MIXED SUCESS WITH A RE-DESIGNED STRATIGRAPHY AND SEDIMENTOLOGY CLASS

The proximity of Cambro-Ordovician clastic and carbonate rocks to the UVM campus provided the impetus to revise a Strat/Sed class. Course goals include developing a student's ability to make field observations, sketches, and measurements of sedimentary rocks in the field and hypothesize about their depositional environment based on the interpretation of this data. The focal points of this lab class were two field projects, one in clastics and the other in carbonates. In addition to the acquisition of field skills, content topics covered in this project-based format included: (1) introductory fluid flow and bedform interpretation; (2) processes and products of depositional environments; (3) principles of stratigraphic correlation; (4) sea level change and sequence stratigraphy. In addition to the field project-based focus, teaching strategies used to cover this material include small group team work, “lead learners” to summarize topics and prepare topical power point presentations (hosted on the class website), and multi-draft writing assignments (of the final depositional interpretation). Because student pairs measured and described only two meter thick portions of an outcrop, assembly of the composite section was analogous to a jigsaw activity. Assessment of this class indicated that students felt that it was poorly organized; I originally planned on including more outcrops but time constraints required I cut back, so students felt that they needed to see more exposures to be able to draw meaningful conclusions. Students also felt that they did not possess enough information to do the tasks they were asked to do, such as how to recognize and interpret the diversity of bedforms, or identify sandstone types, and thus they had little confidence in their field description and resulting interpretations. The “lead learner” activity did not work well the powerpoints they created were of highly variable quality and their peers did not fully utilize them. The quality of student writing improved from the first draft of the first project summary paper to the final draft of the second project paper. Most students felt that their field skills improved.