Understanding Atmospheric Carbon Budgets: Teaching Students Conservation of Mass

ABSTRACT

In this paper we describe student use of a series of connected online problem-solving activities to remediate atmospheric carbon budget misconceptions held by undergraduate university students. In particular, activities were designed to address a common misconception about conservation of mass when students assume a simplistic, direct relationship between atmospheric CO₂ concentrations and carbon emissions. This particular misconception was challenged through an instructional intervention applying constructivist learning theory principles in an effort to prompt cognitive dissonance and induce conceptual change. This study is based on 1 y of data collected from a survey completed by introductory physical geology students (n = 176), divided into a control group (n = 127) and an experimental group (n = 49). The students in the experimental group worked on an instructional intervention targeting identified misconceptions during a laboratory session. Both the control group and the experimental group were presented information targeting the same misconception through a traditional lecture. Students completing the instructional intervention demonstrated significant increases in learning and reductions of misconceptions relative to students in the control group. However, some aspects of the misconceptions seemed to persist.

Key words::

• Introductory physical geology
• budgets
• atmospheric carbon dioxide

Acknowledgments

We thank Pete Boysen for his assistance in the creation of the Thinkspace activity and for his technical support. We thank Holly Bender for funding the upgrade of this activity within Thinkspace 2.0. We also thank John Beyers for his helpful insight in the formulation and analysis of the Thinkspace activity and graduate students in the Departments of Geological and Atmospheric Sciences and School of Education at Iowa State University for the evaluation of questions and review of the activity before it was deployed with students. The thorough review and comments by two reviewers and one associate editor, Research Editor Alison Stokes, and Editor-in-Chief Kristen St. John helped us greatly improve this paper.