This project is leveraging the capabilities of the Google Earth Application Program Interface to create new learning experiences for formal and informal geoscience students of all ages. A network of geoscience instructors is creating GigaPan outcrops and virtual specimens and linking them to source locations on the Google Earth terrain. Virtual field trips with embedded outcrops and specimens are accessible via the project server and web site. Tasks are assigned to groups of students who are then free to explore the terrain in a virtual field vehicle or individually on foot. Students are thus acting as free-agent learners and participating in social networks in order to explore the terrain. They interact and collaborate with each other through texting on tasks that address geoscience learning goals outlined in national standards and college syllabi. Assessment instruments are embedded in the virtual field trips via computer logging. Automated feedback is provided to students when they wander off course or spend too much time on task. Logs are stored on the project's terabyte server for analysis of latitude-longitude-time tracks and comparison of novice versus expert approaches to tasks. Through the use of ground overlays of paleogeography, students are able to experience the Google Earth terrain during any geological period and they can follow the evolution of systems and changes of specimens in deep geologic time. These technologies allow students to go beyond the limitations of real field trips and compare the lithosphere of the Earth with that of the Moon and Mars.
In this collaboration between Old Dominion University and James Madison University, my colleagues, students, and I used Google Earth embedded in web pages to create innovative virtual field trips for use in introductory geoscience education. Virtual field trips with Gigapan outcrop imagery and virtual specimens make online teaching of geoscience more engaging. Students are assigned to groups and tasked with exploring a terrain or responding to natural hazards. Students are able to text one another in order to facilitate peer instruction by collaboration on tasks that address geoscience learning goals outlined in national standards and college syllabi. We developed computer code to log student actions (keystrokes and mouse movements) and to prevent students from wandering off-task. Logs are stored on the project’s terabyte server for analysis and comparison of novice versus expert approaches to tasks. Positive learning outcomes were found by our external assessors. Teaching resources developed during the project, along with resources from a relative proposal (DUE-1022755) are freely available from www.DigitalPlanet.org and have been linked to a new edition of the textbook "Physical Geology" by de Blij et al. (Oxford University Press 2013). In one sample exercise, students play the role of first responders in the Mt Rainier region. Their teacher sets off a virtual volcanic eruption and students working in groups must decide whether to evacuate a designated town downslope. They decide this by determining a) whether the eruption occurred under the snowcap and is therefore likely to produce a deadly mudflow called a Lahar. and b) whether such a mudflow would travel down a valley to the town in questions. Members of the public can try the exercise by signing in as a guest. Other exercises include the geology of Iceland, mapping Purto Rico, and examining virtual specimens of Earth mantle that were brought to the surface in Hawaiian lava flows. We presented numerous faculty professional development workshops and conference presentations (see www.odu.edu/~ddepaor). The project partially supported two Ph.D. students, two M.S. students, and four undergraduate researchers. One has become a community college teacher, one a high school teacher, one a part-time ODU instructor, and one a graduate student (the others are still completing their degrees).
