Geology and People: Toward New Paradigms for Undergraduate Science Education and Curriculum Dissemination

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Recent concern about the declining interest in science on the part of students and the need for increased science literacy on the part of the general public has led to recognition of the importance of making special efforts to reach non-science majors and future teachers. One possible approach to this problem is to develop courses that have a reduced emphasis on terminology and equations and a greater emphasis on those aspects of the science that are tangible and relevant to students' lives and experiences. For the past five years, I have been teaching a General Education course entitled Geology and People. The goal of the course is to draw students' attention to some of the many ways in which geologic factors have been and still are influencing societies, civilizations and cultures. The material in the course is drawn from a variety of fields including history, economics, political science, and archaeology as well as art, music and literature. I believe the material that I have gathered for the course can make a useful contribution to the development of new paradigms for introductory earth science courses for non-majors and teachers. The interconnections between different components make it inappropriate to disseminate the material through a text or a reader. To overcome this problem, I propose to establish an Internet site on the World Wide Web. The Website would be available free to anyone wishing to access the material pertaining to the influences of geology on people's lives.. The Website would be constructed in a way that emphasized pathways and linkages between information. Individuals would use the Website to find information that they could incorporate into their own courses. This approach represents a new paradigm for the dissemination of curricular material.