GeoScape: An instructional rock garden for inquiry-based cooperative learning exercises in introductory geology courses

Journal of Geoscience Education, Mar 2003 by Calderone, Gary J, Thompson, J Robert, Johnson, Wayne M, Kadel, Steve D, Et al

ENVIRONMENTAL GEOLOGY LAB SECTIONS

GeoScape-based environmental geology exercises are also in development. Students can use GeoScape to work out numerous real world environmental problems, such as: (1) choosing the optimal site for a waste disposal facility from a suite of available locations, (2) conducting site assessment for buildings or towns, and (3) identifying a reasonable supply of ground water and where a well should be drilled. Environmental geology students also spend time working with the impact of the difference between geographic and magnetic north in navigation, or measuring property boundaries with a standard compass that had not been corrected for magnetic declination. In Glendale, with a magnetic declination of -14 deg E, the difference works out to be ately 10 feet over the long dimension of the GeoScape area.

PHYSICAL GEOLOGY LECTURE SECTIONS

The close proximity of GeoScape to our classrooms permits use of the area even within the short duration (50-75 minutes) of a geology lecture period. Groups of 48 students were introduced to the concepts of strike and dip of layers by actually measuring these quantities. The map patterns of plunging folds, and the rules of dip direction and age associated with folded strata were easily demonstrated with GeoScape.

INSTRUCTOR OBSERVATIONS AND STUDENT RESPONSES

Because GeoScape and the exercises that employ it were both developed late in the Spring 2001 semester, we were unable to develop instruments to quantitatively evaluate their effectiveness on student learning. We do use standard course evaluations, however, and responses to the question, "What has the instructor done especially well?" were riddled with positive comments about "hands on" learning. There were no negative comments on the GeoScape exercises. Lacking quantitative analyses, we are forced to rely on anecdotal evidence as reported below.

During the GeoScape mapping exercises, the instructors informally prodded the students with questions like "What do you think of this exercise?" or "So do you want to be a geologist now?" Physical Geology lab student responses were resoundingly favorable, in spite of the above average Phoenix temperatures in late April and early May and the fact that none of our lab students at the time were geology majors. We had introduced the map area as the "North Park Quadrangle" with an obvious nod to the popular cable television show "South Park". Several groups jumped into the spirit of the parody and began naming lithologies using South Park's characters or references (e.g. the Cartman Sandstone). In short, most of the students seemed to have fun with the freedom of being able to choose their own names for discoveries.

It became immediately obvious from the instructors' perspective that even the top performing students in the class were challenged by the mapping exercise. Those students who had struggled with the concept of map scale indicated that measuring objects on the ground and the photo to determine the map scale made the concept much easier to understand. Other students commented that they really hadn't understood the concept of faults being covered by other units until they saw such an obvious example. Still other students seemed to take pride in being able to "put it all together". One student related,"[When I first heard we were going to map the courtyard] I thought it was going to be some little tiny thing. It's cool that you can't see it all at once and have to walk around -kinda like I imagine [geologists] do". Our favorite comment, however, was this one: "So this isn't just a bunch of rocks that happened to look like this. Someone put a lot of thought into this, huh?"