Good Learning Practices in the Geosciences

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Good Practices - On-Line Geoscience Courses

Although the vast majority of Internet-based resources are designed as supplements and compliments to formal classroom instruction, there are several wholly on-line courses. If the production of such a course is your goal, you should take the time to go through as many examples as you can.

1. The Earth and its Neighbors in Space
   California State University @ Bakersfield. "Scientific method and discovery in the study of stars, planets, weather, rivers, glaciers, oceans, rocks, volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides, mountains, drifting continents, the earth in time."

2. Gems and Precious Stones
   University of Wisconsin at Madison. "This site provides an integrated body of information about gems and gemstones. Materials cover general topics central to gemology, mineralogy, and geology; with lectures and visual materials covering diamonds and diamond simulants, rubies, sapphires, varieties of beryl (e.g., emerald), and other precious and semi-precious stones (18 lectures, links to sites providing supporting information, hundreds of images and diagrams)."

3. Environmental Problem Solving
   Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis." In this course, you will develop skills that will make you more comfortable in recognizing problems that can be solved (the meaning of "solved" will become clear) and in making sense of the quantitative information that we are flooded with in the media. Environmental problems are used as sources of material for the quantitative analyses because they are both important and interesting. "

4. Oceanography
   U. Houston. In the fall semester the instructor will teach one formal lecture section of the lecture and laboratory and one Internet-based section of lecture and laboratory. Data gathered during the semester may help address the issue of the value added by the Internet to the creation of a learning environment.

One of the easiest ways to begin is to put your favorite classroom or homework exercises on the Internet. Often, such exercises can standalone and, as such, can be of some utility to other instructors or students. A few examples follow along with a link to a catalog of laboratory exercises. Many of the exercises that follow are not "interactive". They are included to give the readers ideas for the development of their own exercises.

1. A Tale of Two Planets: Earthquakes, Volcanoes, Landslides, and Floods on Earth and Mars
   California State University @ Bakersfield. These self-contained exercises are cast in a frames format.

2. Topographic Maps
   Clavert College. "Two exercises are included on this map, and this screen will serve as an index to the individual exercises. The lower box provides a link to an exercise on scale reading. The middle box leads to exercise in reading contour lines. And the upper box represents an exercise on flood-plain analysis that is still in the works".

3. Thematic Maps
   Occidental College. "From this page, you can access various thematic maps covering parts of Los Angeles County. These GIF images are derived from graphics created in COREL Draw by Prof. Scott Bogue (Geology, Occidental College). They are all based on maps originally compiled and drafted by Prof. James Sadd."

4. Oceanography Laboratories
   California State University @ San Jose."Sea water covers 71% of the earth's surface or 360 million square kilometers and composes 97% of the earth's water thus making our planet a unique body within our solar system. Several bodies in our solar system may have sheets of ice and one moon of Jupiter may have an ocean, but the extent and amount of sea water on earth is special. "

5. Landslides
   University of Cincinnati. " Landslides and mass movements involve the downslope movement of rock and/or soil and other surficial materials under the influence of gravity. Movement in landslides is generally rapid and takes place such that the center of gravity moves in a downward and outward direction. In this example, water-saturated bedrock and regolith fail along a curved surface and produce a landslide."

6. Flooding Exercise
   University of Cincinnati. "A flood is usually caused by a stream that has overflowed its banks during periods of high runoff. Floods occur when the water height or stage of a stream, commonly measured by a stream guage, passes some predetermined level, which is usually taken as the bank-full stage. When the stream channel can no longer accommodate the increased discharge it overflows its banks. This exercise is designed to explore the nature of floods and flood prediction. "

7. Physical Geology Lab
   from Texas A&M University. Power Point presentations covering the background needed for a Physical Geology laboratory course. This is a good resource for Teaching Assistants as well as for the students themselves

8. Volcano Project
   the University of Houston. These exercises are a mix of data gathering, obtaining information, and data synthesis. FIve separate exercises comprise this project along with a writing assignment.

9. Igneous Exercises
   University of Wyoming. A mixture of Internet-based and non Internet-based exercises for Physical Geology and/or petrology.

10. A Catalog of Geoscience Laboratory Exercises

1. Gravity Anomaly Over A Tunnel
   from the Colorado School of Mines

2. Effect of "bin width" on the Appearance of a Histogram
   a simple yet highly effective illustrator of an important concept.

3. Virtual Earthquake
   California State University @ Los Angeles. This appears to be one of the most widely used resource on the Internet.

4. Virtual Dating (of rocks!)
   California State University @ Los Angeles

5. The Virtual Laboratory
   More than 100 On-Line Physics Java Applets and VRML Resources

6. A Catalog of Geoscience Applets

1. Crystal Maker
   a Demo version of an application that should be part of the resources in every course in Mineralogy.

2. Earth System Resources
   Penn State University. " During 1994, the multimedia producers in the Deasy GeoGraphics Laboratory of our Department of Geography began a new project. Their goal was to produce a collection of short computer-based animations, images and models. These resources were designed to be used during lectures (using computer projection systems) by faculty members teaching Penn State's introductory earth science course."

3. Earth Moon Viewer
   You can view either a map of the Earth showing the day and night regions at this moment, or view the Earth from the Sun, the Moon, the night side of the Earth, above any location on the planet specified by latitude, longitude and altitude, from a satellite in Earth orbit, or above various cities around the globe.

4. MultiSpec
   "MultiSpec is being developed at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, by David Landgrebe and Larry Biehl from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and LARS. It results from an on-going multiyear research effort which is intended to define robust and fundamentally based technology for analyzing multispectral and hyperspectral image data, and to transfer this technology to the user community in as rapid a manner as possible. The results of the research are implemented into MultiSpec and made available to the user community via the download pages. MultiSpec© with its documentation© is distributed without charge." The lab MultiSpec Analysis of Crop Production is a good illustration of the use of MultiSpec.

5. Petroglyph
   Simulation of a petrographic microscope - from Bringam Young University

6. Petrographic Microscope
   UCLA - Extensive collection of images and optical properties

7. Shell Generator
   U. British Columbia. "The Interactive Accretionary Shell Model This program uses Raup's parameters to generate different shell shapes. You need a VRML PLUG-IN (e.g., Live 3-D of Netscape) to run this program. By modifying the parameters and pressing DRAW, you will generate a 3 dimensional shell. This shell can then be rotated, spun moved, etc. using your mouse button with the appropriate VRML command (click your right mouse button over the drawing for options)."

8. Stella Models
   from Carleton College

1. Earthquake Information
   from the USGS

2. Earthquake Watch
   from the USGS

3. Search for Historic Earthquakes
   IRIS

4. World Data Center A
   Education, Gravity, Magnetics, Topography among other

5. Sources of Geophysical Data
   Geophysics on the Internet, U. Houston

6. Current Volcanic Activity
   from Volcano World - on of the long-term geosciences resources on the Internet.

7. Data Viewer
   Columbia University

1. Climate from Geothermal Data
   St. Francis Xavier, Canada.

2. Environmental Topics
   St. Francis, Xavier, Canada. A set of short "essays" which would make good handout materials covering a variety of topics.

3. Global Earth History, Geologic History of the Western US and Selected North American Orogenies
   from Northern Arizona University

4. Gravity and Magnetics Primer
   "The primary goal of studying gravity and magnetic data is to provide a better understanding of the subsurface geology of the Earth. Gravity and magnetic measurements are both non-destructive remote sensing methods that are relatively cheap, and are used to determine information about the subsurface that is useful especially in exploration for oil and gas and mineral deposits. "

5. Geophysical Examples
   Seismic exploration, in principle, is nothing more than a mechanized version of the blind person and his cane. In place of the tapping cane we have a hammer blow on the ground, or an explosion in a shallow hole, to generate sound waves. We "listen" with geophones ...

6. Geophysical Case Histories
   U. British Columbia - Excellent set of resources covering a wide range of applications

7. Global Positioning Systems
   " Finally, the U.S. Department of Defense decided that the military had to have a super precise form of worldwide positioning. And fortunately they had the kind of money ($12 Billion!) it took to build something really good. The result is the Global Positioning System, a system that's changed navigation forever."

8. Petrology and Plate Tectonics
   from Pomona University.

9. Measured and Estimated SeaFloor Topography
   Land Topography from GTOPO30

10. Plate Tectonics
    from the U. Oregon Electronic Universe Project.

11. A Catalog of Geoscience Handout Resources

1. Keck Consortium Structural Geology Slide Set
   "The Keck Geology Consortium Structural Geology Slide Set was compiled by H. Robert Burger, Smith College with the support of the W. M. Keck Foundation, Los Angeles. The database was developed by the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. "

2. Image Data Base
   University of British Columbia. "Welcome to the UBC EOS Image Gallery. This collection contains images related to the earth and ocean sciences, including some specialized subsets (e.g., Lithoprobe, Structural Geology)." Faculty at UBC can use EOS Slide Shows to prepare talks and presentations.

3. Geologic Hazards - Keyword Organization - from NASA

4. Atlas of Igneous and Metamorphic Minerals, Rocks, and Textures
   from University of North Carolina

1. Earthquake Information
   from the USGS

2. The Electronic Volcano - from Dartmouth College

3. Illustrated Glossary of Geologic Terms
   from Iowa State

4. Geology and Geologic Time - from UC Berkeley

5. an introduction to Plate Tectonics & the Formation of Pangaea
   "The discovery of the one time existence of the supercontinent Pangaea was the crowning triumph of the theory of Plate Tectonics. Books, articles, maps, and diagrams abound describing Pangaea and documenting its ultimate breakup at the end of the Mesozoic era."

6. the Nine Planets
   "The nine planets - The Nine Planets is a collection of information about our Solar System intended for a general audience with little technical background. No special expertise or knowledge is needed; all technical and astronomical terms and proper names are defined in the glossary." One of the first and one of the best.

7. This Dynamic Earth
   from the USGS

8. Seismolinks
   "If you have an extra 168 hours to spare for surfing, this list will guarantee you an A+ in the course and an offer to graduate school. " [from Princeton]

9. Structural Geology on the Web

10. Visualizatons in Materials Science - from North Carolina State University

11. Volcano World
    Extensive resources, exercises, and images

12. Volcanic Outreach Materials
    Slide sets from Michigan Tech

13. A Catalog of Geoscience Reference Materials

14. A Catalog of Mathematics and Science Resources

1. Big Bend National Park
   Texas A&M is an interesting combination of a virtual field trip and a student(s) project. This combination seems to be an ideal alternative to the "same old" term paper.

2. the Geology of Cincinnati

3. The Hooper Paleontology Museum
   Carlton College, includes "Internet" essays by students.

4. Understanding Environmental Systems
   Rice University. "Understanding Rice as an Environmental System : Wetlands System, Flood System, Playing Fields System, etc. A great way to get students to work together in a setting that they are familiar with.

5. Student Projects in Space Geodesy
   from U. California at Davis

6. A Catalog of Student Projects

1. Texas Hill Country Field Trips
   Texas A&M University. "The objective of the Texas Hill Country Virtual Field Trip is to educate visitors to the website about the geology of the hill country in Texas. A key part of this objective is that we wanted to create a websitethat people could visit that would, in effect, show visitors what the hill country would be like if they visited it themselves."

2. Virtual Geology Project
   University of North Carolina. More than 20 field trips in North Carolina will eventually be listed at this site which is designed for the citizens of the state.

3. Quick Time Virtual Reality Movies
   The Open University - check out the Skiddaw granite aureole.

4. Earth Trips by Time and Space
   Paleontological Research Institute

5. Glacier Bay
   A Multimedia Tour

6. Jurassic Park Reef
   " When hearing about reefs you might probably start dreaming about warm weather, snorkeling fun in warm waters, colourful fish schools, the dark blue open sea, greenish-blue clear lagoons, and white palm beaches at lonely islands. This shows already how accurately reefs reflect distinct ecological needs.">

7. Geology of Sideling Hill
   "Sideling Hill lies in the Valley and Ridge Physiographic Province of eastern North America, a region characterized by tightly folded strata."

8. A Catalog of Virtual Field Trips

since December 20, 1996 Copyright by John C. Butler, August 15, 1998.

Updated on August 20, 1998

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