INTERACTIVE VIRTUAL (3D) ROCK MODELS ARCHIVE FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING THROUGH OPEN-SOURCE GEOSCIENCE ACCESS

The need for online resources in geoscience education greatly increased during the multi-year COVID-19 pandemic because, for example, students did not have access to on-campus collections of rocks in physical geology laboratories. With the return of students to campus, one might conclude that the need for online resources has diminished. That is not the case because, for example, of increases in student absences due to multiple causes (e.g., medical, family, work).

Interest in online geoscience resources did not begin or end with the COVID-19 pandemic. National geoscience organizations (e.g., GSA, NAGT, SERC) have built and continue to populate websites with materials such as documents, activities and videos.

In our 2018 (pre-pandemic) survey, we learned that geoscience instructors expressed interest in the availability of online interactive 3D models for a variety of end uses such as supplements to the study of physical rocks, use on exams and assignments, and for outreach and other activities.

We created during our NSF-funded research an extensive collection of interactive 3D models of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks to investigate the degree to which students could learn rock identification through the use of models. Our research models include four samples of each of 10 igneous rocks, 10 sedimentary rocks, and 9 metamorphic rocks (116 total models).

We are now building the structure of an open-access archive for our models. All models will be licensed by Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA (attribution, non-commercial, share-alike).

Geoscience instructors told us in our survey that interactive virtual 3D rocks represent a potentially valuable resource for enhancing existing teaching and learning and provide new opportunities for creating student engagement and outreach beyond the instructor’s classroom.

Our new archive will fill a portion of those needs.

Supported by NSF-IUSE #1937389 and #1937361.