Assessing Student Learning in Soil Physics and Hydrology Courses: Coaching for Problem Solving or Memorization?.

Traditional course structures and student assessments place an unintentionaly high value on low-level student learning such as recognition and memorization. However, many college students majoring in the soil sciences or other natural resource sciences will take a soil physics and hydrology course late in their college coursework during a time they should be fine tuning their abilities to analyze, evaluate, and create. In this presentation, methods and examples for designing student assessments aimed at testing students ability to demonstate higher-level learning will be discussed.