Short Demonstrations, Set #1
Session #2, time slot #1 (Sunday 3:30) , repeated in Session #6 (Thursday 10:30)
S1A: Effective Ways of Integrating Rock Samples into Structural Geology Lectures (Dave West, Middlebury College). The integration of hand samples into the lecture can be a powerful way of illustrating a number of important concepts in Structural Geology. It is believed that hands-on activities involving illustrative hand samples makes a significantly larger impact on students than simply viewing photographs or drawings of similar features. This session will provide tips and several examples of how rock samples can be integrated into the lecture portion of the course.
S1B: Concept Sketches—Using Student-Generated Annotated Sketches for Learning, Teaching, and Assessment (Steve Reynolds, Arizona State University, and Barb Tewksbury, Hamilton College). Concept sketches are sketches or diagrams that are concisely annotated with short statements that describe the processes, concepts, and interrelationships shown in the sketch. Having students generate their own concept sketches is a powerful way for students to process concepts and convey them to others. In this session, we will explore concept sketches and the learning gains from using concept sketches, provide examples of assignments involving concept sketches, and have available examples of student work.
S1C: Rock of the Week (Mike Williams, University of Massachusetts, Amherst). The rock of the week is an exercise aimed to get students to think about structural features before they hear about them in lecture or lab. It is also intended to help students improve their descriptive analysis and their confidence in presenting observations and conclusions in public. Each week students describe a carefully chosen rock specimen that contains features to be presented and discussed in subsequent classes. This session will present the rock of the week concept and discuss some of the many variations that are possible.
S1D: Analog Model of an Accretionary Prism (Jan Tullis, Brown University). Many students are visual learners, and `attaching' important concepts to models can enhance the learning experience, especially when a student is responsible for explaining the model. In this session I will demonstrate a fairly large Davis-Suppe type accretionary prism model, built several years ago as a senior thesis project, and invite a more general discussion of how model demonstrations by students can be used as one component of a course.