Peer-facilitated interleaving using the four geoscientific perspectives: prospects for competency-based measures of learning at the undergraduate level

Since they were introduced over a decade ago, Kastens et al.'s (https://doi.org/10.1029/2009EO310001) four perspectives have provided more than just a taxonomy for geoscientific thinking and learning. Here, these perspectives are employed as the means for systematically framing the learning process - i.e., enabling an iterative approach in which the same topic is considered in progression from the four different stances. Commonly known as interleaving, this perspectives-based approach is unique to the geosciences. Demonstrated as an effective strategy for procedurally oriented learning tasks (e.g., in mathematics education), less well investigated is application of interleaving to the more abstract and conceptual nature of the geosciences - though examples do exist (e.g., Jaeger et al., https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000121). Spanning two, large undergraduate courses that aim to introduce aspects of the geosciences to non-majors, interleaving was employed in laboratory exercises (labs) that independently emphasized climate change and impact cratering. Across both courses, as topics were progressively revisited, perspective-blocked interleaving resulted in systematically improved performance as determined via peer assessment. When perspectives are randomly interleaved within the same lab, however, performance-based metrics are more nuanced - whereas assessments by peers do not exhibit evidence of a systematic improvement from lab-to-lab, traditional means for testing are supportive of the efficacy of the approach when quantified via various statistical measures. Introduced originally as an alternate means for encouraging engagement during the midst of the ongoing global pandemic, a platform that facilitates peer interaction was used to mediate labs in both courses. Because the learning process is thus extended to incorporate evaluation, feedback inherent in peer assessment presents as another opportunity for amplifying the iterative nature of this interleaved learning process. As interleaving via geoscientific perspectives can expose learner competency (i.e., actual measures of performance), and generalizes to other topics, levels of instruction, as well as subject areas, the utility of the approach is as diverse as the geosciences itself.