APPLIED PROBLEM-SOLVING OF GEOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS: COMBINING CLASSROOM AND FIELD WORK IN SOUTHWESTERN BRITISH COLUMBIA

Textbooks typically provide archetypal examples of concepts and physical features covered in geology classes. Unfortunately, both recognizing and analyzing real-world examples of such features often is much more difficult for students to accomplish without adequate lab and field exercises to allow them to understand variation present in form and material of the earth as well as related processes.

Our approach to aid student understanding of earth materials and processes involves field-studies courses that incorporate classroom work along with problem analysis in real-world settings. One example is our field studies course: “Geography-Geology Field Studies in Vancouver and Vancouver Island, British Columbia” which combines 2 hours of classroom work per week along with an 8-10 day field trip to western British Columbia. This class allows students to incorporate a variety of topics in geology, geomorphology, and geography that have been covered in previous courses and to apply this information to a completely new geologic, geographic, and environmental setting from that around their home university in Pennsylvania.

Our poster illustrates a number of the exercises, activities, and methods of assessment both currently utilized and under development based upon two successful offerings of the class. We also illustrate the continuous redevelopment of course activities that instructors must engage in to ensure that such applied courses are relevant, timely, and take locational constraints and opportunities into account.

In our course, students (re)develop skills such as transit use, the compiling of geographic cross-sections, and geologic/geographic measurement among others. As part of their field work in Canada, students work on applied geologic, geomorphologic, and geographic questions related to the landforms and environment in the greater Vancouver area and the Pacific Rim Region of Vancouver Island. Throughout the course students present both independent research and field work in a variety of formats including oral presentations, posters, and in writing papers. This approach is not unlike what may occur in jobs after graduation, in which projects must be completed in settings where little or no prior knowledge of the setting exists, yet they must apply what they do know to complete the tasks.