AN IMPROVED MINERAL IDENTIFICATION TEACHING STRATEGY FOR INTRODUCTORY TO EARTH SCIENCES LABS

One of the most critical and fundamental learning objectives in Introductory to Earth Sciences (Geology) labs is mineral identification and this is often found to be difficult to achieve. This creates frustration for the faculty, teaching assistants and the students and can sometimes negatively impact student's impressions of the Geosciences and also their consideration of Geosciences as a possible career path. Part of the frustration for faculty and teaching assistants lies in the attempt to distill a career’s worth of experience and knowledge into a page or two of instructions usually including tables and/or flow charts. For students, part of the frustration is that they are learning the language of Geology, there is information overload, many of the concepts are new to them and some concepts that are familiar, like color they are told is often not useful and ambiguous and they are encouraged not to consider.

We surveyed commonly used laboratory manuals and found primarily tables and occasionally flow charts are used to aid in mineral identification. There are pros and cons to both tables and flow charts which will be discussed in the presentation but generally tables contain a lot of information and have a high word density and include technical language which can be a challenge for students and flow charts allow yes/no considerations but can lead to an entirely incorrect answer with no way to confirm the decision.

To help with the student learning of mineral identification and associated critical concepts we have designed what we consider to be a "simplification" and less ambiguous teaching method using a hybrid approach starting with a simple flow chart as the entry point for students followed by tables which contain more of the details and further use the distinguishable properties. This simplification also builds on the student's previous experiences and knowledge and attempts to reduce the initial ambiguity and frustration students encounter.