Teaching Mineralogy: A Digital Collection of Teaching Materials
This collection is intended to build upon the 1996 Teaching Mineralogy workshop. A volume of teaching materials was published as a result of that workshop, but it exists only in print form. [Brady et al., 1997] This module will be the digital follow-up to that original collection of materials.
Show Caption
HideWithin this site you will find:
- Internet resources - a collection of useful web-based learning materials, browseable by topics.
- Teaching activities - Classroom-ready exercises, problem sets and projects, complete with handouts, instructor notes and supporting materials.
- Visualizations that can be helpful in teaching about Mineralogy.
- Information and videos about Teaching Mineral Symmetry Using Kinesthetic Learning
- Journal articles that are especially useful for teaching mineralogy at the undergraduate level.
- A place to contribute your own teaching materials, course information, articles and your favorite mineralogy URLs.
Content for Faculty and Students
Table of Contents
You can browse the entire collection of teaching activities by topic.
Optical Mineralogy and Petrography
A collection of teaching resources and activities that include PowerPoint presentations, animations, class notes, problem sets and activities, and links to collections of photomicrographs.
Teaching Mineral Physics
A collection of on-line resources on Teaching Mineral Physics developed as a collaboration between On the Cutting Edge program and COMPRES , the Consortium for Materials Properties Research in Earth Sciences.
Teaching Clay Mineralogy
A collection of resources on Teaching Clay Mineralogy with on-line resources and teaching activities that can be used in a variety of geology courses. This collection was developed to support the 2009 Clay Minerals Society Meeting.
Teaching Phase Equilibria
This web-based learning resource provides a comprehensive introduction to heterogeneous phase equilibria in the geosciences. This site contains the essential background information needed to understand phase equilibria, links to related resources, examples of worked problems, and teaching activities.
Some of the highlights of this module include:
- Descriptions, definitions and worked examples of standard topics like the Clapeyron Equation or deriving and balancing metamorphic reactions
- Phase diagrams for teaching, which contains pdf files of common phase diagrams, plus animated versions that take students step-by-step through the reactions
- User-friendly tutorials for modern thermodynamic modeling programs such as ThermoCalc, MELTS, TWQ and Perplex.
Geochemical Instrumentation and Analysis
This project provides an on-line tutorial of the analytical techniques commonly used to characterize geological materials. The goal is to help novices (such as students or scientists working out of their field) to gain an understanding of mineralogical, petrological and geochemical analytical techniques. This module covers X-ray crystallography, electron microbeam, elemental analysis, mass spectrometers and more. See the entire list of techniques covered on this site.
April 2007 volume of Elements Magazine on teaching mineralogy, petrology and geochemistry
To complement this volume, we have developed the Elements Bibliography that includes an extensive collection of articles, teaching activities, on-line resources, and related information on the scholarship of teaching.
2011 Workshop
In August 2011, geoscience faculty members from around the country met at the University of Minnesota for a workshop on Teaching Mineralogy, Petrology, and Geochemistry in the 21st Century. Participants explored best practices in teaching mineralogy, petrology, and geochemistry in the context of modern advances in understanding Earth systems, analytical and field methods, and information technologies. This workshop built on the success of previous workshops including the 1996 Teaching Mineralogy Workshop, the 2003 Teaching Petrology Workshop, and the 2005 and 2010 Teaching Geochemistry Workshops.
Join the Discussion
- Join the discussion on the MSA-Talk email list, hosted by the Mineralogical Society of America.
- Visit the discussion board to submit your recommendations to identify the most significant contributions made in these fields to the geosciences, the larger scientific enterprise and to society. Post a new topic or add to existing topics to create a threaded archive to demonstrate the relevance, importance and centrality of mineralogy, petrology and geochemistry to the geosciences and beyond.
