CHARACTERIZING SPACE-TIME SIGNATURES OF NOVICES AND EXPERTS IN GEOLOGIC FIELD MAPPING

Geologists regard field mapping as necessary for the development of expertise, and courses in geologic field mapping play a significant role in departmental curriculum and expectations. Nearly all geology students receive some field-oriented training, typically as a field methods course or extended summer camp. However, students are not regularly observed as they are learning to map; typically the final map is collected, feedback is provided, and a grade is assigned. So how do we know that students are using their space and time well while they are mapping? GPS can be used to produce a time-space “track” for the wearer, and have been used to investigate student movement and behavior during geologic field mapping. We have also used GPS tracks to investigate expert movement during bedrock mapping. Here we propose methods to analyze the space-time signatures of the GPS tracks using ArcGIS, based on pilot data from 7 participants with a range of prior mapping experience, and further explored with a larger data set (N=30). Spatial track characteristics including length of the total track, number of intersections with each individual’s own path of movement, rate of travel, rate of intersection, and ratio of area to distance covered were computed. Area covered was computed using a 5m buffer around each participant track. Finally, the ratio of positive to negative deviation from a normal distribution was computed from each track’s cumulative distribution of time. In comparison to experts, students typically travelled a greater distance, intersected their own path more often, and were generally less efficient in how they moved through an area. Students tended to start slowly and make long stops at the end of the exercise to complete the map while experts tended to keep a more constant pattern of stops throughout the task. In addition, experts generally stopped for long periods of time considerably before the end of the task in order to draft a map, followed by a period of movement and map checking. Correlation results indicate that individual patterns of movement were consistent across 2 mapping sites.