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In December of 2010 I solicited, though this listserve, your participation in a survey about how we teach the larger geosciences courses.  My goal was to get a handle on to what degree we as a subset of the sciences have embraced thee use of technology in class.  I am sharing a couple of the results as I find them somewhat surprising.  I hope they stimulate discussion on 1) how to best engage students in larger geosciences classes and 2) how to incentivize instructors with limited free time and energy to explore alternative teaching methods.

The Survey

The survey was sent to two groups: first, a list of all geosciences instructors in the State of Michigan at four-year colleges; and second, a self-selected group of geosciences instructors who participate in a geosciences education listserv.  Table 1 (attached) enumerates the selections made of the combined groups when asked, “In the ‘lecture portion’ of your survey course, please indicate how frequently you used the following teaching strategies in teaching.”  The results, summarized in Table 1 show that even in a population containing those who have self-registered for a “geoscience education listserv” traditional lecture remains the dominant method employed in class.  Table 1 also illustrates that more active learning techniques (in-class exercises, question/answer sessions, etc.) are rarely, if ever, employed by the respondents to this survey.