The Education and Outreach Office of EOS has teamed up with Singapore’s Institute of Education (NIE) to create a curriculum module that aims to spark students’ interest in earth science as a field of study at the university level. The unit, which focuses on volcano science and volcanic hazards, is being piloted at Raffles Institution in Singapore, a prestigious secondary school for boys.

The test module was introduced into the classroom in late October, with 28 Raffles students from Secondary 2 and 3 levels participating. Mrs Yak Sheau Yang, a geography teacher at Raffles, said she was enthusiastic about working with the EOS-NIE team, to expose her students to new scientific methods and skills.

The unit is designed to teach the basics of data collection, interpretation and prediction while exposing students to the work of real scientists. The classroom activities include a hands-on introduction to GIS (geographic information system) skills. The content draws on actual research data as well as scenarios based on past volcanic eruptions.

“The module is designed to make students think like geologists, in four dimensions and across long time frames,” said Prof Chris Newhall, the group leader for volcano research at EOS, who presented part of the material. “They also have to think like detectives, interpreting the evidence to make a decision from the best available data.”

Prof Newhall is helping to develop the module, along with Asst Prof Liu Yan of NIE and Pungki Utami of the EOS Education and Outreach Office.

One learning goal is to develop decision‐making skills based on spatial analysis and reasoning. As part of the lesson on volcanic hazards, the students carried out an extensive role-playing exercise involving crisis management. It required them to act as scientists, local politicians, business owners, residents and civil defence officials faced with the knowledge that a volcanic eruption might be imminent.

The students also listened to a chilling audio recording of a KLM airliner that flew into ash emitted from the 1989 eruption of Mt Redoubt in Alaska and transmitted distress signals. Prof Newhall challenged the students to use their prior knowledge of physics to comprehend the process of volcano eruption and consider what may have happened to the airplane.

On the second day of the classroom activities, Dr Liu taught the students how to use ArcGIS software as a tool for mapping and spatial analysis.

In various exercises designed for the module, the students:

• compiled volcanic data from the Smithsonian Institution’s website using Excel and used it to develop a world hazard map

• produced interactive graphs showing the relationship between the volcano explosivity index (VEI) and volcanic eruptions

• generated data sets to map volcano distribution in Southeast Asia

• developed a volcanic hazard map, using Mt Merapi as a case study, and analysed the data to identify the numbers of people in various zones that would be affected by a volcano eruption

Sharmini Blok, director of the E&O Office, said the project to develop the education module grew from a realization that most students in Singapore have few opportunities for advanced study in earth sciences. “In the present curriculum,” she said, “teaching of earth science is mainly limited to a few topics covered as part of the geography curriculum up to Secondary 3” (ages 14-15).

After that, in most schools other than some private institutions, students follow a humanities or a science track. Geography is taught only as an elective in the humanities track.

Volcanoes were chosen as the topic of the unit, she noted, because most of the standard textbooks used in Singapore’s schools devote little, if any, attention to substantive information on the subject. Moreover, a goal of the project is to teach fundamental concepts and skills in a way that makes earth science more engaging for students through exposure to real-life examples of scientific work.

As the curriculum module is expanded and refined, it will increasingly draw on data and field research of EOS scientists and their colleagues at “laboratory” volcanoes in the Philippines and Indonesia, as well as a global database of volcanic unrest now under development.

The module is now being revised based on student and teacher evaluations.