Challenges and Successes of Teaching Lab-Based Earth Science Courses Remotely
Oral Session Part of
Thursday B: Teaching Online
Teaching labs online during the pandemic has been a challenge faced by many instructors in courses designed for in-person delivery. In petrology courses, labs rely nearly entirely on the observation of rocks in hand sample (3D objects) and thin section using a petrographic microscope. Microscopes have many operable parts (e.g., stage rotation, upper polarizer and lambda-plate, Bertrand lens, etc.) that make the transfer of labs to an online modality challenging. How, then, does one engage students in making physical observations of hand samples and investigating the optical properties of minerals in thin section behind a computer monitor?
To engage students in this hands-on laboratory course and enable them to achieve the learning goals set up for an in-person course, several interactive online tools were used to bring the microscope and petrological concepts to students' screens using interactive platforms (ThingLink), low-stakes interactive and visual pre-lab quizzes (Canvas), and 3D-scanned hand samples (using Qlone phone-base photogrammetry). Using these tools, students were able to independently explore rocks at different scales, including identifying minerals in thin section. Students learned the optical properties of minerals through a collection of images (100+ per sample) integrated in a single interactive 'virtual thin section' environment that linked in situ views of samples at various magnifications (in both plane- and cross-polarized light) with associated videos of 360º microscope stage rotations for observations of properties that change depending on the orientation of the minerals (e.g., pleochroism, birefringence, optic axis figures). This material was accompanied by synchronous recorded lectures, synchronous and asynchronous 'open lab' sessions, and interactive online activities that took students from observations of minerals in thin section to interpretations of field-grounded conditions of petrogenesis (e.g., pressure and temperature), and tectonic-scale implications for dynamic solid-earth processes involved in igneous and metamorphic rock petrogenesis.
To engage students in this hands-on laboratory course and enable them to achieve the learning goals set up for an in-person course, several interactive online tools were used to bring the microscope and petrological concepts to students' screens using interactive platforms (ThingLink), low-stakes interactive and visual pre-lab quizzes (Canvas), and 3D-scanned hand samples (using Qlone phone-base photogrammetry). Using these tools, students were able to independently explore rocks at different scales, including identifying minerals in thin section. Students learned the optical properties of minerals through a collection of images (100+ per sample) integrated in a single interactive 'virtual thin section' environment that linked in situ views of samples at various magnifications (in both plane- and cross-polarized light) with associated videos of 360º microscope stage rotations for observations of properties that change depending on the orientation of the minerals (e.g., pleochroism, birefringence, optic axis figures). This material was accompanied by synchronous recorded lectures, synchronous and asynchronous 'open lab' sessions, and interactive online activities that took students from observations of minerals in thin section to interpretations of field-grounded conditions of petrogenesis (e.g., pressure and temperature), and tectonic-scale implications for dynamic solid-earth processes involved in igneous and metamorphic rock petrogenesis.
Presentation Media
Video talk about Teaching Lab Based Earth Science courses remotely (MP4 Video 28.8MB Jul13 22)