SCIENCE EDUCATION THROUGH VIRTUAL EXPERIENCES - THE STRIKE AND DIP (SAD) TOOL

Understanding the concept of strike and dip and taking measurements with a compass clinometer are critical in undergraduate geosciences education and research. Although imperative, it is well-documented that geosciences students often have difficulties understanding these concepts. Traditionally, measuring strike and dip is a hands-on activity that is often learned and practiced as part of undergraduate field courses to analyze the attitude of geologic bedding in outcrops to infer geologic structures. While field courses are an essential experience for students, they also come with significant challenges. Costs, risks, exclusion of students with certain disabilities or distance learners, lack of repeated studying options, and the infeasibility in times of social distancing are the most prominent ones. The Strike and Dip (SaD) tool is a freely available interactive 3D application that teaches these concepts and related skills to students through a desktop or fully immersive VR application. SaD allows students to practice taking measurements using a variety of georeferenced 3D models reconstructed from outcrops from around the world. These 3D models exhibit various geological structures from simple inclined bedding and faults to more complex folds. SaD’s modularity allows for embedding it into more comprehensive virtual field trip experiences. The development of this tool follows an iterative design approach. Preliminary usability studies with experts and students from an introduction to field methods class have already resulted in numerous improvements to the original design. In addition to an educational tool that offers an immersive fieldwork-like experience anywhere and anytime, we are applying it as a research tool to investigate the effects of using immersive technology VR features in education. Recent studies of human-computer interaction suggest that realistic forms of interactions, such as those involving gestural behaviors, offer an innovative approach to supporting and enhancing spatial thinking. The notion of interaction fidelity, defined as the extent to which interactions in a virtual environment are indistinguishable from those in the real world, is an essential but still weakly studied concept in geosciences education. We are using different variants of the SaD tool to compare the impacts of varying levels of interaction fidelity on learning spatial activities and expect this tool has the potential to improve teaching efficacy of strike and dip, while simultaneously being engaging to students.