TAKING GNEISS ROCKS FOR GRANITE: ACTIVE LEARNING ON GEOSCIENCE FIELD TRIPS IN AND AROUND VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA

Geoscience departments in the Greater Vancouver area are lucky enough to have a wide range of local geologic phenomenon to choose from for our field trips. Like many post secondary institutions, at Simon Fraser University we take advantage of local geology to reinforce course material. This summer semester (2003), in order to advance student knowledge (while simultaneously lowering instructor load) we modified the traditional “Geo-tourism” style field trip (with attendant field trip report), into a trip incorporating learning activities at each site - with the aim of forcing students to engage with the material in the field. Local concerns at certain trip stops were also incorporated (e.g. highway concerns related to the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympic Games, or slope stability in areas of high landslide risk).

As active learning requires full participation of the students, this trip focused less on delivering interpretations of the site information in a lecture style and instead developed questions and activities to test skills and knowledge the students already possessed. The ultimate goal of these activities was for the students to make their own interpretations. We believe this objective was met to a greater degree than on prior trips with the previous lecture-based model.

In our presentation we will present techniques and methods used during the active learning trip and compare them to the lecture-based trip model. Student and instructor responses to the trips are summarised and potential drawbacks and limitations of the new format are discussed.