Virtual strike and dip – advancing inclusive and accessible field geology

Natalie Bursztyn,Bart Masters,Alexander Klippel,Hannah Riegel,Jan Oliver Wallgrün,Jiayan Zhao,Jiawei Huang,Pejman Sajjadi

doi:10.5194/gc-5-29-2022

Abstract

Abstract. Accessibility and inclusivity in field geology have become increasingly important issues to address in geoscience education and have long been set aside due to the tradition of field geology and the laborious task of making it inclusive to all. Although a popular saying among geologists is “the best geologists see the most rocks”, field trips cost money, time, and are only accessible to those who are physically able to stay outside for extended periods. With the availability of 3D block diagrams, an onslaught of virtual learning environments is becoming increasingly viable. Strike and dip is at the core of any field geologist's education and career; learning and practicing these skills is fundamental to making geologic maps and understanding the regional geology of an area. In this paper, we present the Strike and Dip virtual tool (SaD) with the objective of teaching the principles of strike and dip for geologic mapping to introductory geology students. We embedded the SaD tool into an introductory geology course and recruited 147 students to participate in the study. Participants completed two maps using the SaD tool and reported on their experiences through a questionnaire. Students generally perceived the SaD tool positively. Furthermore, some individual differences among students proved to be important contributing factors to their experiences and subjective assessments of learning. When controlling for participants' past experience with similar software, our results indicate that students highly familiar with navigating geographical software perceived the virtual environment of the tool to be significantly more realistic and easier to use compared with those with lower levels of familiarity. Our results are corroborated by a qualitative assessment of participants' feedback to two open-ended questions, highlighting both the overall effectiveness of the SaD tool and the effect of geographical software familiarity on measures of experience and learning.

Highlights

1.1 The “field” environment: real, virtual, and implementation for remote learningThe “field” may be the single most prominent element defining geosciences
We first looked at the scores for the different measured metrics (Table 1) averaged over all participants to analyze the overall assessment of the Strike and Dip virtual tool (SaD) tool
Using the SaD tool, an entirely remote introductory fieldmapping exercise was successfully completed by students during the COVID-19 pandemic

Summary

Introduction

1.1 The “field” environment: real, virtual, and implementation for remote learningThe “field” may be the single most prominent element defining geosciences. Virtual field trips can allow instructors to expose students to widely accessible, relevant, and authentic learning experiences independent of time and space (e.g., Stumpf et al, 2008; Bursztyn et al, 2017; Mead et al, 2019; Klippel et al, 2020a). Leveraging increasingly accessible high-resolution computing devices for education has the potential to positively impact student engagement (Witmer and Singer, 1998; IJsselsteijn and Riva, 2003), and efforts to integrate emerging technology into the classroom to improve undergraduate success in introductory geoscience courses have further demonstrated the importance of experiential learning exemplified best by field trips (Cunningham and Lansiquot, 2019; Dolphin et al, 2019; Lansiquot and MacDonald, 2019; Moysey and Lazar, 2019). While there is some positive evidence that compares actual and virtual field trips (e.g., Klippel et al, 2019; Marshall et al, 2021), considering fieldwork without the field (i.e., in a virtual environment) is a challenging concept for Earth science educators. We have seen a dramatic influx of efforts (e.g., numerous NAGT workshops; Earth Educators’ Rendezvous, 2020) and papers since 2020 that detail the creative ways a community, deprived of their traditional educational methods, has responded to distancing constraints and travel bans (e.g., Andrews et al, 2020; Bethune, 2020; Madon, 2020; Rotzein et al, 2020, 2021; Sajjadi et al, 2020; Tibaldi et al, 2020, Whitmeyer and Dordevic, 2021)

Methods

Results

Conclusion