Digital Geology and Visualization

Geoscientists face challenges when it comes to teaching with technology. Although our discipline is highly visual, it is also very physical and tactile. We traditionally map geological contacts on foot, record field observations with pencil and notebook, split specimens with geological hammers or recover cores from ocean drilling, view thin sections with a petrographic microscope, and draw stereographic projections of structural orientations on a tracing overlay. For most geoscientists, digital technologies are recent additions to a toolkit of skills built upon analogue field and lab methods. Today's students are digital natives. They were born after the iMac and grew up with Web 2.0 and its plethora of social media. They tend to think differently because the use of mobile devices changes students' learning styles and preferences. Instead of instructing students to turn off devices in class and concentrate—which for many young people may be an impossible demand—we can leverage technology to enhance geoscience education and teach our very different students in very non-traditional ways. In this talk, we review recent innovations in digital mapping and cartography, virtual specimens, educational games and challenges, geo-data mining, and authentic undergraduate research experiences. Highlights include: crowd-sourced mapping; onsite and remote student partnerships via smart glasses (whilst the Google Glass Explorer program is over, there is an explosion of smart glasses development); augmented reality in the field using FreshAiR for context-aware mobile learning; "Viewmaster" virtual field trips via Poppy3D; Google Earth for structural analysis and tectonic reconstructions; COLLADA models for global studies; and geological applications of Street View, Photo Spheres, and GigaPans. We also discuss digital course management and student-instructor interaction. GEODE senior personnel include: Heather Almquist, Stephen Burgen, Cinzia Cervato, Gene Cooper, Mladen Dordevic, Janice Gobert, Paul Karabinos, Terry Pavlis, Jen Piatek, Bill Richards, Jeff Ryan, Ron Schott, Kristen St. John, and Barb Tewksbury.

A series of geoscience videos were created to support student learning in Introductory Physical Geology classes at North Carolina State University. Specifically, we have created web-streamed videos with multiple formats to supplement specific geoscience concepts and processes (http://tiny.cc/q1csnx). Videos are typically 5-7 minutes long and made using a stylus, tablet, microphone and video editing software. Essentially, we narrate a slide, sketch a diagram or explain a figure while describing the concept illustrated by what is projected onto the tablet. During the creation of the videos we considered aspects of effective multimedia design (e.g., spatial and temporal contiguity, modality, coherence) that have been shown to enhance student learning. Videos typically contained the following elements: a focus topic for each video module, learning objectives, and various narrated content slides and images. A learning objective reflection activity was presented at the end of each video to assess student confidence that they could successfully complete the objectives of the lesson. Students answered separate multiple choice and open-ended questions on the class management system to assess comprehension of the material covered in each video. These videos can be implemented outside of class to aid in student learning and. The videos can be integrated into pre-class activities and/or used as post-class resources in support of lecture. Assigning the videos before class provides an opportunity for instructors to make additional time available during class for more in-depth active learning exercises. Essentially, by moving some of the instruction to a pre-class video, instructors can create a "flipped" or hybrid classroom and reformat in-class activities to promote more in-depth learning focusing on challenging course content.