REVISION OF VIRTUAL EARTHQUAKE – A POPULAR WEB-BASED LEARNING ACTIVITY

Virtual Earthquake is a web-based learning activity that is being widely accessed via the Internet by instructors and students of earth science. A revision of Virtual Earthquake, now being field-tested, is more interactive than the original and provides features to help instructors monitor and assess student learning. The revised and original versions of Virtual Earthquake are available at http://www.sciencecourseware.com. The revised Virtual Earthquake is designed to be more inquiry-based and more closely mimic the scientific process than the original. Various “tools” are used to control the placement of seismic stations, select and view seismograms, measure amplitudes and S-P lag times, measure distances on maps, plot and fit lines to data, read seismic wave travel time graphs, determine magnitudes with a Richter nomogram, and estimate epicenter locations. Measurements are recorded in a Journal, which can be printed along with maps, seismograms, and background information. A user can save a session at any time and resume it later. After completing Earthquake, each user must take an interactive assessment quiz before being issued a Certificate of Completion. For assessment purposes, each question on the quiz is linked to one or more specific learning objectives. Quiz results are revealed to users and stored on our server for access by instructors. The revised Virtual Earthquake allows instructors to register one or more classes before assigning the activity. Each class is issued a unique class code to be entered when students begin the activity. After a class has completed the exercise, instructors use a password to access assessment data and statistics stored on our server. Instructors can view quiz scores for entire classes or individual students, generate detailed reports of learning outcomes related to specific learning objectives, and edit the student database for their classes.