VIRTUAL FIELD COURSE ON GEOLOGIC MAPPING AND ANALYTICAL DATA INTEGRATION IN DEFORMED CRYSTALLINE BASEMENT EXPOSED IN THE FRONT RANGE, COLORADO

The COVID-19 pandemic hindered the ability to conduct field geology courses in a hands-on and boots-on traditional manner this summer. In response, we redesigned an advanced geology field course in deformed crystalline basement exposed in the Front Range, Colorado into an entirely online format. For three weeks, the online course met daily in a video conferencing platform with a schedule consisting of lectures, small group mapping and collaboration, office hours, and virtual presentation.

For the mapping exercise, student groups made daily navigational decisions and chose stations based on topographic maps, Google Earth satellite imagery, and iterative geological reasoning. For each chosen station, students received customized outcrop descriptions, measurements, and photographs from which they input field data and created geologic maps using StraboSpot. Complementing their mapping, students also chose supplemental datasets, integrated them into their own data, and used the combination to conduct more advanced geochronology, metamorphic petrology, or structural geology analysis. Finally, the students interpreted and synthesized their results from mapping and integrated analytical data into written reports and video presentations.

The drawbacks of this online course included the absence of hands-on field data collection and the missing appeal of working outdoors. While an online course may not have perfectly replaced field experiences, there were numerous advantages of conducting this same research remotely. First, this experience provided relevant training for students to use modern technology and interactive collaboration for conducting science. This was supported by student responses in course assessment data. Second, this experience fostered a more accessible and inclusive learning environment for all students. Notably, this online course only required access to a computer and internet, in contrast to other field courses with prerequisites of physical ability and comfort in the outdoors. Our modified remote field course maintained the original course expectations and goals, provided a technologically advanced learning experience, and made a small step towards improving the geology curriculum’s accessibility and inclusivity for a diverse student body, with or without a pandemic.