CL-1: Learning Through Technology (LT^2): Case Studies: San Diego State University

Creating A Computer-Enhanced Geology Learning Environment

Creating the Learning Environment

Eric Frost is among the growing number of faculty who are designing their courses as learning environments. A learning environment is a place where learners may work together and support each other as they use a variety of tools and information resources in their pursuits of learning goals and problem-solving activities (Wilson, 1995).

In structuring his learning environment, Eric adheres closely to the teaching philosophy that teachers should shift the major responsibility for learning from the faculty to the students.

His department chair summed up this strategy by saying, "His teaching strategy is that the student must learn that they are in control." We learned that, for Eric, shifting responsibility for learning to his students entails actively engaging them in a set of mental processes during which they learn, restructure and add to what they already know, individually and as a group. These processes lie at the core of a theory of learning called "constructivism" in the cognitive psychology and education literature.

To implement his teaching principle, Eric has chosen a set of activities that he weaves together to achieve his goals for student learning. These activities include:

Computer-dependent learning activities-that faculty believe simply would not be possible, or at least not feasible, without computers.

Computer-independent activities that can be done without technology.

Although the topics that Eric covers in his class could be taught without technology, student learning would suffer greatly.^a The computer-independent aspects of Eric's class, namely group work and connection to real-world data, almost inevitably occur alongside the computer-dependent ones, where they work synergistically to help Eric help his students learn in the most effective manner. His department chair made this point as follows, "There really isn't much of a choice not to use technology because it has become a vital part of conveying the dynamic nature of our planet."

Of course students can think without computers. They can even visualize and engage in real-world problems all on their own. But when working on complex, dynamic earth processes that are an integral part of the geological work around the world today, technology is essential. In fact, when we asked Eric Frost whether he could do his teaching without technology, he quickly and surely responded:

Eric: No. I think without the technology I would still not be able to communicate what it is that they are trying to see. When we go up to the Chevron offices, we look at their large screen visualization in stereo. In an hour, the students learn more about how faults work than most of our faculty learned in their thirty years of experience. Just by looking at it they go, "Oh, this motion passes from here to here to here." They just look at it and it's pretty obvious. And they would not get that by any amount of talking that I did. These large data sets in stereoscopic 3D are really showing what takes place. The words and drawings just can't convey the way it is turning. I wouldn't be doing this if the technology was not there because I would find it too frustrating to convey those ideas.

Below, we explain in greater detail the computer-dependent and the computer-independent learning activities that make Eric's learning environment so effective in preparing students for their post-graduation activities and careers.

Computer-Dependent Learning Activities

Many of the learning activities that Eric Frost uses in his classroom are not teachable without the use of technology because they are born out of the technology, enabling new geological relationships to come to light for his students. For example, Eric's visualization^b exercises have students analyzing satellite imagery to discover the most efficient placement of a pipeline^c as well as the earth's subsurface geometry as it relates to . fault lines.^d Two Supercomputing Centers at National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA): the first supercomputer center in the US, and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) have provided many of the visualization exercises that Eric uses.

To read a student and faculty discussion of computer-dependent learning activities, see Discussion 1.

Computer-Independent Learning Activities

Not all activities that are done without computers involve paper, pencils and lectures. Eric Frost incorporates computer-independent learning activities into his classes that work together with the computer-dependent ones to achieve his goals for student learning. The computer-independent activities that he uses include:

- Connection to real-world data

Group Work
Eric constantly requires his students to collaborate in order to give them what Shane calls a "broader grasp of a lot more things."^e Eric also feels that when students are being watched by supportive fellow students, they are likely to achieve at a higher level.^f This is especially true when students in related though not identical fields are paired together.^g To encourage group work, Eric uses some uncommon methods such as intentionally not having enough computers, or utilizing older equipment that is likely to fail, at which time students are forced to fix the problem together.^h

Connects Students to Real-world Data and Problems
Along with group work, Eric emphasizes real-world geological phenomena when challenging his students with problems. His students pick international problems related to geology that have, as of yet, remained unsolved. They find and collect real data, and present possible solutions to governments. Eric helps students pick problems that potentially have multiple possible solutions.

a. Gary Girty, Department Chair of Geological Sciences: The earth is an extremely dynamic environment. There are no processes that operate on the earth that one could possibly view as static. Because of the dynamics of the very thing that we're trying to understand, it is literally impossible for a two-dimensional black and white--or even a flamboyantly colored textbook--to get across the dynamics of the earth. It can't be done. What that leads us to is: How do we get the modern day student interested in the earth that they live on? How do we get across the dynamic, exciting processes that affect their daily lives? Why does an earthquake occur, and what's going on when an earthquake occurs? Why does a volcano erupt? Why do mudflows coming down the side of a mountain after a volcanic eruption, destroy villages in South America year after year?

When you read the newspaper, when you listen to the news on the radio or the TV, every day, every week, there is some geological process that has affected society in some tremendous fashion. How do we then do this--get away from the stale, black and white textbook use? There's only one answer to that path. The computer. That's the only way that you can do it. That is the philosophy that we're trying to take in this Dynamics of the Earth lab. That is the philosophy that Eric came up with ten years ago. My perception is that Eric has decided he will never again teach with a piece of chalk in his hand. But it's taken the rest of us ten years to understand how we can use the technology in our favor.

b. For our purposes, "visualization" is the process of understanding simple to complex geological processes that result from observing one or more objects, or a graphical representation of those objects, in a still or animated manner, from different perspectives or orientations.

c. Eric: Some of the visuals use satellite imagery to show the terrain. For example, if you want to build a pipeline across Turkey, the visuals would show how you would lay out that pipeline in order to avoid earthquake areas that would disrupt it.

d. Shane, former graduate student: We have data sets of 3D cubes where you could find and pick the faults and surfaces. You can pick a reflection, a seismic reflection, and follow that through the cube to see where it faulted. You are trying to figure out the subsurface geometry, what the faults are doing and how the rocks are behaving. You can go through in Photoshop software and draw a line where all the faults are and pick that out in a 3D setting, in a 3D cube. So you are using some 2D applications and then transferring them to 3D.

e. Shane: In a traditional class setting, the amount of what you learn is significantly less because you only learn what you turn back to that teacher. You are only learning the assignment he gave you. In the group setting you are learning a lot more than what the teacher even expected for the class. You are learning how to present things in various different media. I got a more general and a broader grasp of a lot more things by doing it in a group setting. And I feel I've retained everything that I learned in that class. Whereas in other classes I have completely forgotten everything that the teacher taught. If anybody gets stuck, it is the job of the group to bring that person up to speed. So I have never seen a student get stuck by not being able to figure out a concept.

f. Eric: There is a different sense of doing something when somebody is watching you. When a friendly person is watching them, students seem to learn distinctly better than if they are just in there doing it themselves. It's kind of like when people play games, and they can play better when somebody else is going to watch them.

g. Shane: There is one person in our group who is a geophysicist. As far as any basic geology, he didn't have much course work in that. He had a general idea of what was going on, but it actually worked out to our benefit because he knew a lot of things that we didn't know in looking at different kinds of data sets. So actually, our differences made the group much richer in learning because he was able to explain the geophysics behind some of the data sets we were looking at, and then we could figure out and help him along with the geology.

h. Eric: And that's one of the reasons we often have fewer numbers of computers. You force the students to work together and once you say it is okay to do that, they see that somebody else knows how to do something and they go faster.

Introduction || Quick Looks || Conversations || Case Studies || Resources

Search || Who We Are || Site Map || Meet the CL-1 Team || WebMaster || Copyright || Download
College Level One (CL-1) Home || Collaborative Learning || FLAG || Learning Through Technology || NISE