HR: 0830h
AN: ED41C-1178    [PDF]
TI: Refining a Proposal to Build Data-Rich Rock Suites for Learning Petrology
AU: * Wirth, K R
EM: wirth@macalester.edu
AF: Geology Department, Macalester College, 1600 Grand Ave, St. Paul, MN 55105 United States
AU: Davidson, C
EM: cdavidso@carleton.edu
AF: Geology, Carleton College, One North College Street, Northfield, MN 55057 United States
AU: Creasy, J W
EM: jcreasy@bates.edu
AF: Departement of Geology, Bates College,, Lewiston, ME 04240 United States
AB: One of the outcomes from the 2003 Teaching Petrology workshop held in Bozeman, MT was a call for the development of a series of data-rich rocks suites that could be used to help students learn fundamental petrologic processes and concepts such as partial melting, magmatic differentiation, and phase equilibria. These suites would include detailed field, structural, geochemical, and geochronologic data that could be used in short lecture demonstrations, laboratory exercises, multi-week activities or semester-long projects. The motivation behind the development of these suites is the growing understanding in the education community that hands-on, problem-based learning activities that allow students to build their own knowledge are more effective than most traditional lecture formats. In discovery-based environments students learn to pose questions, work with data, manage ambiguity, and synthesize diverse observations. Many existing rocks suites used in petrology courses consist of rocks that were not necessarily selected to facilitate learning of important petrologic processes, or to develop higher order skills in a discovery-based setting. Our proposal is to develop a collection of genetically related rocks that can be used to discover fundamental petrologic concepts through guided data collection, interpretation, and synthesis by students and faculty. The use of suites in this manner helps develop a "community of learners" atmosphere in a course, where the outcome is perhaps not well defined and could change from year to year depending on the interests of the students and faculty involved. In addition, we hope these suites will be developed and used by several institutions, thus modeling the process of modern research by promoting sharing of equipment, data, ideas, and expertise perhaps through the use of a dedicated web site for each suite. This abstract solicits interest in and feedback from the community on the development of a series of data-rich rock suites and curricula for learning petrology.
DE: 3640 Igneous petrology
DE: 3660 Metamorphic petrology
DE: 6605 Education
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting