WEB-BASED RESEARCH ADDS RELEVANCE TO GEOHAZARDS COURSE

Many schools offer a course dealing with geological hazards similar to the Earthquakes and Volcanoes course at the University of Texas at Dallas. Making this course relevant to "flatland" students is challenging. The integration of web-based investigation has significantly diminished this problem. The course was designed to be interdisciplinary, including a liberal dose of mythology, history, sociology, political science, visual aids, and the necessary geological concepts. However, there is always a sense of detachment related to our geographical location. Two hazard mitigation projects replaced more traditional short research papers. These projects rely on student investigation through the internet. Students are instructed to pick an active volcano or seismic zone from any of several web sites. Over a 4-5 week period they monitor their "adopted" volcano (and seismic zone), documenting the activity, establishing patterns or trends, and learning about the surrounding area. During that period, the lecture provides discussion of rock types, tectonic concepts, eruptive mechanisms, seismic waves, related hazards, and case histories. As the students build their knowledge base, they can integrate this information directly into their investigations. Several students have been able to establish a dialog with researchers at their study site, reinforcing the immediacy of their work. The final project for each section is a short paper in which they outline the type of volcano (fault system), tectonic setting, geographic setting (including topographic, demographic, and economic analysis), and the likely hazards. The culmination of the work is a hazard mitigation plan. The students can utilize maps and figures from the internet to provide visual support, but the plan is to be their own and is compared to any existing plan. At the end of this process, the students are "vested" in their volcano and many continue to follow the activity after the class is completed. Student evaluations strongly support the continuation of this type of investigative learning. This type of activity is easy to incorporate into existing classes, provides invaluable exposure to "real" data, and is inexpensive.