51-10 Student Recruitment into the Geosciences: Driving Factors for Entrance and Continued Engagement in Geoscience Courses

Session: Geoscience Education Research: Methods, Frameworks, and Results from Emerging Scholars

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Introductory geoscience classes represent the primary recruiting ground for future majors (Boyd et al., 2023) or the last science class many college students will ever take. With growing concerns about the recruitment and training of earth science literate citizens and qualified graduates for the job market (AGI; Gonzales and Keane, 2020), introductory courses remain the frontier of our efforts to attract new students. Here we present the continued work with the Beliefs of Students in Introductory Courses surveys for geology students I and II (Jackson & Ryker, 2019; BaSIC-Geo), which assess motivations for why students enroll in introductory geology courses and what would cause them to enroll in additional future courses. 

An exploratory factor analysis of 1,057 student responses showed that five factors explained 41% of the variability in student responses to the BaSIC-Geo I, including enjoyment and utility of the course topic, perceptions of the professor, autonomy in course selection and the belief that the student can succeed and therefore should enroll in the course. These factors suggest areas where geoscience departments can be more proactive at recruitment and areas that may be beyond departmental control. A follow-up analysis of BaSIC-Geo II showed similar results, with five factors accounting for 53% of the variance. While there was significant overlap in loading factors between BaSIC-Geo I and II, the BaSIC-Geo II was different in that it relied upon the perception that the professor cared about their students, and that others (e.g., parents, academic advisors) would approve of the choice to enroll in additional courses. This presentation includes new results from a confirmatory factor analysis of previously reported results as well as an assessment in the variability of student responses by demographic factors. We also present the relationship between the BaSIC-Geo surveys and students separately self-reporting their interest in taking another geology course.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Program. Vol. 57, No. 6, 2025

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