A distributed model for undergraduate education in environmental remote sensing: increased student interest in science and sense of science identity and belonging

Increasing diversity in the geosciences and expanding the relevance of the discipline in addressing environmental and societal challenges require transformative approaches that create equitable and inclusive opportunities for student engagement. Previous research has posited that inquiry-based approaches to learning, where students are active participants in asking and answering scientific questions, can increase retention of students with identities historically underrepresented in the sciences and directly affect attitudes towards science. 

We present results from a new open-access course in satellite remote sensing of the environment that uses evidence-based, active learning pedagogy to train the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists The course, called Observing Earth from Above, teaches students how to access, visualize, and communicate satellite remote sensing data from NASA’s ECOSTRESS instrument to address a variety of environmental challenges. The resources focus on follow-along tutorials for students and also include recorded lectures and interviews with remote sensing scientists.  

 The course has now been formally taught by instructors from at least seven different institutions and the website visited >2700 times by >1400 users. We observed significant increases (p < 0.05) in: (i) interest in science (20% increase); (ii) sense of belonging in the sciences (11% increase); (iii) sense of identity in the sciences (9% increase); and (iv) understanding of the course materials (19% increase; n = 59 students). Importantly, these results were robust as a function of gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. However, changes were minimal for students who identified as first-generation in their family to attend university (7% increase). We also observed only small changes in an interest in a career in science, which was relatively high from the outset. 

Our results indicate that an inquiry-based approach to teaching environmental remote sensing can improve student attitudes and that this can be scaled by making resources available to other instructors. We expect such a model could be replicated for different content knowledge and skill sets to support instructors in implementing evidence-based approaches that empower a diverse new generation of geoscientists.