WEATHERING – AN INTRODUCTORY GEOSCIENCE PLACE BASED EDUCATION LABORATORY ACTIVITY CREATED DURING THE 2020 PANDEMIC

The instructional world of undergraduate geology changed drastically when students at many U.S. universities did not return for the remainder of the 2020 semester after spring break. Like many geoscience instructors, I was faced with creating laboratory activities that could be completed at a student’s pandemic-resident location, typically off campus at home or apartment. This primary constraint, of home location, was an opportunity to employ Place Based Education (PBE), an important movement in the undergraduate geosciences (Semken et al 2017).

Most of my UAB students were situated during the 2020 semesters at home in urban and rural settings of central Alabama, without access to on-campus geological laboratory materials. However, all students, no matter where they lived, were in a local environment subject to the cumulative effects of weathering on materials of their surroundings. These may include building construction materials, sidewalks, soil and exposed bedrock.

I created an integrated laboratory activity on weathering that draws on online resources, including examples of weathering in U.S. national parks, an outside experimental stone wall, and a classification of weathering effects that develop in building stone.

With this background of knowledge, students were then instructed to wander their neighborhood, make observations to recognize and identify specific types and examples of weathering according to the classification, document these observations by notes and images, and compile this information into a group-based report, submitted online. Students reported a wide range of local weathering effects, many of which would have escaped their notice without this assignment.

Access to the laboratory activity is freely available for modification and re-use (mailto:sbrande@uab.edu).

Place Based Education is important because it focuses student attention on the observation, application, and integration of knowledge at the student’s locality. However, a potential difficulty of implementing PBE is the unavailability of features specific to a particular study topic. The ubiquity of weathering on materials exposed outside everywhere makes this topic almost universally applicable, including on-campus environments.