TEACHING A SUBSURFACE, SIMULATED SUBJECT OUTDOORS: HOW TO LEVERAGE TIME FOR FIELD HYDROGEOLOGY

An old adage in geosciences is “the best geologist is the one who has seen the most geology”. There may be exceptions to this saying and variability exists among subdisciplines, but most people agree that field experience is valuable. However, time demands on students, faculty, and staff seem to increase continually making field work appear less practical. In hydrogeology, the problem is how to justify time required to teach field hydrogeology in competition with time needed for today’s remotely-sensed, GIS-based, numerical modelling hydrogeologists. One answer is to leverage teaching time and effort creatively among a multi-tiered group. A model mentored to me as a student consisted of weekly field trips added to a regular class as labs, in contrast to a field course consisting almost entirely of time spent in the field. I adopted this technique as a professor and was pleased with the observed results until I participated in the Cutting Edge program, “Teaching Hydrogeology in the 21^st Century”. Sharing with other hydrogeology educators, I learned my model could be improved significantly. In response, I modified my approach and my present goal is to share some of the successful modifications including the, “lecture-field-writing-presentation continuum”, thesis assignments, field tutoring, and the “faculty-teaching assistant-staff trickle effect”. Because hydrogeology is a subsurface subject some argue it is not effective to teach concepts in the field but rather to focus only on field skills or field methods. My observations indicate that time in the field strengthens conceptual understanding, develops confidence, gives context to models, and is time well spent for today’s hydrogeologists.