Online and On-Campus Historical Geology Students' Prior Ideas About Global Climate Change

ABSTRACT

As part of a university initiative to incorporate issues of sustainability into general education coursework, the authors sought to incorporate concepts of global climate change into online and on-campus sections of a historical geology course. The authors asked: What is our students' prior knowledge, perceived and actual, about global climate change and what are their sources of understanding? Questionnaires were administered to elicit prior knowledge, perceived knowledge, and sources of previous learning about global climate change. Results indicate that the primary source of students' previous learning was through the media for online students and was university coursework for the on-campus students. Students in both on-campus and online courses came to the course with limited prior knowledge (both perceived knowledge and written responses) about the evidence for global climate change and the methods used to study global climate change.

Key words: :

• global climate change
• prior knowledge
• beliefs
• online learning
• historical geology