Skeptical Science Educates My Students

A guest post by Professor Scott Mandia, reposted from Global Warming: Man or Myth?

I teach MET295 – Global Climate Change to first and second year community college students. MET295 is a three credit lecture course that serves as a science elective for the general student population. Basic high school algebra is the only prerequisite. (See the course outline.)

I used John Cook’s SkepticalScience.com as the student resource for this semester’s research papers. As you will see from the four example papers highlighted on this blog, information found at SkepticalScience.com is accessible to the typical college student and likely to the general public.

The assignment:

Each student was randomly assigned a topic from Skeptic Arguments & What The Science Says.

Students were asked to carefully study all the information appearing in the Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced tabs.

Students were required to summarize, in their own words, the information learned from researching the topic. Students were also encouraged to use other resources, especially course notes, to help them complete the paper. Students were to use proper APA Citation Style formatting within the content (parenthetical citing) and in a Works Cited page appearing as the last page.

I asked all students to please refer to the Term Paper Grading Rubric to maximize their final paper grades.