“GEOLOGY AND THE NATIONAL PARKS” – CLASSROOM AND WEB RESOURCES

Considerable effort has been expended over the past 18 months at Ohio State to develop an introductory-level course that integrates geologic principles and the geology of U.S. National Parks and Monuments. Background data for the course include a compilation of decades of professional experience, published information on the geology of specific parks and monuments, trips to more than two dozen parks, monuments, and historical sites, and the collection of representative rock samples from many of the localities.

A ‘Parks’ website is being developed as an important part of the course format, and is intended as a resource for students who regularly attend lectures, not as a substitute for classroom time. The website contains information about the course, short bios and links to the professors, a link to the course syllabus, and various other links (U.S.G.S. glossary of geologic terms, U.S. Parks System, etc.). The syllabus is the action part of the page, as it contains links to the lecture sessions, which currently are given as two 2-hour sessions per week, followed by a 1-hour recitation section (for class exercises, quizzes, and exams). Students ‘click’ on a syllabus entry to open a page that contains a 1-2 paragraph description of concepts, and parks and monuments to be visited that day. The paragraph is followed by a table that contains links to modules with background information and discussions of specific parks and monuments. The links in the table are to power point presentations that were given in class, plus links to html presentations of the same material that can be accessed through a modem.

The pages of the website were created in Netscape Composer and reside on a Zope Content Management System. Approximately 1000 of our own photographs have been scanned, and these plus line-drawings, figures, and original text were entered into a Zope server, from which they are available to students.