Fully Online Geology Lecture and Lab

We hooked students into the content of our new introductory geology course using popular Hollywood movies, but we went beyond those movies so that students could recognize the ways in which the media lens distorted the nature of science. We started with a simple topic (dinosaurs) and slowly moved into much more controversial areas (such as water resources and hydraulic fracturing for natural gas). The mixture of science concepts, media, and policy allowed us to have students engage in thought provoking discussions. To succeed with that discussion in a fully online lecture and lab format, we engaged lots of humanizing structures such as team-based data collection using online tools, role-playing within teams, progressively revealed case studies, and discussions using VoiceThread and Moodle forums. In the end, our students felt like they got more human interaction and feedback in our fully online course than they do in typical face-to-face GE courses.