ALTERNATE FIELD CAMP ACTIVITIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS AT LITTLE ROCK THAT INCORPORATE DIGITAL TECHNIQUES AND LOCALITIES NEAR AND FAR

We strongly believe that no student should be excluded from gaining the benefits of field-based learning through a field camp experience. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, several of our students in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock are unable to attend a traditional, multi-week field camp. This inability to attend field camp, despite being a requirement of the major, should not prevent successful completion of a BS Geology degree. To address this issue, we have developed an alternative field camp with exercises that apply our field-based knowledge and accumulated datasets coupled with the use of digital technology to provide meaningful projects both locally in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas and virtually in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado.

In the local exercises, students use traditional and mobile digital devices to collect their own geological data from easily accessible field areas to produce geologic maps, cross-sections and written reports. In terms of content and learning objectives, these exercises do not differ much from ones that are completed at our traveling field camp. For the virtual field work, students are given geological datasets collected from our established field camp exercises in the San Juan Mountains, CO. These are intentionally messy, raw datasets that require some filtering and organization before use. Students use Google Earth, digital topographic overlays, and GIS software to produce geologic maps, cross-sections, stereonet plots and written reports. With a recent acquisition of a small UAV, we are expanding on these datasets to add 3D imagery of key outcrops to our virtual exercises.

Preliminary assessment of student learning outcomes indicates students from our alternate field camp do a bit better on some aspects of the exercises, particularly the cross-sections and written reports. As this alternative field camp becomes more formalized in the future, we expect it may be possible that student learning outcomes will meet, or possibly even exceed, traditional field-based outcomes. Our method is a work in progress, so we welcome input from others on creating accessible field-based experiences that will improve diversity and inclusion in the geosciences.