HR: 09:30h
AN: ED11A-07 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Students Learning from Model-Produced Graphics in an Undergraduate Climate Change Science Class
AU: * Gautier, C
EM: gautier@icess.ucsb.edu
AF: Geography Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106 United States
AB: We present results based on the analysis of inquiry-based modeling activities in a climate change science course. This course is an inquiry-based course in which questions are explicitly solicited from students in different forms. With much preparation and scaffolding in the form of reading assignments and preliminary questions asking, mini-lectures and modeling to them what is expected, students are eventually asked to come up with quantitative scientific questions that they can address with a radiative transfer model. The issues they must address with their questions are related to the radiative forcing concept and include: clouds, greenhouse gases, aerosols and land-use effects on climate. For each of their experiments, students analyze graphs that are automatically generated from the model and also produce their own graphics and simple analytical models based on the tabular data generated by the model. Our analysis focuses on how practices in generating, interpreting, discussing, and integrating graphs relevant to climate change help students learn about climate change science. Students' presentation and discussion of their results in the form of graphics will be analyzed and the way in which the students chose to proceed with analytical representations of results for theory establishment will be investigated.
UR: http://www.crseo.ucsb.edu/esrg/Geog134_S04/Geog134_Index.html
DE: 1610 Atmosphere (0315, 0325)
DE: 0850 Geoscience education research
SC: Education and Human Resourcese [ED]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting