MULTIMEDIA "SANDSTONE PETROLOGY TUTORIAL" FOR UNDERGRADUATE SEDIMENTARY ROCKS LABORATORY: WILL ENHANCED LEARNING LEADS TO IMPROVED ENROLLMENT?

The undergraduate Sedimentary Rocks (GEO 416M) course offered twice yearly at the University of Texas at Austin has enrollments in the range of 60-80 students per semester. Students are typically sophomores and juniors and include geology majors with experience in optical mineralogy and petroleum engineering majors without such background. The students are typically divided into several laboratory sections taught by graduate teaching assistants. Laboratory activities cover clastic hand specimens, a crash course in optical mineralogy, general sandstone petrography, Holocene sands, and sandstone clans in less than three weeks. During this period, students typically examine and describe no more than 15 sandstone thin sections.

In order to improve student cognition of major sandstone constituent grains and diagenetic features, we are currently developing a "Sandstone Petrography Tutor". The multimedia CD-based module is designed to give the beginning student of sedimentary petrology an overview of the major constituents of sandstones as seen through the petrographic microscope. The module will contain up to three hundred highly interactive photomicrographs. Within individual images, information on the specimen can be called up from an icon on the function bar. Active regions of the image are indicated when the cursor appears as a pointing hand. Clicking on such a region calls up information, either a short identification of the activated region, a tiny bit of text that quickly disappears on its own, or the major theme of the image in a larger box of text.

Our goal is to use the "Sandstone Petrography Tutor" in a way to expose students to a larger quantity of petrographic information and to allow them to attain a higher level of expertise in rock description than the current curriculum permits, and eventually motivate students to pursue in higher level geoscience studies / careers in rock description. In addition, once officially released, the "Sandstone Petrography Tutor" module will bridge the gap between large research-focused institutions and smaller schools where there may be less access to teaching materials, facilities, and specialized expertise.