Ferrier Ken L, Golos Eva M, Haseloff Marianne
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Geoscience, Madison, Wisconsin, United States.
Data Brief. 2024 Sep 6;57:110904. doi: 10.1016/j.dib.2024.110904. eCollection 2024 Dec.
Course requirements for undergraduate degree programs are of wide interest because they signal the subjects and disciplines that departments value, and because they indicate to prospective employers the knowledge and skills that students are trained in. Many geoscience departments are reassessing course requirements for their undergraduate majors in the face of declining enrollments and budgetary pressures. Comparing course requirements among institutions is useful during such reassessments because it enables departments to identify gaps in their curricula and to evaluate their course requirements relative to those at other institutions. To date, however, no easily accessible compilation of course requirements for geoscience majors has been developed. This presents an obstacle for quantitative, data-based assessments of geoscience course requirements. To fill this gap, we constructed a novel data compilation of course and credit requirements for undergraduate geoscience majors in 50 Geoscience departments in the United States in March-April 2024 (n = 966 courses in total). To facilitate comparisons among programs, we restricted this compilation to departments at R1 universities. For each program, we collected data on the required geoscience courses and credits inside the home department and the required cognate courses and credits outside the home department (e.g., Math, Physics, Chemistry). In addition to reporting the course and credit requirements for each major, this data compilation also reports normalized course and credit loads to help compare requirements among semester-term and quarter-term institutions, which have different term lengths and systematically different course and credit degree requirements. The dataset consists of two files: one data compilation file in spreadsheet format that contains data on geoscience undergraduate major course requirements, and one document in pdf format that contains figures displaying graphical representations of the same data. The data compilation is organized as a series of four tables, each in its own worksheet. These tables contain: 1) a list of the institutions, departments, and majors included in this compilation; 2) a matrix of course requirements in the compiled major at each institution, both in the home geoscience department and in cognate fields outside the home department; 3) a matrix of the credits associated with each course requirement; and 4) the percentage of the compiled programs that require a list of common geoscience subjects. These data can be reused by other researchers to identify subject-matter gaps in departmental curricula and to quantify the mean and variability in course requirements across institutions. This in turn can be used to inform departments' decisions about how to adapt their course requirements to best serve their students. These data can be used to investigate trends in course and credit requirements among institutions, and they can serve as a quantitative foundation for comparisons of course and credit requirements in the geosciences to those in other non-geoscience fields. Lastly, these data can be used by students comparing their course requirements to those at other institutions, which can help them choose which courses to take to strengthen their education and career prospects.
本科学位课程的要求备受广泛关注，因为它们表明了各系所重视的学科领域，也向潜在雇主展示了学生所接受培训的知识和技能。面对招生人数下降和预算压力，许多地球科学系正在重新评估其本科专业的课程要求。在这种重新评估过程中，比较各院校的课程要求很有帮助，因为这能使各系发现其课程设置中的差距，并相对于其他院校评估自身的课程要求。然而，迄今为止，尚未编制出易于获取的地球科学专业课程要求汇编。这给基于数据的地球科学课程要求定量评估带来了障碍。为填补这一空白，我们于2024年3月至4月构建了一个关于美国50个地球科学系本科地球科学专业课程及学分要求的全新数据汇编（总共966门课程）。为便于各专业之间的比较，我们将此汇编限制在R1类大学的各系。对于每个专业，我们收集了本系内所需的地球科学课程及学分数据，以及本系外所需的相关课程及学分数据（如数学、物理、化学）。除了报告每个专业的课程和学分要求外，此数据汇编还报告了标准化的课程和学分负荷，以帮助比较学期制和学季制院校之间的要求，因为它们的学期长度不同，课程和学分程度要求也存在系统性差异。数据集由两个文件组成：一个电子表格格式的数据汇编文件，其中包含地球科学本科专业课程要求的数据；一个pdf格式的文档，其中包含相同数据的图形表示。数据汇编按一系列四个表格组织，每个表格在单独的工作表中。这些表格包含：1）本汇编中所包括的院校、系和专业列表；2）每个院校汇编专业在本地球科学系和本系外相关领域的课程要求矩阵；3）与每个课程要求相关的学分矩阵；4）要求一系列常见地球科学学科的汇编专业的百分比。其他研究人员可以重新使用这些数据，以发现各系课程设置中的学科差距，并量化各院校课程要求的均值和变异性。这反过来可用于为各系如何调整课程要求以更好地服务学生提供决策依据。这些数据可用于调查各院校课程和学分要求的趋势，并且可为地球科学与其他非地球科学领域的课程和学分要求比较提供定量基础。最后，学生可以使用这些数据将自己的课程要求与其他院校进行比较，这有助于他们选择修读哪些课程来加强自己的学业和职业前景。
