Integrating active learning into paleontology classes

Active learning is a natural fit for paleontology, which can provide opportunities for examining fossils, analysing data and writing.

Additionally, there are a number of topics in the field that are exciting to geology majors and non-majors alike: very few can resist the lure of dinosaurs, huge meteor impacts, vicious Cretaceous sharks or a giant Pleistocene land mammal.

However, it can seem difficult to introduce these techniques into a large general education class full of non-majors: paleontological specimens provide a natural starting point for hands-on classroom activities, but in a large class it is not always practical or possible to provide enough fossil material for all students.

Here I will briefly introduce different types of active learning approaches, and then explain how I have applied these to a large introductory paleontology class for non-majors.