Cathryn A. Manduca

How Geoscientists Think and Learn

Decades ago, pioneering petroleum geologist Wallace Pratt pointed out that oil is first found in the human mind. His insight remains true today: Across geoscience specialties, the human mind is arguably the geoscientists most important tool. It is the mind that converts colors and textures of dirt, or blotches on a satellite image, or wiggles on a seismogram, into explanatory narratives about the formation and migration of oil, the rise and fall of mountain ranges, the opening and closing of oceans. Improved understanding of how humans think and learn about the Earth can help geoscientists and geoscience educators do their jobs better, and can highlight the strengths that geoscience expertise brings to interdisciplinary problem solving.

Emplacement and deformation history of the western margin of the Idaho batholith near McCall, Idaho: Influence of a major terrane boundary

Cretaceous plutons of the western margin of the Idaho batholith were emplaced along and to the west of the major terrane boundary separating middle Proterozoic and Paleozoic continental rocks from mostly Mesozoic accreted oceanic-arc terranes of the Blue Mountain Province. This boundary is marked by a change in the lithology of pendants and inclusions within the batholith. Plutons form two newly named complexes of igneous and metamorphosed igneous rocks. The Hazard Creek Complex, emplaced west of the boundary between the oceanic arc and the continental margin, consists primarily of a series of variably deformed and metamorphosed quartz diorite to trondhjemite plutons. The Little Goose Creek Complex, which intruded the boundary between the oceanic arc and the continental margin, is primarily porphyritic granodiorite to granite orthogneiss. A preliminary U-Pb age of 111 Ma for this porphyritic orthogneiss is a minimum age for the formation of the oceanic-arc-continent boundary. The plutonic rocks were deformed both during and after emplacement in response to east-west compressive stresses. Cretaceous deformation was localized along the boundary between the accreted terranes and the continental margin and is interpreted to have occurred after the formation of this boundary. The major deformation of the Hazard Creek Complex occurred during its emplacement. The dominant fabric in the Little Goose Creek Complex is due to subsolidus ductile deformation. The localization of two deformation events along the pre-existing boundary between the accreted terranes and the continental margin suggests that a terrane boundary may form a long-lasting, crustal flaw.

Teaching Methods in Undergraduate Geoscience Courses: Results of the 2004 on the Cutting Edge Survey of U.S. Faculty

A survey of U.S. geoscience faculty provides an integrated look at the geoscience courses currently being taught and the teaching methods that are used in these courses. The survey data indicate that there is a wide array of offerings both at the introductory level and for majors and thus no standard geoscience curriculum. While teaching methods remain dominated by lecture, most faculty use a range of more interactive methods. Most students are asked to solve problems including quantitative ones as part of their courses although relatively few explore problems of their own choosing. Writing and reading in the primary literature are used extensively in courses of all sizes at both the introductory level and in courses for majors. Strategies and tools for assessing student learning are strongly dependent on class size; however, students are more likely to be assessed through problem sets, oral presentations or papers in courses for majors. There is no question that research on learning and the resulting recommendations for best classroom practice that have emerged over the past decade have had an impact on geosciences classes. On the other hand, there is room for growth. Our data suggest that most faculty are still using these techniques infrequently. These results strongly support the continued offering of professional development activities that both bring new ideas to faculty and address the practicalities of widespread implementation of these techniques.

The digital library for earth system education: building community, building the library

Science educators have called repeatedly for an information system that can effectively deliver quality educational materials in readily accessible formats, with a high degree of confidence in their usefulness, interest, and effectiveness [4]. In the past 18 months, the Earth system education community has begun development of the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE). Earth system educators and key agency officials at NSF and NASA have recognized that the convergence of information and learning technologies , the maturation of basic digital library research, and the increasing ubiquity of the Web in classrooms has made the DLESE both possible and timely. Representatives of the Earth system education community came together in August 1999 to institute a governance system and an operational arm (the DLESE Program Center, or DPC) to design and develop a community-sponsored and community-owned digital library [3]. DLESE will serve the unique needs of Earth system educators and learners at all academic levels , in both formal and informal settings, by providing: Interfaces and tools to allow student exploration of geospatial materials and Earth data sets. Though a wealth of Earth data exists on the Web, much of it is difficult for educators to use. DLESE will provide student-friendly access to a wide variety of archived and real-time data sets. Rapid, sophisticated access to collections of peer-reviewed teaching and learning resources. Earth science educators have been frustrated in attempts to find high-quality teaching resources appropriate for their teaching style and educational level on the Web in a timely manner. This resource discovery challenge is being met with the creation of metadata schemas, controlled vocabularies, and cataloging best practice recommendations , all informed by community participation [2]. Services to help users effectively create and use materials. A full array of digital services and human-mediated services for both users and contributors to the library is critical to the vision of DLESE as an active organization that both builds and serves its community. A community center to facilitate sharing and collaboration. DLESE will serve as an intellectual commons for the global Earth system community by being the primary contact for educators, learners , and citizens who seek reliable information about the Earth. A federated collection of holdings. DLESE is being designed from the beginning to support resource discovery across a diverse, federated net

The use of online digital resources and educational digital libraries in higher education

This paper summarizes results from a national survey of 4,678 respondents, representing 119 institutions of higher education in the United States regarding their use of digital resources for scholarly purposes. This paper presents the following results: (1) demographics commonly used in higher education to categorize populations such as institution type or level of teaching experience could not reliably predict use of online digital resources, (2) valuing online digital resources corresponds with only higher levels of use for certain types of digital resources, (3) lack of time was a significant barrier to use of materials while, paradoxically, respondents indicated that they used them because they save time, (4) respondents did not tend to intentionally look to the Internet as a trusted resource for learning about teaching.

Lithospheric and crustal reactivation of an ancient plate boundary: the assembly and disassembly of the Salmon River suture zone, Idaho, USA

Abstract The Salmon River suture zone, western Idaho, is a fundamental lithospheric boundary between the North American craton and the accreted terranes of the Cordilleran margin. The initial juxtaposition along this north-south-oriented structure occurred during Early Cretaceous time. This zone was potentially reactivated twice by subsequent tectonism, once during Cretaceous time and once during Miocene time. The Late Cretaceous western Idaho shear zone formed along the Salmon River suture zone, as denoted by a sharp gradient in the isotopic signature of the granitoids that intruded the lithospheric boundary zone. The reconstructed Late Cretaceous orientation of the western Idaho shear zone contains subvertical fabrics (lineation, foliation). The same boundary also acted as a locus for subsequent Miocene Basin and Range extensional deformation. Domino-style normal faulting and deep (2100 m) basin formation accommodated the motion between the extending accreted terranes to the west and the unextended Idaho batholith to the east. Whereas either the mantle boundary or a crustal-scale structuring controls the regional extent of the extensionally reactivated zone, locally crustal basement faults and lithological contacts control the orientation and precise location of faults that accommodate reactivation. The multiple reactivation of the Salmon River suture zone is critical for several reasons. The Early Cretaceous suture zone apparently created a fundamental lithospheric flaw, which was reactivated after terrane accretion. Whether this zone was a fracture or a shear zone, the fabric in the mantle lithosphere was apparently not ‘healed’ during orogenesis. Thus, juxtaposition of mantle lithosphere, which is inferred to occur by faulting in the uppermost mantle, acts as a weakness during later tectonism. Second, the paucity of strike-slip plate boundaries in the geological record makes sense in the context of reactivation. The vertical, lithospheric-scale nature of these structures makes them particularly susceptible to lithospheric-scale reactivation during both transcurrent and/or extensional deformation. These reactivations both overprint the earlier deformation and modify the original geometry. Steeply dipping fabrics, rather than vertical fabrics, may be the general signature of major, ancient strike-slip faults.

Making Undergraduate Geoscience Quantitative

Modern geoscience uses equations, models, and numbers in conjunction with observations, maps, and words as fundamental tools for investigating Earth. Yet the U.S. public persists in viewing the study of Earth processes as highly qualitative and, in many states, as a remedial science course that is not accepted as appropriate preparation for admission to U.S. colleges and universities. Geoscience teachers and faculty are working to change this perception by increasing the quantitative content of the geoscience curriculum. From the most mathematical of senior theses to the most basic of introductory courses, geoscience instructors can make these courses more reflective of the full range of tools used in the geosciences by including the quantitative content and methods that pervade geoscience. In addition to being provided with a more realistic perception of our science, college students whose major study is the Earth sciences will be better prepared for geoscience careers and all of our students will be more quantitatively literate.

Faculty Professional Development and Student Learning: What is the Relationship?

Change • May/June 2012 Proposition: Educators improve their pedagogy through professionaldevelopment programs, and students learn more as a result. Doctoral programs vary widely in their preparation of graduate students for their professional roles, often providing unequal attention to the areas in which faculty are traditionally evaluated: research, teaching, and service. And even the most well-prepared new or seasoned teacher benefits from ongoing exposure to pedagogical innovations based in research on human learning. Recognizing the merits of lifelong learning by professionals engaged in a scholarly career that includes classroom teaching, many colleges and universities invest in workshops, speakers, and other activities designed to provide continuing education to faculty.

Improving undergraduate STEM education: The efficacy of discipline-based professional development

Effective teaching practices are more common in courses taught by faculty who spend time learning about teaching. We sought to determine whether instructional practices used by undergraduate faculty in the geosciences have shifted from traditional teacher-centered lecture toward student-engaged teaching practices and to evaluate whether the national professional development program On the Cutting Edge (hereinafter Cutting Edge) has been a contributing factor in this change. We surveyed geoscience faculty across the United States in 2004, 2009, and 2012 and asked about teaching practices as well as levels of engagement in education research, scientific research, and professional development related to teaching. We tested these self-reported survey results with direct observations of teaching using the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol, and we conducted interviews to understand what aspects of Cutting Edge have supported change. Survey data show that teaching strategies involving active learning have become more common, that these practices are concentrated in faculty who invest in learning about teaching, and that faculty investment in learning about teaching has increased. Regression analysis shows that, after controlling for other key influences, faculty who have participated in Cutting Edge programs and who regularly use resources on the Cutting Edge website are statistically more likely to use active learning teaching strategies. Cutting Edge participants also report that learning about teaching, the availability of teaching resources, and interactions with peers have supported changes in their teaching practice. Our data suggest that even one-time participation in a workshop with peers can lead to improved teaching by supporting a combination of affective and cognitive learning outcomes.

Recommendations for Making Geoscience Data Accessible and Usable in Education

Geoscience and planetary science are awash in data. Over the past decade, our field has transformed into one that acquires and uses extensive remote-sensing data. Enabling state-of-the-art models of complex systems, these data focus our understanding of the future impact of our actions by examining the present and past.