The project is enhancing the learning outcomes of fieldwork-based geoscience education across a diverse range of undergraduate educational institutions. It is leveraging the power of modeling technology (COLLADA and GigaPan) and virtual globes such as Google Earth. A project-related Penrose professional conference at Google Headquarters is enabling a paradigm-shift among a cohort of academic experts and research assistants who are designing, developing, and implementing innovative virtual field trips. The virtual field trips are allowing geoscience students to act as free-agent learners guided by distributed teacher networks. The project is enabling students to explore a geoscience-enhanced Google Earth experience using models or "avatars" to represent themselves and their field vehicles. The virtual terrain is peppered with computer-generated rock outcrops and rock specimens that students are discovering and collecting as they solve problems as virtual detectives. The virtual activities are enabling students to lift and examine specimens, and allowing them to perform virtual physical and chemical analyses that are helping to guide their field mapping decisions. In addition to traditional field destinations, the project is providing a mechanism that allows students to visit and examine virtual places where real field trips cannot take them, including the vents of active volcanoes and the deepest ocean trenches. Students are playing the roles of first-responders in natural disaster scenarios and are exploring Paleo-Google Earths that correspond to a number of past geologic periods, thus expanding their appreciation and understanding of "deep time". The project is also enabling students to virtually explore the past and present environments of the Moon and Mars. Strong formative evaluation components are embedded throughout the project and are informing its development. A key feature guiding the development of the project is the use of technology to track students' actions and to log and scaffold their virtual field activities. By analyzing their actions and - by comparing of novice versus expert tracks - the project is assessing, in real time, the potential of each exercise to improve student learning while also providing instant feedback, encouragement, and guidance to the students.
This collaborative research involved James Madison University, Old Dominion University, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. My colleagues, undergraduate students, and I created learning resources and visualizations for undergraduate level geoscience education and research using Google Earth and related technologies. We used SketchUp (a program intended for creating 3D buildings in Google Earth) to make geological cross sections and symbols, and we used digital field equipment (e.g. iPads) to bring geoscience-oriented visualization into the field (as well as to collect relevant field data). We designed geological mapping and visualization exercises and tested their efficacy in class by a variety of methods, including pre- and post-tests, think-aloud protocols, and logging. Our external assessor documented statistically significant gains, as reported in peer reviewed literature. Resources were presented and explained at several hands-on faculty professional development workshops and short courses and are available at both the project web site www.digitalplanet.org, and the PIs website http://csmres.jmu.edu/Geollab/Whitmeyer/web/Index.htm. Several undergraduate research projects were funded by this award, and most of the undergraduate students involved have gone on to graduate work in related fields. The principal product resulting from this work was GSA Special Paper 492: Google Earth and Virtual Visualizations in Geoscience Education and Research, edited by Whitmeyer, Bailey, De Paor, and Ornduff.
