TEACHING FIELD WORK ONLINE: AN EXAMPLE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

Field education is an essential part of the curriculum for geoscience majors. It is important both for learning skills that are used by professional geoscientists engaged in activities such as mineral exploration, and also as a way for students to tie together and reinforce concepts learned in their traditional lecture courses. Furthermore, field courses are an excellent opportunity to develop friendships and teamwork skills. Due to the covid-19 outbreak the normal field school component of the curriculum had to be cancelled for many schools across the globe and online versions had to be implemented. Here we will describe the methods used at the University of Toronto to create an online field experience. In order to combat distractions in an online course setting, it was elected to replace the traditional mapping of a single large area with 6 shorter modules which focus on different aspects of the learning objectives. The first module was designed to simulate the interpersonal nature of field camp and teaches field note taking skills using a virtual meeting room with 3-D outcrop photos. Second, a series of videos and exercises were created to show students how to locate themselves on a map using a compass and GPS locations. Third, students were mailed 3-D printed blocks and a compass, with written and video instructions. They used the blocks to measure strike and dips, plot them on a stereonet, use that stereonet to find the trend and plunge of the fold then use that information to make a cross section of the map area using the kink method. The fourth module got the students outside (while staying inside) using a virtual field mapping excursion in Google Earth. A series of videos, photographs, and rock samples from 15 stations on a shoreline near Parry Sound, ON were supplied and students used them to produce a geologic map of the area. The last two modules focused on elements of field geology that are less commonly covered in field courses but we thought were applicable and were more easily accommodated with the online format: core logging and detail trench or bench mapping (the Anaconda method). In this contribution we will discuss student impressions of the course and the individual modules as well as how well the learning objectives were met with an aim to provide advice for those designing similar courses in the future.