A PROPOSAL TO BUILD DATA-RICH ROCK SUITES FOR LEARNING PETROLOGY

The higher order skills that enable a student of petrology to infer process and history from field relationships, mineral assemblages, textures, and geochemical data are difficult to teach. From our experience these skills are best learned by students through discovery-based learning. In a discovery-based environment students learn to work with data, manage ambiguity, and synthesize diverse observations, data, and petrologic concepts. Many suites currently used in petrology courses consist of rocks that were not necessarily selected to facilitate learning of important petrologic processes, or to develop higher order skills in a discovery-based setting. At the recent (July, 2003; Bozeman, MT) workshop on Teaching Petrology in the 21st Century it was recommended that a series of data-rich rock suites be developed to accomplish these learning objectives.

It is proposed that these data-rich rocks suites consist of a collection of genetically related rocks that illustrate fundamental petrologic processes or concepts (e.g., magmatic differentiation, phase equilibria, partial melting, P-T-t evolution, tectonic association). These suites will include detailed field, structural, geochemical, and geochronologic data that could be used in a variety of modes including short lecture demonstrations, laboratory exercises, multi-week activities or semester-long projects. In addition, new curricula will be developed to accompany these suites. Opportunities also exist for students to generate data, and contribute to a web database dedicated to the suite.

This abstract solicits interest in and feedback from the community on the development of a series of data-rich rock suites and curricula for learning petrology.