Developing and Assessing an Environmental Science-Based Education Module to Support the Nature of Science and...

In today's rapidly evolving career climate, there is an increased need to foster student understanding and appreciation of the scientific method, as well as the higher-order cognitive skills that accompany this process. A partnership with ANP Technologies, a Delaware company that manufactures and produces products relating to enviromnental monitoring, has led to the development of a classroom-ready educational tool. This module uses a sequence that prompts students to engage, explore, explain, and evaluate while meeting various concepts within the Next Generation Science Standards. Located in Dover, Delaware, Wesley College is a minority-serving liberal arts institution where non-science majors are required to take a topical science course emphasizing scientific literacy. Prior to this project, there was no coimnon instructional tools or assessment between the various class sections. The module developed in tliis project was piloted in the spring of 2019 along with a post-test to assess module effectiveness and consistency between sections. It was hypothesized that there would be no significant differences between average post-test scores of the different sections following the implementation of the module and that students would achieve proficiency (70% or higher) on at least half of the questions. Results confirmed the consistency between the sections as there were no significant differences in mean post-test score. Students were able to meet threshold on 7 of the 12 questions, suggesting this module could be useful in scientific literacy education.