Michael Phillips: Using Mapping the Environment with Sensory Perception in Environmental Geology at Illinois Valley Community College
About this course
An introductory general education course.
45
students
Two 50-minute lectures and one 50-minute seminar
per week
Small, two-year public community college
Syllabus (Microsoft Word 83kB Jun15 15)
This is an introductory course in the study of the interactions between human activities and the Earth and geologic processes. An overview of modern geologic concepts is followed by an in-depth examination of natural hazards, natural resources, waste management, environmental restoration and land-use planning. This course provides instruction in applied geology and scientific reasoning that is useful to all students.
Course goals and content: This course is a general education science course with a lab and meets transfer requirements and the requirements for students seeking an associate's degree. The course also meets the requirements for students seeking a degree in geology.
Outcomes and competencies:
- Understand how science works and the characteristics of environmental geology. Competencies: Identify the methodology of science; Critically evaluate data sets and infer valid conclusions from those data sets; Identify the basic concepts of geology as a method for the scientific study of Earth; Recognize environmental geology as an application of the science of geology to the interactions between humans and Earth and Earth processes.
- Understand hazardous geologic processes and the interactions between humans and those processes. Competencies: Identify, analyze, and evaluate the hazards presented by rivers, slopes, earthquakes, volcanoes, and coastal areas; the natural and human causes of those hazards; and the human responses to those hazards.
- Understand geologic resources and the interactions between humans and those processes. Competencies: Identify the primary soil, water, energy, and mineral resources; describe where those resources are located and how they are extracted; describe, analyze, and evaluate the geological impact of human use of those resources.
- Understand human impact on the environment and the environment's impact on human health. Competencies: Identify, analyze, and evaluate the primary sources and impacts of surface and groundwater, land, and air pollution. Describe the impact of natural, inorganic substances on human health.
- Understand the resources available for the study of geologic processes. Competencies: Identify the features common to all maps, and use maps to identify human and geologic phenomena; Identify public information resources and publications useful in geologic research, and use those publications to identify geologic resources and hazards and human impacts.
- Express insight and judgment with regard to future options that may resolve environmental concerns. Competencies: Discuss their personal relationship with the environment and value judgments they make of their actions; Describe and evaluate the processes by which humans can protect the environment, including politically; Examine a designated area and identify, analyze, and evaluate resources and potential hazards.
Topics and content:
- Foundations of Geology: Provides a description of the basic concepts of geology including scientific analysis, plate tectonics, the rock cycle, and the hydrologic cycle. Provides information on the basic types of Earth materials including minerals, rocks, sediments, and soils.
- Hazardous Earth Processes: Provides a discussion of hazardous Earth processes, their causes, the impacts of the processes on humans, the impacts of humans on the processes, and the response of humans to the hazards.
- Earth Resources: Provides a description of Earth resources, how they came to be, and the impact of human use on those resources.
- Pollution and Human Health: Provides a description of various pollutants and what happens to them when they enter the environment. Describes the impact of natural and human-introduced substances on human health.
- Land Use Planning: Provides a description of the methods used when planning the use of Earth resources, including a discussion of the scientific, economic, and political aspects of planning. Students plan the use of a square mile of land around their home.
A Success Story in Building Student Engagement
I used this module to engage my environmental geology students and to get them to think about how contaminants move through the environment. Students can have difficulty understanding how contaminants move through the environment, and this is especially true with groundwater. This module allowed students to trace odors and sounds; neither are visible, but both are relatively easy to detect. The students got to go outside!!! And, they developed an understanding of the planning necessary to collect quality data.
Mapping with the senses allows students to experience the movement of contaminants through their environment while also encouraging them to think about the impact those contaminants have.
My Experience Teaching with InTeGrate Materials
I was able to use the module essentially as presented; the sections flowed logically and helped build understanding of how contaminants move and how they impact people.
Relationship of InTeGrate Materials to my Course
This module was used as three weeks of a sixteen-week course. The course begins with an overview of the basics of geology (minerals, rocks, and plate tectonics) and then moves on to in-depth explorations of natural hazards, natural resources, and human-induced hazards. This module was the primary component of the human-induced hazards section. The module requires students to design and carry out a field study; it has them examine how scents and sounds move through the environment and consider the impacts the detected scents and sounds have on the people who live there. One of the strengths is that no special equipment is needed; students learn to calibrate their "instruments," develop reproducible collection techniques that produce comparable data sets, and display their collected data in a meaningful way.
General tips:
- Lead students to develop a broad appreciation for what qualifies as data and for the relationships between qualitative and quantitative data, beginning with the first module.
- While the units can stand alone, using them in the recommended sequence helps students develop a better understanding of what sensory data is, how best to collect it, and how best to display the results.
- Students' ability to collect sensory data can vary greatly; this should be recognized and addressed by students as they proceed through the units.
- Students need to describe collected sensory data as precisely as possible to avoid confusion; overly broad descriptions should be questioned.
Unit 1
- The data sets can be copied and presented in gray scale with the exception of the photograph of Tempe Town Lake.
- One or two groups can be assigned the video to watch on a laptop (if available), or the video can be shown to the entire class and discussed as a capstone to the exercise.
- Students should be encouraged to consider the strengths and limitations each piece of data expresses.
Unit 2
- This can be a lot of fun for students if they take the time to do it correctly and are willing to share.
- Encourage students to start early in the day and record all sensory details as carefully as possible.
- Reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of what students recorded is one of the keys to developing a good data collection protocol in Unit 3.
Unit 3
- Students developing data collection protocols and field work plans should consider what might go wrong and develop contingencies.
- Students testing protocols should record specific concerns as well as what works well. Revisions should address weakness without taking away from strengths.
- The instructor needs to help the students develop fieldwork plans that are practical given constraints of time, place, and mobility. On-campus (even in-building) work can be just as meaningful as working off campus.
- Students working off campus need to be respectful of private property; it is usually best to work in public spaces where permission is not required.
Unit 4
- The instructor may choose to focus on one case study; however, the students are likely to develop a better appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of various data presentation styles if they compare different case studies.
- Much of the material in the case studies can be printed in gray scale, but some items must be made available in full color for students to develop an appreciation of the full impact of the item.
- An end goal of this unit is that students will develop ideas for how best to display the results of their fieldwork. This should be made explicit.
Unit 5
- This is a culmination of material presented in all of the prior units. Students should be encouraged to consider how they express their results in the light of what they have learned about data types, data expression, and how to achieve a desired impact on a viewer.
Assessments
Moving around in the classroom as students work in small groups is very important; students can move off-topic or can misinterpret instructions. Most of the students enjoyed completing the three reflection papers, and they are relatively easy to read and grade. The primary problem was that some students were too brief; when the assignment is made, students need to be told that a good reflection has some depth and should be at least a page. For the final assessment, I had students work in groups, which enhanced the discussion between group members and produced some very nice maps. As the groups develop their final product, it is important to monitor their progress and use questions to help them produce better maps.
Outcomes
In helping to develop this module, I wanted students to experience the movement of contaminants through the natural environment and to consider how best to communicate that experience to others. Contaminants often move through the environment invisibly, and reports describing their movement can be difficult for students to understand. This module worked well because students collected their own data, discussed the collected data with others, evaluated a wide variety of data sets expressed in different ways for different purposes, and then used their experiences to produce maps that were easy to understand.
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