Geoscience Learning Research Articles

Integration by design: driving mineral system knowledge using multi-modal, collocated, scale-consistent characterisation

Abstract. Recent decades have seen an exponential rise in the application of machine learning in geoscience. However, fundamental differences distinguish geoscience data from most other data types. Geoscience datasets are typically multi-dimensional, and contain 1D (drill holes), 2D (maps or cross-sections), and 3D volumetric and point data (models/voxels). Geoscience data quality is a product of the data's resolution and the precision of the methods used to acquire them. The dimensionality, resolution, and precision of each layer within a geoscience dataset translate into limitations to the spatiality, scale, and uncertainty of resulting interpretations. Historically, geoscience datasets were overlaid cartographically to incorporate subjective, experience-driven knowledge and variances in scale and resolution. These nuances and limitations that underpin the reliability of automated interpretation are well understood by geoscientists but are rarely appropriately transferred to data science. For true integration of geoscience data, such issues cannot be overlooked without consequence. To apply data analytics to complex geoscience data (e.g. hydrothermal mineral systems) effectively, methodologies that characterise the system quantitatively at a common scale, using collocated analyses, should be sought. This paper provides research and exploration insights from an innovative district-wide, scale-integrated geoscience data project, which analysed 1590 samples from 23 mineral deposits and prospects across the Cloncurry district, Queensland, Australia. Nine different analytical techniques were used, including density, magnetic susceptibility, remanent magnetisation, anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility, radiometrics, conductivity, automated mineralogy based on scanning electron microscopy (SEM), geochemistry, and short-wave infrared (SWIR) hyperspectral data with 561 columns of scale-integrated data (+2151 columns of SWIR data). All data were collected on 2.2 cm × 2.5 cm sample cylinders, a scale at which the confidence in the coupling of data from techniques can be high. These data are integrated by design to eliminate the need to downscale coarser measurements via assumptions, inferences, inversions, and interpolations. This scale-consistent approach is critical to the quantitative characterisation of mineral systems and has numerous applications in mineral exploration, such as linking alteration paragenesis with structural controls and petrophysical zonation. The Cloncurry METAL dataset is made freely available via the AuScope Data Repository: https://doi.org/10.60623/82trleue (Austin et al., 2024).

Leveraging Uncertainty as a Means of Facilitating Sensemaking Within a Digital Wildfire Curriculum

AbstractThe changing landscape of geoscience learning has initiated growing interest in engaging science learners with climate data. One approach to teaching climate is the application of broadly accessible digital science curricula, which often include data tools such as visualizations, data representations, and simulations embedded within digital science curricula. We are specifically interested in how students and teachers grapple with scientific uncertainty in digital curricula. Our paper therefore examines how a 7th grade science class and their teacher leverage moments of uncertainty in their work within a digital geohazard curriculum to learn about wildfire risk and impact. We analyzed episodes of learners’ interactions, and those included scientific uncertainty related to key ideas about wildfires. We also attend to how the teacher orchestrates across class members’ ideas and the representations they were using. Our findings suggest that the digital curriculum elicited important sensemaking about wildfires and climate, including the interpretation of trends (Episode 1), working with simulations as a means of scientific investigation (Episode 2), and making meaning across disparate climate maps (Episode 3). Importantly, our analysis highlights the imperative work of the teacher in creating and leveraging productive sensemaking around the climate representations and simulations, yet outside of the predetermined curriculum. Our findings illustrate that maximizing students’ learning about climate in digital science curricula demands attention beyond teachers’ ad hoc adaptation, and rather, the intentional design of tools that support sensemaking about uncertainty as a dialogic process that is negotiated in response to students’ ideas.

Importance of centering traditional knowledge and Indigenous culture in geoscience education

Traditional Knowledge (TK) is a qualitative and quantitative living body of knowledge developed locally and regionally across generations over thousands of years. This study aims to show through authentic voice the importance of centering TK systems and cultural needs to provide equitable geoscience education programs. TK can be communicated through a variety of methods, such as story and song, dance, paintings, carvings, structures, and textiles. TK is interdisciplinary within anthropological and ecological subsistence and provide enhanced cultural and spiritual context. Research findings are enhanced by the exploratory and inquiry-based design of TK and provide insight into the anthropogenic impacts on the environment allowing researchers to gain a rich understanding of human behaviors and patterns when collecting and analyzing data. This study examines factors influencing Indigenous students’ participation and retention in the geosciences, specifically gauging opinions on the incorporation of TK systems into geoscience education. Data was collected using an electronic survey to identify factors that inform students’ decision to enter geoscience disciplines and better understand the importance of role models and mentors for retention. Our findings indicate that Indigenous students were interested in using both TK and Western science in geoscience learning spaces, Indigenous role models played an important role in sense of belonging and identity in the geosciences, and the incorporation of culture into learning experiences played an important role in retention. Findings from this study, if operationalized, would allow geoscience departments to increase retention of Indigenous students and faculty, provide equitable educational opportunities, and to better understand how to effect cultural change in the geosciences by providing a welcoming and affirming space for Indigenous scholars.

Self-regulated learning: Overview and potential future directions in geoscience

Self-regulated learning (SRL) models provide a framework for understanding the observed variance of student performance in geoscience learning contexts. Instructors can potentially use a SRL framework to support students in self-identifying the specific approaches to learning they use when engaging in geoscience learning situations (coursework, field experiences, visualization and abstraction tasks, etc.) and guide them in adopting more effective learning strategies and tactics, ultimately improving their performance and learning. Presented here is a summary of a SRL theoretical framework from the educational psychology community, an overview of recent research in science learning at the college-level using SRL frameworks, and recommendations for future SRL research directions in geoscience to promote SRL in teaching and learning practices.

Automated Well-Log Processing and Lithology Classification by Identifying Optimal Features Through Unsupervised and Supervised Machine-Learning Algorithms

Summary The application of specialized machine learning (ML) in petroleum engineering and geoscience is increasingly gaining attention in the development of rapid and efficient methods as a substitute to existing methods. Existing ML-based studies that use well logs contain two inherent limitations. The first limitation is that they start with one predefined combination of well logs that by default assumes that the chosen combination of well logs is poised to give the best outcome in terms of prediction, although the variation in accuracy obtained through different combinations of well logs can be substantial. The second limitation is that most studies apply unsupervised learning (UL) for classification problems, but it underperforms by a substantial margin compared with nearly all the supervised learning (SL) algorithms. In this context, this study investigates a variety of UL and SL ML algorithms applied on multiple well-log combinations (WLCs) to automate the traditional workflow of well-log processing and classification, including an optimization step to achieve the best output. The workflow begins by processing the measured well logs, which includes developing different combinations of measured well logs and their physics-motivated augmentations, followed by removal of potential outliers from the input WLCs. Reservoir lithology with four different rock types is investigated using eight UL and seven SL algorithms in two different case studies. The results from the two case studies are used to identify the optimal set of well logs and the ML algorithm that gives the best matching reservoir lithology to its ground truth. The workflow is demonstrated using two wells from two different reservoirs on Alaska North Slope to distinguish four different rock types along the well (brine-dominated sand, hydrate-dominated sand, shale, and others/mixed compositions). The results show that the automated workflow investigated in this study can discover the ground truth for the lithology with up to 80% accuracy with UL and up to 90% accuracy with SL, using six routine well logs [vp, vs, ρb, ϕneut, Rt, gamma ray (GR)], which is a significant improvement compared with the accuracy reported in the current state of the art, which is less than 70%.

Physics Student’s Research Skills Performance: A Field-Based Approach in Geoscience Learning

This research aims to describe performance of university physics students in the field of geoscience, focusing on assessment of students’ ability in field-practice implementation associated with geoscience learning to solve corresponding problems in the society living nearby the volcano. The present study involved a total of 32 students in the year 3 of their study, performing field work relevant to geoscience themes in Mount Kelud, well known as Tourism Park in East Java province, Indonesia. Based on the assignments distributed over the students during practising research skills, we concluded that students’ performance was overall good, indicating that they were well-trained. However, further improvement of the skills was required for at least two competencies, namely ability to assess critical information from the source and to both analyze and synthesize relatively new knowledge and hence different perpectives obtained on site. Following the research results, we hereby recommended that the field-based approach in geoscience learning is of significance in supporting improved performance and better research skills of university physics students.

The Students’ Voice of Volcanology in Education for Sustainable Development Context

The aim of this study is to identify college students’ conception regarding to volcanic phenomena. This study was possessed the conception profile of freshmen in volcanology using questions instrument about volcanology concept and making decision skills instrument test which created by the researchers. A descriptive quantitative approach was used, which included 32 physics students at Surabaya State University as the participants. The result indicated that the physics students have a little understanding about volcanology concept. From all questions provided, they answered correctly less than 50 % only. In line with this, their making decision skills need to be trained. Meanwhile, as science teachers must have a good understanding of this subject matter. Therefore it can be concluded that the evaluated geoscience learning curriculum for pre-service science teachers needs to be evaluated.

Science teacher’s conception about importance of Geoscience learning: A case study of junior high schools in Surabaya Indonesia

The aim of this study is to identify the science teacher’s conception of the importance of geoscience learning. This study was possessed the conception profile of science teacher about geoscience learning through questionnaire instrument and curriculum analyses to 17 science teachers at three Junior High Schools in Surabaya as the participants. A descriptive quantitative approach is used to analyse the data. Based on the results obtained, almost all the participant stated that geoscience learning is important to teach but more than 50% of science teachers do not teach it because of insufficient time constraints. Based on the curriculum analyses, can be known that the learning method which is done using textbooks only without involving issues which are happening in the present. Therefore, it can be concluded that the developed geoscience learning curriculum for pre-service science teachers needs to be developed.

Machine Learning in Geoscience: Riding a Wave of Progress

2nd Annual Machine Learning in Solid Earth Geoscience Conference; Santa Fe, New Mexico, 18–22 March 2019

Designing Geoscience Learning for Sustainable Development: A Professional Competency Assessment for Postgraduate Students in Science Education Program

This research involved 19 postgraduate students majoring on Science Education at one university in Surabaya who were programming Earth and Space Sciences course. The objective of this research is to measure students’ ability in designing a lesson plan for sustainable education on environmental issues around volcanoes by integrating education for sustainable development (ESD) competence. Descriptive quantitative analysis was employed to assess the lesson plans developed by the students. In general, the results showed that the lesson plans were less contextual to support the improvement of decision-making abilities on the environmental issues, the emergence of environmental awareness among students, encouragement to the students to have sense of belonging to the environment, and fostering critical analysis of various environmental phenomena. The results suggest further efforts to improve professional competence of the postgraduate students in developing geoscience learning instruments, particularly related to integrate the ESD competence into lesson plans.

Earth surface modeling for education: How effective is it? Four semesters of classroom tests with WILSIM‐GC

AbstractThis paper presents results from a randomized experimental design replicated over four semesters that compared students’ performance in understanding landform evolution processes as measured by the pretest to posttest score growth between two treatment methods: an online interactive simulation tool and a paper‐based exercise. While both methods were shown to be effective at enhancing students’ learning of the landform concepts and processes, there was no statistically significant difference in score growth between the two instructional methods. However, the attitudinal survey indicated that students consistently favored the simulation approach over the paper‐based exercise. With the simulation method, female students showed greater score growth than males, especially for test items requiring higher level thinking. This indicates that the visually rich interactive simulation tool may be integrated to better support female students’ learning in geoscience. Science major students generally outperformed non‐science major students in terms of score growth, which suggests that background knowledge played an important role in realizing the potential of computer modeling in enhancing students’ learning. Sufficient scaffolding is necessary to maximize the effect of interactive earth surface modeling in geoscience education.

Learning to Form Accurate Mental Models

A cycle of prediction, comparison, and feedback supports spatial learning in geoscience.

The Roles of Working Memory and Cognitive Load in Geoscience Learning

ABSTRACT Working memory is a cognitive system that allows for the simultaneous storage and processing of active information. While working memory has been implicated as an important element for success in many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, its specific role in geoscience learning is not fully understood. The major goal of this article is to examine the potential role that working memory plays in successful geoscience learning. We start by reviewing two popular approaches to studying working memory in science learning—the individual differences approach and the cognitive load approach—and consider how these two approaches have been utilized in geosciences education research. Next, we highlight examples of various activities and curricular materials that have been used in geoscience classrooms in an effort to improve student learning and offload working memory resources, including using concept sketches and providing varying levels of scaffolding. We outline recommendations about how to structure geoscience classrooms and labs to maximize student learning and suggest potential avenues for future research aimed at investigating the role of working memory in geoscience learning.

VLP Simulation: An Interactive Simple Virtual Model to Encourage Geoscience Skill about Volcano

The purpose of this study was to describe physics students predicting skills after following the geoscience learning using VLP (Volcano Learning Project) simulation. This research was conducted to 24 physics students at one of the state university in East Java-Indonesia. The method used is the descriptive analysis based on students’ answers related to predicting skills about volcanic activity. The results showed that the learning by using VLP simulation was very potential to develop physics students predicting skills. Students were able to explain logically about volcanic activity and they have been able to predict the potential eruption that will occur based on the real data visualization. It can be concluded that the VLP simulation is very suitable for physics student requirements in developing geosciences skill and recommended as an alternative media to educate the society in an understanding of volcanic phenomena.

Assessment of student learning using augmented reality Grand Canyon field trips for mobile smart devices

In searching for ways to improve undergraduate success in introductory geoscience courses, the importance of experiential learning in engaging students has become clear—and in geoscience, that is encapsulated best by field trips. However, as general education class sizes increase, so do the cost, liability, and difficulty of running a field trip. A solution for economically and conveniently bringing kinesthetic field experiences to a broader audience lies in the integration of technology through mobile-device games, apps, and augmented reality (AR) field trips. We report here an examination of learning gains at five colleges after intervention with augmented reality field trips to Grand Canyon. The AR field trips cover three topics taught in introductory geoscience courses: geologic time, geologic structures, and hydrologic processes. Results involving nearly 1000 students show that overall gains are similar to control groups, with completion of the AR field trips being a predictor of student learning success in some cases. Prior interest in the geosciences, students’ base-level understanding of the material, and whether or not the student is a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) major are strong predictors of improvement in geoscience learning. Gender and ethnicity had no statistical impact on the results, suggesting the AR field trip modules have broad reach across student demographics. Because these modules have been shown elsewhere to increase student interest in learning the geosciences, we advocate their adoption, leading to increases in student learning.

Leveling the playing field: Grounding learning with embedded simulations in geoscience.

Although desktop simulations can be useful in representing scientific phenomena during inquiry activities, they do not allow students to embody or contextualize the spatial aspects of those phenomena. One learning technology that does attempt to combine embodiment and grounded experience to support learning in science is Embedded Phenomena. The objective of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of a classroom-based Embedded Phenomena activity for learning in geoscience, and to investigate whether individual differences in spatial skills had an impact on the effectiveness. The simulated scientific phenomenon was earthquakes, and 44 fifth grade (10-year old) students learned from a unit containing both content instruction and simulations. In the embedded condition, 15 earthquake events were simulated within the classroom space and students enacted the computation of epicenters with strings and their bodies. Students in the non-embedded condition received the same content instruction and did the same activities, but the epicenter computations were done with maps instead of with students’ bodies. Students in the embedded condition showed greater learning gains overall. Further, the Embedded Phenomena activity attenuated the effect of individual differences in spatial skills on learning in science such that low spatial individuals performed as well as high spatial individuals in the embedded condition.

Teaching students in place: the languages of third space learning

With a perceptive eye cast on geoscience pedagogy for students labeled as disabled, Martinez-Alvarez makes important contributions to the existing conversation on placed-based learning. It is in our local backyards, from the corner basketball court, to the mud bank of a city lake, to the adjacent field where rocky outcrops spill down to a forgotten farmer’s field, that we find rich working material for connecting self and community, moving students’ out-of-school experiences that feature their cultural and linguistic knowledge, from misconceptions to “alternative conceptions.” Informed by her insights regarding the learning of students whose literacy does not match conventional classroom practice, geoscience learning in the place of third space can act as a model of meaning making across the entire curriculum. In the pages that follow, I transact, both aesthetically and efferently, with Martinez-Alvarez’s text as she presents her research on special ways of learning in placed-based geoscience explorations with bilingual children experiencing disabilities.

IRB Protocol Starting Point for Those New to Geoscience Education Scholarship and Publication

Scholarly endeavors in geoscience education span a spectrum from the development and application of new geoscience teaching innovations and curricula to the development and testing of geoscience education research questions and hypotheses. These can be characterized as the scholarship of geoscience teaching and learning (geo-SoTL) and geoscience discipline-based educational research (geo-DBER). Both geo-SoTL and geo-DBER are important for improving the geoscience teaching practice. In terms of Journal of Geoscience Education (JGE) publication, geo-SoTL best aligns to the Curriculum & Instruction (CI these distinctions are largely in the purpose, study design, and methods. Data needed to determine if a teaching innovation is meeting its goal in a C&I study, or to test a particular research question or hypothesis in a Research study, often involve surveys or interviews of people. These could be, for example, students in a class, or participants in a workshop or field trip. While such human subject data is common to research in the social science disciplines, it is distinctly different from physical, chemical, or paleobiological data that geoscientists are trained in collecting and analyzing. For that reason, geoscientists who are interested in getting started in geo-SoTL or geoDBER need to become familiar with the rules that guide human subject research.The federal government, your institution (in most cases), and JGE each provide resources to help you understand what your responsibilities are when conducting research that involves human subjects. If you are new to geoscience education research and publication take the time to look at each of these resources as you plan your study:* Federal Government Resource: Recently the US Department of Health and Human Services Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) published human subject regulation Decision Charts (http:// www.hhs.gov/ohrp/policy/checklists/decisioncharts. html) to assist investigators and institutions in determining whether an intended activity is human subject research, and if a study protocol may be eligible for exemption by a college or university's Institutional Review Board (IRB). These Decision Charts are in (mostly) plain language and ask a series of straight-forward yes/no questions. Working though the charts will not take long and can help investigators place their intended research in context of federal guidelines on human subject research.Based on the OHRP Decision Charts, most of the types of data collected, analyzed, and disseminated in geoscience education studies of adult populations are of minimal risk to study participants, and are therefore typically eligible for exemptions or expedited review by IRBs. For example, in most cases research that is conducted in classrooms or labs that focus on investigations of instructional strategies, curricula, and classroom management, and use educational tests, surveys, or interviews meet this criteria. In addition, studies that involve existing data (e.g., collected for the purpose of student assessment in a course) also meet this criteria. In all cases the privacy of the individuals will need to be assured so that study subjects cannot be identified or harmed by the reported results. …

Being Your Own Best Advocate: Geoscience Education Researchers and the Tenure Track in Traditional Geoscience Programs

Geoscientists have seen the boundaries between traditional geology and other science fields become more permeable as geoscience research questions have evolved to better capture the transdisciplinary nature of the natural world. From geochemistry to geophysics to geobiology, the value of a transdisciplinary approach to complex and meaningful research questions is evident in each of these fields. Research on geoscience teaching and learning is following a similar path, but has the added complexity of crossing over with the social sciences (e.g., educational psychology), which introduces research methods useful, but less familiar, to many geoscientists. This is one of the reasons that Feig (2013) called for targeted ''marketing'' by geoscience education researchers to contextualize their research and build community, a concept echoed by Lukes et al (2015). I think this advice is a time-sensitive action item for one group of geoscience education researchers in particular - those who are currently on the tenure-track. While it is important for all tenure-track faculty to talk with their department colleagues early and often about what they do, how they do it, and why it is important (St. John and Leckie, 2009), it is especially true for tenure-track geoscience education scholars in traditional geoscience programs.How those conversations are approached is important. Avoid jargon, which creates further barriers. Maintain respect for colleagues; wisdom on geoscience teaching and learning isn't exclusive to those with geoscience education research PhDs. Find common ground. As is the case for all discipline based educational researchers (DBER), a strong geoscience education researcher also has disciplinary knowledge (D. Mogk, DBER webinar 30 June 2015, available at: http://nagt.org/nagt/profdev/workshops/geoed_research/ dber_webinar.html; Singer et al, 2012); therefore connecting by way of the geoscience itself can help establish common ground with geoscience department colleagues. The university mission and the geoscience departmental goals are also areas of common ground. Serving that mission and meeting those goals depends on faculty that can each play to their strengths and respect the diverse and unique contributions of their colleagues, including geoscience education researchers.Like all tenure-track faculty, tenure-track geoscience education faculty should be expected to demonstrate achievement and impact in the traditional promotion and tenure categories of Teaching, Research, and Service. However, both at the community level and at the department level, conversations need to occur between geoscience administrators, senior-faculty, and tenure-track faculty on the metrics of success of geoscience education research.There are at least two points to consider when thinking about metrics of success. One is deciding on what ''counts'' as evidence of achievement and impact in a research field that, by its very nature, overlaps with teaching and service. Like in other geoscience fields, publications and grantfunding are key pieces of geoscience education research evidence, but there are nuances that need to be considered. For example, there is a wide range of dissemination outlets for geoscience education scholarship. …

Engaging Undergraduates in the New York City S-SAFE Internship Program: An Impetus to Raise Geoscience Awareness

ABSTRACTTo engender and raise awareness to the geosciences, a geoscience research project and a corresponding geoscience internship program were designed around plume dispersion dynamics within and above the New York City subway system. Federal, regional, and local agencies partnered with undergraduate students from minority-serving institutions to conduct the largest plume dispersion study ever done in a complex, dense, urban-coastal metropolis. The students were engaged in an array of geoscience activities within the confines of geoscience learning communities. Assessment results indicate that the geoscience exposure and experience helped to stimulate and proliferate geoscience awareness and knowledge among the undergraduates.