STARTING POINT: USING WORDS AND PICTURES TO CAPTURE THE ESSENCE OF FIELD WORK

“Starting Point” is a collection of pedagogical and content resources for teachers of introductory geoscience classes, produced by the Science Education Resource Center through grants from the NSDL program at NSF. Creating a module on field laboratories (more than 32 web pages of information and examples at http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/field_lab/index.html) required us to synthesize and generalize our experiences in ways that other teachers would find useful. For example, we devised a framework for structuring field lab experiences that consists of these parts: Organizing the work around a particular question; Encourage observation first; The field “lecturette;” Dealing with complexity; The concluding discussion; Summing up: closure for the students; and Follow-up assignments. Other important pedagogical and logistical concerns discussed in the module are how to manage time in the field, how to choose field sites, and what kinds of equipment are necessary for field labs, among others. We have intentionally used the module to promote field work in geoscience classes by helping instructors locate suitable areas on and near the campus. Pictorially, the site incorporates images of students and faculty engaged in field work, as well as students posing with field equipment. The module also includes sixteen examples of field labs. We encourage other geoscience faculty to add more examples to the module and we also encourage comments on the pedagogy pages.