COVID-19 AND FIELD TRAINING: U. AT BUFFALO'S SUMMER VIRTUAL MAPPING COURSE

Like many geoscience departments, we cancelled our department’s 2020 Geological Field Training course because of concerns about COVID-19. This 6-credit capstone course normally takes ~40 students (including ~20 from the University at Buffalo) and 9 staff for a 4-week-long field-training and geologic-mapping experience, held at 3-4 different locations in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Quickly transitioning this course to an online experience for summer 2020 required teamwork and ingenuity, as well as a deeper look into our goals and expectations for student-learning outcomes.

Our team of 5 instructors included some faculty who had taught field camp before and others deeply experienced in undergraduate teaching and online instruction. We limited enrollment to seniors who needed the credit to graduate (16 students).

We developed a 3-credit-hour course offered entirely online during a 6-week summer session. Recognizing that we could not fully recreate the “field camp” experience, we focused on the following student learning outcomes:

1. Making a geologic map (with all the accoutrements);
2. Constructing a stratigraphic column from “field” observations;
3. Constructing a geologic cross-section using their geologic map;
4. Working in groups.

This presentation will include our evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of this class, and how we plan to evolve our mapping modules for future use to improve field-mapping accessibility for geoscience students.