Volcanic Histories

Robert Filson

Green River Community College

This activity has been reviewed by 2 review processes (view details)

This activity was selected for the On the Cutting Edge Reviewed Teaching Collection

This activity has received positive reviews in a peer review process involving five review categories. The five categories included in the process are
- Scientific Accuracy
- Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
- Pedagogic Effectiveness
- Robustness (usability and dependability of all components)
- Completeness of the ActivitySheet web page
For more information about the peer review process itself, please see https://serc.carleton.edu/teachearth/activity_review.html.
This activity has benefited from input from faculty educators beyond the author through a review and suggestion process. This review took place as a part of a faculty professional development workshop where groups of faculty reviewed each others' activities and offered feedback and ideas for improvements. To learn more about the process On the Cutting Edge uses for activity review, see http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/review.html.

Initial Publication Date: October 29, 2008 | Reviewed: July 12, 2015 (see revision history: 2 events)

Summary

Students collaborate on the history and hazards of two volcanoes based on deposits from the two mountains. Appropriate for introductory students.

Volcanology, Volcanism | College Introductory

Expand for more detail and links to related resources

Share your modifications and improvements to this activity through the Community Contribution Tool »

Context

Audience

This activity is appropriate for students in a Physical Geology class (for majors and non-majors) that are studying volcanism.

Skills and concepts that students must have mastered

They should know about types of volcanoes and the products of volcanoes.

How the activity is situated in the course

I use problems like this one in small group discussions. The students collaborate and submit one answer sheet for their group. This type of activity spawns numerous questions which I use as an assessment of my efforts in communicating the ideas.

Goals

Content/concepts goals for this activity

Goals would include improvement of communication between students in the course, analysis of geological-type data, and using course content to answer a more open-ended question.

Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity

The answers to the questions are not something that can be accessed through a textbook, so they must analyze data. They must communicate effectively with the other students in their group to contstruct the answers.

Other skills goals for this activity

Description of the activity/assignment

To prepare for this in-class problem, students should have read about volcanism in their introductory text. Specifically they will need to know the types of volcanoes, the characteristics of volcanic products, such as lava flows of different silica compositions, tephra, lahars, and pyroclastic flows. Students should be able to connect the types of activity of a volcano to its type, such as composite volcanoes having abundant tephra, with some lava flows, while a shield volcano may have less tephra and more low viscosity lava flows.
This activity is similar to the process used by geoscientists to evaluate the history and hazards of a volcano.

Determining whether students have met the goals

The students submit a group paper and I evaluate the answers to the questions. I also use the questions asked by the students during the class discussion to provide feedback on what the students did not learn in the class sessions before the group activity.

More information about assessment tools and techniques.