DIGITAL TOOLS TO SUPPORT A QUASI-SYNCHRONOUS ONLINE GEOLOGY FIELD CAMP EXPERIENCE

Online courses are designed for asynchronous learning - students access premade learning material (videos, readings, assessments) and complete the course on their own schedule. Geology field courses, in contrast, are designed to be synchronous. Distractions are minimized by living in a remote area, and students have constant in-person access to instructors. COVID-19 demanded a new online model of geology field camp. To most effectively replicate a quasi-synchronous field camp experience, we used a suite of technologies to create direct lines of communications among participants. Here we discuss our approach to overcome communication barriers in online geology field camp.

Zoom has become synonymous with online education. However, barriers, such as weak internet access, limited bandwidth, and lack of webcam/microphone, disrupt group discussions. We used Zoom for daily check-ins, but transitioned to shared Google Docs and Slack workspaces to create direct lines of communication. Each student was provided a personal Google Doc (shared with instructors) to act as a ‘digital field notebook’, and provide a written record of their work. Students were able to ‘tag’ instructors in their notebooks for feedback or questions and we could efficiently respond to every student while monitoring the progress of the course. We created a Slack workspace with specific #channels, to which we assigned students into mapping groups. By enabling organized, asynchronous communication among students, we implemented a collaboration component into assignments. Students were also able to directly message instructors - this is critical in a course that heavily relies on software. Instructors could quickly solve a technology error from a screenshot, or set up a zoom call. Ultimately, it limited the amount of time and energy instructors spent online.

Throughout the course we introduced a variety of technologies to identify the most effective means of communication to support our students. Students responded positively to the direct communication that Google Docs and Slack enabled, and instructors were able to better support the students. Ultimately we found that multiple channels of direct communication are necessary to answer questions quickly, encourage collaboration, and disseminate information in a quasi-synchronous field course.