It's course evaluation time!*

And so far I've seen (paraphrased, of course):

Labs/TA were horrible
Labs/TA were okay
Loved lab
Labs were informative and relatively harmless (I would have laughed even more if it had said 'mostly harmless' and referenced the HGTG)
TA is elitist (Because I wouldn't give this person a second make-up date for a quiz they missed, never mind that I didn't have to give them a first one)
TA is responsible and patient
Boring lab material
Exciting/interesting lab material
Lab books sucked (This I totally agree with.)
Quizzes should only test us on what we've already done in lab, not the reading we're supposed to do to prepare for lab (Sorry, that's what the purpose of those quizzes were, since none of you read the labs in advance until I started giving quizzes!)
Had to do all the questions (under "What did you find annoying?")
Needs more group work
Needs less in-class work
Why do we have to come to labs anyway when we can just do the work on our own? (Despite the workbook lab manuals that we had to teach from, mostly because that's the point of being in a class, and not teaching yourself from a library book.)

And my favorite, in answer to "Would you recommend this class to a friend?":

"In the event that I acquire any friends, I would think it not advisable to start our relationship talking about school. Perhaps music, or Darfur?"

I have no idea where that came from, but it was awesome.



*Note the false cheerfulness in that title. What I really mean is, "I care, but that's moot at this point because there's nothing I could have done about the crappy lab books, and I'm not teaching next semester so I won't have any input in the future."

Best labs for introductory geology courses?

My department will be restructuring some of their introductory geology labs soon, and I was asked my opinion of the labs that I taught last semester. I was pretty brutal about some of them: they were difficult both to teach and to get the students to understand. When you're spending most of your time apologizing for the shortcomings of a flow chart that the students are supposed to be using to identify minerals, for example, neither you nor the students are getting much out of the lesson.

There were a number of other issues with the labs, but one of the big questions about the intro labs in general was what were the most valuable labs for different categories of student. The way our courses are likely to be restructured, we may end up with one general geo course and lab for the fall semester, and then two - one for geology majors and one geared more for environmental majors and non-geo-majors - in the spring.

So if you're going to split up classes that way, how do you create a set of labs that both hooks the potential majors but doesn't overwhelm the people who are just in the class for a science requirement? How do you make sure the majors are getting instruction in essential, basic skills, but still teach the non-majors something they find interesting and useful? To make things more complicated, how do you do this in a lab that, because of the 300+ person class size, meets every other week - meaning you only have six or seven labs to do this in?

My undergraduate intro geology lab followed this progression:

• Mineral identification
• Rock identification, rock types and the rock cycle
• Structural features of sedimentary rocks (including mapping on aerial photographs, geologic map interpretation, and geologic cross sections)
• Plate tectonics
• Geologic interpretation of topo maps, aerial photos, and satellite images (emphasis on fluvial features)
• Ocean and coastal processes

Looking back on it, it's both a little scattered and very heavy on what I tend to associate with geology rather than geography or environmental science - rocks and minerals, structure and tectonics, mapping. I remember finding the rock and mineral and mapping labs very useful, but I knew that I wanted to major in geology, and wanted to learn as much as possible as fast as possible.

The lab that I taught last semester went a little differently:

• Rock descriptions (really basic stuff, not requiring mineral or rock IDs)
  
• Mineral identification
• Sedimentary rock identification
• Impact cratering
• Streamflow processes (with stream table)
• Stratigraphic columns, topo maps and geologic cross sections
• Folding and faulting

This set of labs reflects some of the research preferences in our department, planetary geoscience and Western NY geology (including the evolution of Niagara Falls and the Niagara Gorge).

I feel like there are pros and cons to each of the sets, but my viewpoint isn't necessarily what's going to be good for a nonmajor who needs a science requirement. And whether or not that nonmajor goes on in geology, it's important for them to get something useful out of the class.

So, how to compromise? It's a tough process. I'm not the one who gets to make the final decisions, but I think that there are some basic concepts that an intro lab should cover:

1. Minerals. This is the basis of geology - if you don't know the minerals, you don't know the building blocks of the Earth. Everyone coming out of an intro lab should be able to recognize quartz and calcite, as one of the professors here said.
2. Rock cycle and types. This is a chance to introduce both the rock types and the processes that create them, as well as a few basic rock names in each type. Students can then take this knowledge on to a petrology class (usually taught for igneous and metamorphic rocks, I've found) and a sedimentology/stratigraphy class (for the sed rocks).
3. Surface processes. Weathering and erosion, as well as fluvial features could be included here. I found that my students had very little concept of how sediment was formed, transported, and turned into rocks. The lab that we did with the stream table helped fix some of that, and it was their favorite one; they were the most engaged and spent the most time thinking about what they were observing. This also would have been a fun one to do outside, but it was too cold by the time we got to it.
4. Atmosphere and weather. I can think of a lot of people who watch the weather forecast every night without having the faintest idea how it's put together, or the difference between weather and climate, or (for example) why it snows a lot south of Buffalo but not so much north of the city. (This is not the case today, however.) Having a basic knowledge of the structure of the atmosphere and how certain types of weather and climates come about is important for life - you've got to deal with weather every day, after all.
   
5. The solar system/geology on other planets. With all the great research going on these days into formation and evolution of other planets in the solar system, it would be a shame to skip planetary geology in an intro course. (It's also a good opportunity to chuck things at sandboxes, which seems to have gone over fairly well in this week's labs.)
   
6. Maps. Absolutely NO ONE should leave a geology or environmental science course without knowing how a map is put together and how to read it. In the age of GPS navigation and Mapquest, it's honestly shocking how many students I encounter that can't deal with a paper map. Including topographic and geologic maps in this section would be good too, especially for majors, but also as a way of exposing students to something other than a talking car computer or a fold-out road map. (This would also be a great chance to integrate Geocaching into a lesson and get the students outside.)
   
7. Natural hazards/disasters. This would be a favorite of mine just for the chance to talk about volcanoes, but it's a chance to separate students from what they hear on the news (which is often wrong) and explain what's really happening when, say, a hundred-year flood occurs, or why an earthquake will or won't create a tsunami (and what to do if you're in danger of getting hit by one). It's also exciting stuff, which is always important if you're trying to hook people on a major.
   

Just a few thoughts on what I'd find useful as a beginning geology student, really. I'm sure that the basics would vary depending on the department and who's qualified to teach certain subjects.

So what would you all, who collectively have much more experience with this sort of thing, want to see in an introductory lab? At some point I might get asked to help decide this for my current department, so your input is greatly appreciated!

Accretionary Wedge #12: Geology as a connector science

Hooray! I finally have both a working computer and internet connection. Definite cause for celebration, since I can now get back to blogging - at least as much as grad school allows, that is.

Even more cause for celebration: This is post #100! I think it's fitting that it should be an Accretionary Wedge entry, since at least part of the reason I started blogging was to connect with other people in the "geoblogosphere" - and what better way to do that than an online panel discussion? (Hey, there's that connection theme again.)

I've decided to write about something that's going to happen in a few days: I'm going to stand in front of an introductory geology lab and try to convince myself that I'm qualified to be teaching people who are only a few years younger than me. I expect that many of them will be freshmen, or non-science majors, who are in the class because they have to fulfill a science requirement. My undergrad classmates called this the "Rocks for Jocks" phenomenon, and we always laughed gleefully afterward, because we knew that anyone who picked geology because it was a "soft" science would be very surprised when they got to class. This phenomenon is also, in my opinion, at the root of the difficulties that science educators have keeping geology in science curricula at the K12 level. We as geologists all know that geology is one of the most inclusive sciences there is - but how do we get this across?

One of my main concerns is to make my labs not only fun for my students, but relevant to their lives. They're probably used to thinking of sciences as compartmentalized - this is chemistry, this is physics, this is astronomy, etc. I want to prove to them that not only is this untrue, but that they've probably used or relied on geology - and all the other sciences it incorporates - on a daily basis.

I'm planning on doing a short activity based on one that my mineralogy professor did early on in his course. I'll be handing out Oreos (knowing full well that food is an excellent tool for bribery), then asking the students to think about what goes into them (and the packaging). Once we've got a list, I'm going to ask them to tell me where each ingredient comes from, and how it is obtained. This is a great place to bring geology - and other sciences - into the discussion. Cocoa, for example, is commonly grown in tropical climates, and in rich volcanic soils (like in Central America). That chocolate flavor came (ultimately) from a volcano! The white filling is colored with TiO2, otherwise known as rutile, which can also be found in quartz crystals. There are minerals in that cookie! The plastic wrapper and tray are made from chemicals derived from petroleum products, which started as rotting leaves in a coal swamp teeny dead ocean critters hundreds of millions of years ago! And so on.

The value in the activity - aside from the brief boost in attention span resulting from sugar intake - is that they see the connections that science, and geology in particular, have to their everyday lives. Geology isn't just something that grubby, bespectacled rockhounds do off in the mountains somewhere; it's something that ultimately helps produce the food we eat, the packaging that keeps it fresh, the fuel for transporting it, the nuclear energy that runs the lights in the grocery store, and more.

Hopefully, in trying to communicate how geology is intimately connected to our lives, I'll also be able to get across how important it is to me, and how exciting I find it because of all those wonderful connections. And, according to the people in my three-day "how to not fail as a teacher" training session, getting your students excited about learning is the most important part of the job.

And there are some thoughts on connections, with a bit of wandering thrown in. (And after what I've gone through to get moved into a new apartment in a new state and trying not to panic about teaching and taking classes, I think I'm allowed a few tangents!)

Residence time of lab samples

Here's an situation I've been dealing with for a while. During the research I did for my undergraduate thesis in the summer of 2006, I collected a number of samples to use for Ar-Ar dating, with the intention that I would actually accompany them to a lab and learn the processes involved in mineral separation, irradiation, analysis, etc. Fast forward to January and February of 2007, where I (after much communicating with the scientist in charge of this particular lab) was finally able to arrange to spend a few weeks working in the lab.

I was lucky enough to live near the lab, although it was several hours' drive away from my campus. The first week I worked there was during my winter break, which was fine; almost a month off between semesters is enough to make anyone eager to get out of the house. The second week, however, was during classes, and I had to make special arrangements with several professors outside of the geology department to miss classes so I could go home and work at the lab. On completing the mineral separations and having prepared the samples for irradiation, I was assured by the scientist I was working with that I would have data from the samples in time to include it in my senior honors thesis. (This was early February, and my thesis was due late in April.)

Fast forward again to April. After having heard little from the lab (and with my advisor having had as little luck as I did in getting in touch with the person I'd worked with), I finally succeeded in getting through on the phone - and was told that not only had my samples not been run, they had never been sent off for irradiation. There was some explanation about the cost of reactor time and wanting to include as many samples in the shipment as possible, but it wasn't clear why I had been told that I would have data in time for my thesis when it wasn't really going to happen. I was very upset, but after a while I calmed down and came to agree with my advisor on the point that it would be one less thing to write up in an already long thesis, not to mention that we were going to write a more comprehensive paper later. (The dating was originally a major part of my thesis proposal, but as I ended up branching out into structural and geochemical aspects later on, it wasn't totally devestating not to have it.)

And now the current state of affairs: Advisor and I are in the process of writing a paper on multiple volcanic deposits in the area where I did my field work, and are of course eager to include Ar dates in it, seeing as I didn't get to them in my thesis, and we're trying to correlate the deposits with other regional volcanics. And what's the status of our samples?

Still not run (although they have been irradiated). This time the excuse is a somewhat legitimate one (the equipment has been broken and the head of the lab was unaware of it, having been on vacation for a month), but it's still extremely frustrating - not to mention that I have to wonder why the samples were sitting around all summer and fall of last year. So, I now have irradiated samples but no data, thus stalling another paper. My advisor had also planned on me taking the time to learn how to reduce the data, but it's going to become more and more difficult to find the time for that, since I'm working full time and will have to start visiting prospective graduate schools soon.

My question for everyone else is, is this a normal thing? I understand that a non-academic lab might not run on the same schedule as an undergraduate trying to write a thesis, but it's now been almost a year to the day since I started working on those samples, and I find it hard to believe that this kind of turn-around time is acceptable in a research situation. I invested a considerable amount of time and effort into this and even missed classes so I could complete the sample preparations and leave enough time to have them analyzed for my thesis.

I somehow feel I've been gypped, but I don't know what other peoples' experiences have been with this kind of situation.