PROMOTING GEOSCIENCE EDUCATION THROUGH ONLINE COURSES

State budgets for higher education are contracting in most of the United States. Universities are continually looking for ways to cut costs and increase enrollments in courses. Many traditional face-to-face courses that are not general education requirements may be cancelled in budget cuts. Such was the fate of some geology courses in the small, four-year state university in which the author teaches. There is no "Geoscience Department" at this institution. Geoscience courses are required as part of the Secondary Science Education degree and the Environmental Science degree. Both degree programs produce only a small number of graduates, but enough to keep the university in need of one geoscience educator.

To promote Geoscience education, online courses are now offered. The flexible scheduling afforded by online courses attracts many students who might otherwise not consider Physical Geology to fulfill their general education physical science lab course requirement. Keeping strong scientific rigor in courses in which the majority of the students are non-science majors presents particular challenges. Research as to the effectiveness of the online presentation methods is the only current research outlet, given the course load restraints of the position. The initiation of online geoscience courses has successfully quadrupled the number of students enrolling in the past year, with a number of them showing interest in taking additional upper level geoscience courses.