FOUR DAYS A WEEK: A HANDS-ON STRUCTURAL GEOLOGY COURSE EMPHASIZING SEISMIC-REFLECTION AND EXPERIMENTAL MODELING DATA

Our 4-credit Structural Geology course (enrolling 2nd- and 3rd-year majors) meets for 80-minute periods on four consecutive days per week for 14 weeks. We make no distinction between lectures and labs, and cover topics in the order best-suited for learning, rather than for fitting into a rigid lecture / lab format. Each class session is a mixture of 1) reviews and/or quizzes; 2) brief lectures; and 3) a series of hands-on exercises. These exercises involve topics covered in most traditional courses: description and attitude of geologic structures, geologic maps and cross sections, stereographic projections, etc. In addition, many exercises involve interpretation of seismic-reflection data. Widely used in industry and academic research, these data allow students to study the geometry of structures in 3-D (vertical profiles plus “map-view” time slices) and to unravel geologic history using cross-cutting relationships, recognition of unconformities, and the presence or absence of syn-deformational units. Many exercises use the results of scaled experimental models. Students also run and analyze their own experiments involving extension, shortening, and strike-slip or oblique deformation.

Students complete short exercises during class and orally report on their results; they complete other exercises for homework. In total, there are over 50 graded assignments, including four written reports on the experiments and field trips. The final exam is cumulative and open-book. Many students, accustomed to passive learning in 80-minute doses, are uncomfortable with our hands-on, interactive style, but almost all prefer it by the end of the semester. Because many of these students also take our subsequent Field Geology course, we have determined that students retain more knowledge compared to students who took earlier, more traditional versions of the course. This positive result more than compensates for the extra effort required to prepare and grade all those exercises.