Making Connections to Students’ Lives and Careers Throughout a General Education Science Course

The University of Oklahoma’s general education lecture course Severe & Unusual Weather, taught in two sections each fall and spring, covers about nine topics. The sections are taught by different instructors, each of whom has flexibility to employ a variety of instructional strategies and choose specific topics to cover while meeting the requirement that general education courses in the natural sciences help students understand the importance of the science for appreciating the world around them. Students enrolled have been approximately 6-10% returning adult students, some of whom were veterans or active duty military, and about 10% members of racial or ethnic groups. Their majors are mostly in the humanities (theater, photography) and social sciences (education, English, journalism, sociology), with some natural science majors (psychology, aviation).

For the past two years, Section 001 has been designed with adult and active learning concepts in mind, using deliberate connections between course content and students’ lives and careers to motivate meaningful learning. Students were grouped in teams according to similar majors and assigned group presentations connecting course content to topics that should interest them, such as economic impacts of weather, societal and personal impacts of severe weather, risks to aviation, media coverage of weather, and psychological and sociological responses to weather risks. Students learn about the peer review process for scientific papers while also exploring a connection of course content to their future career or life interests through papers that are run through a mock peer review process. Public policy is discussed in several sections of the course, such as hurricane building codes, wind-resistant construction in tornado alley, and the disproportionate impacts of weather and climate on certain socioeconomic groups. Most students deeply appreciate the opportunity to explore how course content intersects with their lives. Several examples of these connections will be described.