HAZARD CITY: PROBLEM-SOLVING ASSIGNMENTS IN APPLIED GEOLOGY WITH COMPUTER ASSESSMENT

Hazard City is a collection of eight problem-solving assignments in applied geology on CD-ROM. In each assignment, students will explore the imaginary community of Hazard City, collect relevant data, and apply that data to solve practical problems. Hazard City topics include: earthquakes, volcanoes, flooding, water supply, ground water contamination, mass wasting, waste disposal and mineral resources.

Each Hazard City assignment requires between one and three hours of student work, however, the assessments are in the form of multiple choice questions. This allows them to be rapidly graded by hand or automatically graded using a course management system such as Blackboard, WebCT or CourseCompass. With a course management system, the scores can be automatically entered into an online grade book. These time-saving features allow professors of high enrollment courses to give students several significant assignments each semester with very little time spent on tasks such as distributing materials, marking papers and calculating grades. This is a way to let technology work for you.

The Hazard City assignments can be used as meaningful homework in a face-to-face course or they can serve as the core of a distance learning course. Because the assignments are challenging they can generate significant student interaction. This can be done in class as part of a face-to-face course or out of class in an online discussion forum. The topics enable the assignments fit well into courses in Environmental Geology, Physical Geology, Physical Geography or Earth Science.

The Hazard City: Assignments in Applied Geology CD accompanies Edward Keller’s Introduction to Environmental Geology and can be packaged with any of Prentice Hall’s geology textbooks. It is also available for individual purchase, separate from any book.