José teaches a capstone course for geoscience majors, and has recently become head of his department's curriculum committee. As José prepares for the first meeting of the curriculum committee and considers the structure of his capstone course, he is thinking about what his department should expect their undergraduate students to know or be able to do by the time they graduate. Some of his students will go on to geology related jobs, particularly in the environmental industry, and others will be attending graduate school in MS or PhD programs. In addition to acquiring a core of factual knowledge about the geosciences, he would also like his students to gain an accurate understanding of important geologic processes, to be able to think critically about spatial data, and to learn to integrate processes and data into a holistic model of the Earth and Earth processes. In short, his goal is to have students learn to "think like a geoscientist" - to move their thinking and skills along the continuum from geology student (novice) to geoscience professional (expert). What does José mean by this, and how can he achieve this goal?
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Petcovic et al. (2007) studied this question.