These lecture tutorials are designed as illustrative review of individual lectures, followed with a series of questions aimed at addressing student misconceptions. The general idea is that you lecture for 15-20 minutes, the students work through the lecture tutorials for 15-20 minutes, then the class discusses the answers. These offer a consistent active learning formative assessment, and also act as study guides for students.

Two or three weeks of the course are dedicated to studying diagenesis. Lectures start with a general definition of diagenesis, the range of conditions under which it occurs, and examples of diverse diagenetic environments and features. I use rice crispy cereal and rice crispy treats to introduce cement (the marshmellow is the cement that "glues" the rice krispies together). I also incorporate basic hydrogeology to show how pores filled with (or partially filled with) groundwater provide both the space and the material for cementation. As part of this lecture, I show the students various rock samples and photomicrographs in which they can see cement examples. I outline the different cement minerals and shapes and how they can be used to interpret past diagenetic conditions (eg., gravitational "pendant" calcite cements indicate that the host sediment was once in a vadose zone with groundwater rich in calcium and carbonate). I also discuss types of pores during these lectures and the ways that pores form. We also discuss criteria for recognizing cements. After two one-hour lectures about cements, we have a lab exercise in which the students are given ~10 samples (including hand samples and thin sections) and asked to sketch and describe the cement types. The next one-hour lecture focuses on neomorphic processes and their products, including replacement, recrystallization, and polymorphic transition. As part of the lecture, we look at photomicrographs and hand samples that illstrate various neomorphic features, such as replacement dolomite and replacement chert. We establish criteria for distinguishing cements from neomorphic fabrics. This lecture is followed by a lab exercise that presents the students with ~10 rocks and thin sections and asks them to sketch and identify neomorphic fabrics. This lab is follwed by another one-hour lecture on compaction features, dissolution evidence, and determining paragentic sequences. If I am short on time, that is all I do for diagenesis. However, ideally, I continue with a lecture focused on the "dolomite problem" and some case studies of other types of diagenesis, as well as a third lab assignment that combines cementation, neomorphism, compaction, dissolution, and paragenetic sequences. As part of this section, I also try to incorporate examples of methods other than petrology (eg., fluid inclusion studies, stable isotope studies, dating) that are used for diagenetic studies. Later in the course, we take several field trips in which the students examine diagenetic features.

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This activity is a field investigation where students make observations of the pebble beach, lava flows, and wetland restoration at Sugarloaf Cove to generate questions to be addressed throughout the earth science curriculum.

Field Geology is an investigative course conducted in the field and computer laboratory without formal exams. The field excursions challenge groups of students to apply understanding to new or unknown geologic environments preserved in Vermont.
Students complete several professional-style reports that synthesize geologic information collected by teams of 2-3 students.

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In order to be able to undertake this assignment, students will not only have to follow and interact in class but also read and understand papers at home. After a first simple question on the tectonic style of the mountain range students will have to apply what they learn from the paper from DeCelles and Giles (1996) and Graham et al. (1986), assigned to read as homework, to answer the first set of examples. Consequently, I have developed a second-part exercise designed to help students understand the relationship between source and sediments; they will use data provided in the exercise to constrain the rates and patterns of source exhumation. In order to answer the second-part exercise students will have to read a suite of papers on detrital thermochronology (Bernet et al., 2002; Carrapa et al., 2003); this will enhance their capability of independently assess complex scientific issues. They will also have to apply simple equations to calculate the rate of source exhumation (through the concept of lag time).

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This activity asks students who are soon to enter an introductory geology course at the college level to collect a local rock from their home, vacation locale, or elsewhere prior to the course start date and do a ROCKD local query (or MacroStrat search) on the bedrock unit description. Both the rock and the description from the mobile and web applications will be re-visited throughout the semester's course. Formal components of the activity will be an initial observation and writing assignment at the course's start, and then a more extensive writing and ROCKD and MacroStrat research assignment at the course's end.

Activity outcomes include:
Fluency in general rock descriptive terminology
Ability to read and use geologic maps
Ability to interpret geological sample details toward understanding earth history
Ability to identify geological sample details toward understanding economic value of rock types
Ability to identify geological sample details toward understanding surface landscape characteristics and local environmental issues

This worksheet has students identify and annotate stratigraphic and structural features on top of four outcrop photos. It's designed to give students critically important practice, training their eyes to see geologically important features and understand what these features look like in real life. Stratigraphic and structural features are described for each of the four photos. Using the descriptions, students sketch and label each feature on top of the photo. For one photo, students also draw arrows to indicate the direction of fault movement given the geometry of bedding in the photo. Students also complete six multiple-choice questions pertaining to the concepts of the worksheet.

This worksheet uses the sketch-understanding program with built-in tutor: CogSketch . Therefore, students, instructors, and/or institution computer labs need to download the program from here: http://www.qrg.northwestern.edu/software/cogsketch/. At any point during the worksheet, students can click the FEEDBACK button and their sketch is compared to the solution image. The built-in tutor identifies any discrepancies and reports pre-written feedback to help the student correct their sketch until they are done with the activity. Once worksheets are emailed to the instructor, worksheets can be batch graded and easily evaluated. This program allows instructors to assign sketching activities that require very little time commitment. Instead, the built-in tutor provides feedback whenever the student requests, without the presence of the instructor. More information on using the program and the activity is in the Instructor's Notes.

We have developed approximately two dozen introductory geoscience worksheets using this program. Each worksheet has a background image and instructions for a sketching task. You can find additional worksheets by searching for "CogSketch" using the search box at the top of this page. We expect to have uploaded all of them by the end of the summer of 2016.

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Related Links

Supplement for this course

Field-based research projects are the focal point for my course in sedimentary geology. For each offering of the course, projects are selected which will enable students to engage in authentic research and learn fundamental principles of sedimentary geology at the same time. Projects have addressed problems as diverse as sedimentologic processes, paleoenvironmental interpretation, stratigraphic correlation between outcrops and the nature of contacts between units. Each semester, the specific content of the course, how the content is organized, which readings are chosen and selection of laboratory experiences are dictated by the nature of the specific project and are planned to support students in their work on the project. Less content may be "covered" with this approach and topics may not follow a "traditional" order (see syllabus), but students' depth of understanding, skills in scientific reasoning, sense of accomplishment, and growth in confidence are greatly enhanced. Class projects from half of the past four offerings of the course culminated in the presentation of three posters at regional GSA conferences. Results of the other two semesters were not submitted for presentation because the instructor failed to identify problems of adequate significance for the class to investigate. However, these projects did yield data which may be useful in future projects.

Field projects must be chosen carefully so that they a) have the potential to yield results of scientific significance, and b) can be completed within the time-frame of one semester. In addition, it is essential to provide students with experiences that enable them to develop the expertise necessary to gather and make sense of the data. To ensure these conditions, the faculty member should be involved actively as a collaborator in the project. Therefore it is mutually beneficial if the class project is related to the faculty member's research or to a topic of interest to him/her. Guidelines for the development of successful projects are available in the Instructor's Notes file.

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This is a laboratory course supplemented by lectures that focus on selected analytical facilities that are commonly used to determine the mineralogy, elemental abundance and isotopic ratios of Sr and Pb in rocks, soils, sediments and water.

Student-designed, data-based authentic research projects can be useful tools for incorporating a dimension of authentic research in non-major science courses. Such an approach has been followed in a geoscience course for non-majors at UW Whitewater. Students worked in pairs and selected a research topic on a local environmental issue, wrote a research proposal, collected, analyzed and synthesized data, and presented their research in a public poster presentation session. They critiqued their peers' proposals and posters, and assessed their own learning. Student self-assessment reports indicated that they found such projects to be personally enriching. Students reported significant learning gains from participating in this project. Such an approach can be applicable in a variety of courses for promoting student engagement in science classrooms.

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The approach to teaching geologic map interpretation described in the materials departs significantly from the typical approach, which commonly involves defining strike and dip and types of contacts, drawing cross sections in areas with no topography and working with paper block models and PlayDoh for visualiztion, teaching outcrop patterns and rule of Vs in areas with topography, and then having students practice map interpretation and cross section construction.

The approach describe in materials listed here uses the powerful 3D viewing capability and the remarkable satellite images of Google Earth to help students really visualize structures. The approach does the following:

* Emphasizes mapping before map interpretation in order to help students visualize, rather than memorize.
* Starts by having students do geologic mapping in Google Earth before they know anything about strike, dip, or types of contacts.
* Has students work first with inclined units and contacts in areas with topographic relief, using Google Earth 3D view to develop an understanding of dip.
* Has students sketch simple cross sections of their own geologic maps and use Google Earth 3D view to help them visualize the relationships.
* Derives strike after students understand dip.
* Has students work with vertical contacts next, then horizontal contacts, and, finally, folded and faulted contacts.
* Gives students lots of practice in mapping in Google Earth and creating their own cross sections in areas of increasing complexity.
* Follows with interpretation of existing geologic maps coupled with use of maps in the field.

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The Smith College Sedimentology course is an example of a course structured around projects, most of which are field based. The projects are carefully designed to take advantage of the local geology and to address a variety of topics. Of utmost importance in designing individual projects is demonstrating the relevance of the work the students do. Therefore the projects are designed to mimic real-life situations: for example, the students address concerns of a local farmer, or have roles as field conference organizers and collaborators (with paleontologists) on a multidisciplinary research project.

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Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum module/Geology of National Parks course. Students estimate travel times and costs of a driving/camping trip to visit national parks in the Colorado Plateau.

This lesson will begin by introducing students to the impact of the interaction of the hydrologic and rock cycles on Earth's materials. Students will categorize the mechanical and chemical impacts of the hydrologic cycle on Earth's lithosphere using a jot chart. Students will participate in an outdoor geologic field study to locate examples of mechanical and chemical effects of the hydrologic cycle on their school's grounds. Lastly, students will analyze and interpret the data gathered during the geologic field study through the creation of a bar and circle graph. This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.

In this exercise, students use DEMS of the Nile valley plus georeferenced geologic maps to make observations first about the changes in floodplain width from Khartoum northward to the Mediterranean and then about correlations between floodplain width and bedrock geology. They write an analysis paragraph offering an explanation for their observations about the correlations they observed and summarizing what they have concluded about the influence of bedrock geology on the development and location of Ancient Egypt. They each create an ArcMap to illustrate their observations and interpretations.

You can also download a GIS Primer (Acrobat (PDF) PRIVATE FILE 1.2MB Mar30 10) that we have written, which is a simple GIS "how-to" manual for tasks including those used in this exercise.

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There are now about 170 identified impact craters on the Earth, and this number is growing, ever since the well known discovery of Meteor Crater in 1920s. Currently, multi-interdisciplinary research studies of impact structures are getting conducted in fields like mineralogy, petrology, environmental geology, and marine biology. The course objectives are to introduce basic principles of impact cratering, understand the application of analytical tools, and become familiar with geological, geochemical and environmental studies.
This course is offered during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), which is a special 4-week term at MIT that runs from the first week of January until the end of the month.

This course introduces students to the technique of instrumental neutron activation analysis. This is a non-destructive analytical technique for the determination of elemental abundances at trace levels in a wide variety of geological, biological, environmental and industrial samples.