The Data Mining Test: An Unexpectedly Effective Tool to Promote Soft and Hard Skills, In Earth Sciences

This article presents a recent experience of the serialization of new educational tools and approaches, which became necessary because of the pandemic, and the need to work online. As it is well known, the use of ‘distance learning’ has had several consequences. It has required everyone, teachers, and students alike, to acquire new digital skills: it has entailed psychological disadvantages, such as social isolation, and didactic-educational ones, such as a lack of transparency in the recognition and certification of skills, knowledge, and abilities, which are difficult to measure behind a screen. But it has also required teachers to renew their methodological approaches and to make the best possible use of the tools offered by the new technologies. In Earth Sciences, as in many other disciplines, the frontal approach is the easiest and traditionally most used, especially in front of a silent and dark screen, where the students on-line are represented just by letters or symbols, but it is certainly the least effective in engaging and exciting students. The endless virtual tools available on the web, films, animations, presentations can partly help the teacher to overcome this obstacle, but they cannot replace educational approaches of active teaching, which allow to develop the students’ interest in this field of knowledge and promote skills. In this research we aimed to build models and paths that use data readily available on the web, such as maps, apps, images, useful for the development of hard skills related to Earth Sciences, but also soft skills, such as critical thinking, problem solving, digital literacy, increasingly required in the world of work. The tool used is the Data Mining Test, a tool that requires commitment and practice in its implementation but is very effective. The research is underway, but the results of the first experiments are proving interesting.