SIMULATED PLANETARY ROVER OPERATIONS AS A MODEL FOR TEACHING FIELD GEOLOGY TO STUDENTS WHO CANNOT GO TO THE FIELD

The undergraduate geology curriculum at UTEP culminates in two field geology courses, the first in January and the second in May. COVID-19 required the May 2020 course to be online, so we took inspiration from planetary exploration. For over 20 years scientists have planned traverses; acquired, analyzed, and interpreted data; generated and tested multiple working hypotheses; and communicated their work daily at field sites they will likely never visit in person. These field sites are on Mars, and, while the practical tasks of collecting data are done in-situ by robots, humans on Earth conduct the science in an asynchronous, time-delayed fashion. Using this style of field work as a model, we taught online field geology at Mt. Cristo Rey, NM, a site close to the UTEP campus. For two weeks the instructors visited the field site every other day following traverse plans generated by student science teams. At the start of each field day, the teams transmitted their plans to the instructors. The instructors followed the plans, collecting requested data (e.g., images, orientations, descriptions, XRF measurements, etc.) at specified stations. At the end of each day’s ~3-hour traverse, the instructors transmitted the data back to the students so they could do their collaborative and individual science work, including a traverse plan for the next field day. The students worked exclusively online, and the instructors followed COVID-19 safety protocols in the field. Course engagement was maintained through day-to-day, intra-team electronic communications and short, twice-daily video conferences on field days. Teams collaboratively generated traverse plans as well as wiki pages documenting their science and operational problem-solving and decision-making progress. Students were individually responsible for keeping digital field notebooks; constructing their own geologic maps and cross-sections; and writing an accompanying report. While the pace was slower and the scope of the field area less than in a traditional field course – and the students reported missing going to the field in person – the course was well-received, and the performance of the students compared favorably with their predecessors’. As this concept is refined, it can provide accessibility-increasing alternatives to field exercises in other courses.