ED11A-01 08:00h
On-Line Resources for Teaching Geoscience with Visualization
Understanding the Earth, its processes, and its evolution through time lies at the heart of geoscience. Geoscientists rely heavily on visualizations of changes in the earth in time and space to develop their understanding of Earth systems and processes. Thus visualizations that help researchers and students develop and use their own mental images are an important aspect of geoscience education. In winter 2004, a NAGT "On the Cutting Edge" workshop addressed the question "How do we teach geoscience with visualizations effectively?" The workshop convened geoscientists who are leaders in using visualizations in their teaching, learning scientists who study how we perceive and learn from visualizations, and creators of visualizations and visualization tools. Workshop participants brought expertise in understanding the cognitive processes of learning with visualizations, the classroom experience of teaching geoscience with visualizations, and the knowledge drawn from creating visualizations to convey conceptual ideas and display data. Based on this confluence of expertise, a set of design principles for effective visualizations was created. Participants recommended research directions on how geoscientists use visualizations in their thinking, on student perceptions of standard visualizations, and on the relationships between visualizations and student learning in the geosciences. A particularly interesting line of discussion was the use of student drawing in teaching. A large number of on-line resources to assist faculty in creating and using visualizations resulted from the workshop http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/visualize04/index.html.. These include 1) a collection of visualizations for teaching organized by topic; 2) design principles for creating effective visualizations; 3) information on tools for creating visualizations; 4) essays, references and websites describing research on learning with visualizations; 5) summaries of workshop discussions.
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/visualize04/index.html
ED11A-02 08:15h
Teaching Geosciences With Visualizations: Challenges for Spatial Thinking and Abilities
It is widely recognized that the geosciences are very spatial disciplines. Their subject matter includes phenomena on, under, and above the Earth surface whose spatial properties are critical to understanding them. Important spatial properties of geoscience structures and processes include location (both absolute and relative), size, shape, and pattern; temporal changes in spatial properties are also of interest. Information visualizations that depict spatiality are thus critically important to teaching in the geosciences, at all levels from K-12 to Ph.D. work; verbal and mathematical descriptions are quite insufficient by themselves. Such visualizations range from traditional maps and diagrams to digital animations and virtual environments. These visualizations are typically rich and complex because they are attempts to communicate rich and complex realities. Thus, understanding geoscience visualizations accurately and efficiently involves complex spatial thinking. Over a century of psychometric and experimental research reveals some of the cognitive components of spatial thinking, and provides insight into differences among individuals and groups of people in their abilities to think spatially. Some research has specifically examined these issues within the context of geoscience education, and recent research is expanding these investigations into the realm of new digital visualizations that offer the hope of using visualizations to teach complex geoscience concepts with unprecedented effectiveness. In this talk, I will briefly highlight some of the spatial cognitive challenges to understanding geoscience visualizations, including the pervasive and profound individual and group differences in spatial abilities. I will also consider some visualization design issues that arise because of the cognitive and ability challenges. I illustrate some of these research issues with examples from research being conducted by my colleagues and me, research informed by psychological and cartographic theory.
ED11A-03 INVITED 08:30h
Spatial Visualization in Introductory Geology Courses
Visualization is critical to solving most geologic problems, which involve events and processes across a broad range of space and time. Accordingly, spatial visualization is an essential part of undergraduate geology courses. In such courses, students learn to visualize three-dimensional topography from two-dimensional contour maps, to observe landscapes and extract clues about how that landscape formed, and to imagine the three-dimensional geometries of geologic structures and how these are expressed on the Earth's surface or on geologic maps. From such data, students reconstruct the geologic history of areas, trying to visualize the sequence of ancient events that formed a landscape. To understand the role of visualization in student learning, we developed numerous interactive QuickTime Virtual Reality animations to teach students the most important visualization skills and approaches. For topography, students can spin and tilt contour-draped, shaded-relief terrains, flood virtual landscapes with water, and slice into terrains to understand profiles. To explore 3D geometries of geologic structures, they interact with virtual blocks that can be spun, sliced into, faulted, and made partially transparent to reveal internal structures. They can tilt planes to see how they interact with topography, and spin and tilt geologic maps draped over digital topography. The GeoWall system allows students to see some of these materials in true stereo. We used various assessments to research the effectiveness of these materials and to document visualization strategies students use. Our research indicates that, compared to control groups, students using such materials improve more in their geologic visualization abilities and in their general visualization abilities as measured by a standard spatial visualization test. Also, females achieve greater gains, improving their general visualization abilities to the same level as males. Misconceptions that students carry obstruct learning, but are largely undocumented. Many students, for example, cannot visualize that the landscape in which rock layers were deposited was different than the landscape in which the rocks are exposed today, even in the Grand Canyon.
http://reynolds.asu.edu
ED11A-04 08:45h
Familiarity of Alpine magnitude and geometry as a critical pedagogic element in student visualisation of basin- & crustal-scale sub-surface structure
A geoscience education stumbling block that typically re-currs throughout the early years of student progress is bringing three dimensional spatial scales of Earth's features in perspective. This far more so than temporal scales; the concept of geological timescale is normally quickly adopted into a students perception. Providing a sense of proportion for three dimensional objects is two fold: the first, the actual "thinking in 3D" while often depicting in 2D (e.g. seismic moment "beachballs", stereonets, cross-sections, atmospheric circulation cells) has been dramatically assisted by accelerated graphics imaging software. The second, proportion across all scales, is subtle yet crucial and not necessarily better-conveyed to students exclusively via computer-assisted learning. My experiences teaching students from a range of geographical backgrounds strongly indicates a much firmer grasp overall, by students from Alpine regions, of magnitudes and scales of crustal features. The intensity of topography in these regions, where cablecar and steep walking are the primary accesses, is a unique opportunity to illustrate the km-scale of structures in 3D, a lesson far beyond one of simply illustrating the appearance of typical rocks "in the great outdoors" and very tricky to convery through "virtual" field trips alone. Examples include; 1. the embodiment of a shallow seismic reflection profile to a several hundrend metre cliff of intercalated (i.e. switching impedance contrast) turbidites whose km-long overthrust line is traceable along a valley floor far below. 2. the weight of the thrust pile underfoot and corresponding amounts of lithosphere bending and foreland basin growth - a perspective often lost with beam engineering-only approaches. 3. fluid-volumes: intensely solution-strained &/or vein-bearing masses can be estimated for volume percentage and total cubic amount across a mountain region. 4. instantaneous river bedload versus yearly versus m.y. total volumes. Such 3D realism is crucial is subsurface modelling of hydrocarbon/water/waste potentials.
ED11A-05 INVITED 09:00h
Stereo Visualization and Map Comprehension
In this experiment, we assessed the use of stereo visualizations as effective tools for topographic map learning. In most Earth Science courses, students spend extended time learning how to read topographic maps, relying on the lines of the map as indicators of height and accompanying distance. These maps often necessitate extended training for students to acquire an understanding of what they represent, how they are to be used, and the implementation of these maps to solve problems. In fact instructors often comment that students fail to adequately use such maps, instead relying on prior spatial knowledge or experiences which may be inappropriate for understanding topographic displays. We asked participants to study maps that provided 3-dimensional or 2-dimensional views, and then answer a battery of questions about features and processes associated with the maps. The results will be described with respect to the cognitive utility of visualizations as tools for map comprehension tasks.
ED11A-06 09:15h
Effectiveness of GeoWall Visualization Technology for Conceptualization of the Sun-Earth-Moon System
One persistent difficulty many introductory astronomy students face is the lack of a 3-dimensional mental model of the Earth-Moon system. Students without such a mental model can have a very hard time conceptualizing the geometric relationships that cause the cycle of lunar phases. The GeoWall is a recently developed and affordable projection mechanism for three-dimensional stereo visualization which is becoming a popular tool in classrooms and research labs. We present results from a study using a 3-D GeoWall with a simulated sunlit Earth-Moon system on undergraduate students' ability to understand the origins of lunar phases. We test students exposed to only in-class instruction, some with a laboratory exercise using the GeoWall Earth-Moon simulation, some students who were exposed to both, and some with an alternate activity involving lunar observations. Students are given pre and post tests using the a diagnostic test called the Lunar Phase Concept Inventory (LPCI). We discuss the effectiveness of this technology as a teaching tool for lunar phases.
ED11A-07 INVITED 09:30h
Students Learning from Model-Produced Graphics in an Undergraduate Climate Change Science Class
We present results based on the analysis of inquiry-based modeling activities in a climate change science course. This course is an inquiry-based course in which questions are explicitly solicited from students in different forms. With much preparation and scaffolding in the form of reading assignments and preliminary questions asking, mini-lectures and modeling to them what is expected, students are eventually asked to come up with quantitative scientific questions that they can address with a radiative transfer model. The issues they must address with their questions are related to the radiative forcing concept and include: clouds, greenhouse gases, aerosols and land-use effects on climate. For each of their experiments, students analyze graphs that are automatically generated from the model and also produce their own graphics and simple analytical models based on the tabular data generated by the model. Our analysis focuses on how practices in generating, interpreting, discussing, and integrating graphs relevant to climate change help students learn about climate change science. Students' presentation and discussion of their results in the form of graphics will be analyzed and the way in which the students chose to proceed with analytical representations of results for theory establishment will be investigated.
http://www.crseo.ucsb.edu/esrg/Geog134_S04/Geog134_Index.html
ED11A-08 09:45h
Effects of Interactive Applets on Student Understanding and Explanation of Introductory Weather Concepts
Use of the Internet's virtually unlimited resources continues to increase in introductory college courses. The "Web" can offer students with: lecture notes, graphics, study guides (such as flash cards), self-administered quizzes, and interactive applets that animate complex concepts and processes. In the lecture-based course "Weather and Climate," consisting of approximately 400 non-science majors, interactive applets were developed to demonstrate introductory meteorological concepts. Results from the course's formative evaluation suggest utility of the supplemental online resources in student learning. In this study, we pursue three goals to empirically measure the effects of the animated meteorological applets on the learning. First, we measure if an interactive applet increases comprehension of scientific explanations by students with no previous expert knowledge. Second, we measure whether the applet enhance their understanding of "cause-and-effect" processes. Third, we investigate whether an applet facilitates a student's application of concepts and processes to problem-solving. Methodologically, approximately 400 students are randomly assigned to one of two conditions. One group is exposed to only text and graphics on a Web page that explains the concept of relative humidity. The second group of students is exposed to the same Web page of text and graphics, but also to an animated applet with which students can interact. To assess learning gains, students' responses to questions about these presented concepts are compared. Recall and free recall of content is measured using questions that range from text-based definitions (multiple choice) to problem-solving (short answer).
http://profhorn.aos.wisc.edu/wxwise/AckermanKnox/