Anna Ksienzyk

Digital field assistant – teaching structural geology by mobile device

Anna K. Ksienzyk, Christian Rønnevik, Joachim Jacobs & Hallgeir Sirevaag

University of Bergen, Department of Earth Science, P. O. Box 7803, 5020 Bergen, Norway; anna.ksienzyk@uib.no, cronnevik@gmail.com, joachim.jacobs@uib.no, hallgeir.sirevaag@uib.no

Rising student numbers present a challenge for field-based geology education. In the last years, participant numbers in our “Introduction to Structural Geology” field course have been around 70-80 students. Structural geology field courses involve a lot of individual student work, such as measuring the orientation of geological structures and plotting structures in the stereonet. Especially in an introductory course, students require a lot of help with these tasks and need to be tutored individually or in small groups. Even with several MSc students as teaching assistants, we have been struggling to provide the high-quality supervision that all students deserve. In order to improve this situation, we have started to develop an application for Android-based smartphones and tablets, to be used as a teaching support during structural geology field trips. The app guides the students through the different steps of outcrop description, rock description, structural measurements and fold classification. It includes short tutorial videos on how to measure planar and linear structures. For this early stage, we have selected suitable outcrops located in walking distance from the Department of Earth Science. The app guides the students to the outcrop and through all the tasks to be done on the outcrop during the field course. Structural measurements can be entered into the app, which will give the students direct feedback on their results. Thus students can visit these outcrops individually before or after the main field course to work at their own pace. Altogether, the app is not meant to replace traditional field education but to provide an additional source of help and information for students when the teacher is unavailable in a large group. Early tests with students this spring semester have been positively received. The overall feedback from students was very encouraging for future development and regular integration of this app in our field education.