USING VIRTUAL OUTCROPS IN INTRODUCTORY UNDERGRADUATE GEOLOGY COURSES

Virtual field experiences have become an increasingly attractive alternative to field trips and fieldwork in introductory geoscience courses because of improved instructional technology, increased on-line offerings in geoscience, and concerns about class time, budget, safety, and accessibility. While the number of these experiences has increased dramatically during the last decade, research into their educational effectiveness has been limited. I examine the development and evaluation of virtual outcrops and related activities by comparing spatial understanding, data collection, and problem solving for students working at the physical site to that of students working with its virtual representation. To evaluate these differences, an experiment was constructed in which groups of students were given the task of ranking the stability of four sections of a single hillside on a college campus. While the control group gathered their data by surveying the actual hillside, the experimental group gathered data using a multi-media representation of the hillside. Cognitive and behavioral data was gathered using assessments conducted through all stages of the activity and using survey team reports. Results showed that students working with the virtual representation gathered less data than did those on the actual hillside; they reached similar conclusions about the site. However, disagreement about these conclusions among field teams was larger for students working with the virtual site. Post-activity assessment showed that students in the control group tended to produce slightly more detailed descriptions of the site. While the results of this experiment are preliminary, they do indicate that a well-constructed virtual outcrop accompanied by inquiry based activities can provide students with the opportunity to learn some of the basic data gathering and problem solving skills that they would learn in a field setting.