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Triggered situational interest in introductory courses can encourage student engagement, motivation, and value for the geosciences. In-person labs have traditionally played a unique role in triggering situational interest compared to lectures, but the COVID transition online disrupted these dynamics. We examine students’ self-reported situational interest from 6,463 responses to weekly surveys in online introductory geoscience lab courses at five U.S. institutions during fall 2020 and spring 2021. Approximately half of students reported that labs were equally (49.4%) or more interesting (4.3%) online, compared to a hypothetical in-person option. Analysis showed a statistically-significant interaction between student situational interest and the combined effect of 1) the course the students were enrolled in and 2) the topic of the lab session (F (20, 6395) = 4.038, p < 0.001). However, topic and course together explain only about 4% of the variance in the dataset, indicating that other factors have a large role in triggering interest. Students who indicated that labs were less interesting online (46.3%) most often cited not being able to physically interact with instructional materials (56.3%) and difficulty interacting with peers (30.6%). When asked what revisions would increase their situational interest, additional hands-on interaction (22.8%) and increased relevance to their life or future career (20.2%) were the answer choices students selected most frequently. These findings identify modifications and enhancements grounded in students’ self-reported interest that can inform the design of online introductory geology labs. 

Following the culmination of an ambitious Earth science education initiative, scientists and educators met to prioritize ways in which education about Earth can foster sustainable societies. 

We compared 236 geoscience instructors’ histories of professional development (PD) participation with classroom observations using the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) that describe undergraduate classes as Student-Centered (score ≥ 50), Transitional (score 31–49) or Teacher-Centered (score ≤ 30). Instructors who attended PD (n = 111) have higher average RTOP scores (44.5 vs. 34.2) and are more frequently observed teaching Student-Centered classes (33% vs. 13%) than instructors with no PD (p < 0.001). Instructors who attended PD that is topically-aligned with content taught during the classroom observation are likely to have RTOP scores that are higher by 13.5 points (p < 0.0001), and are 5.6 times more likely to teach a Student-Centered class than instructors without topically-aligned PD. Comparable odds of teaching Student-Centered classes (5.8x) occur for instructors who attended two topical PD events but were observed teaching a different topic. Models suggest that instructors with at least 24 h of PD are significantly more likely to teach a Student-Centered class than instructors with fewer hours. Our results highlight the effectiveness of discipline-specific PD in impacting teaching practices, and the importance of attending more than one such PD event to aid transfer of learning.