GEOL 100: Earth Materials

Fundamentals, Reflections, Careers

Course Description

Catalog description: Properties and identification of minerals and rocks; rock formation and the rock cycle. Lecture three hours; laboratory three hours; Field Trip.

The course has a maximum enrollment of 35, although we may need to source an alternative space to continue to allow this high of a number of students. The course has a lecture and a lab. It is an upper division majors course. Due to high number of transfer students in our program this is often the first geology course taken at Sac State.

Overview of the Redesign Project

The redesign was multi-faceted and is ongoing. I first taught this course when I arrived at Sac State in the Fall 2024 semester. For the first iteration (F24) I mostly utilized lecture materials and lab exercises provided by previous instructors. This gave me the opportunity to determine the overall goals of the course and where it fits in our department curriculum. While I am still working to better understand, I've begun to redesign the course to:

1. 1. Ensure better coverage of the fundamentals of mineral and rock identification. From what I learned from my department colleagues, the course was originally designed to focus primarily on mineral and rock identification. However, what I found using materials that had been passed down through multiple generations of instructors was that the fundamentals on identification skills had become relegated to a one week module, and instead the course had expanded into a lecture heavy style focused on upper division content on rock formation processes. While an understanding of these processes is important, as much of mineral and rock identification is aided by contextual clues, the course was clearly needing a shift towards more emphasis on the fundamental identification tools.
  2. Provide consistent lecture session structure with time for reflection. As a takeaway from the Summer Teaching Institute, I was enamored by the idea of providing the opportunity to recap during the last 5-10 minutes of a lecture session. I designed a consistent lecture opening and recap that is now utilized in nearly every lecture session. By providing this consistent structure, students better understand what the purpose of a given lecture is (learning goals/outcomes). Furthermore, the recap sessions guide students to reflect on their learning, not only enabling better outcomes from a given lecture, but also reinforcing an important learning strategy they hopefully carry forward in their education, indeed their careers.
  3. Enable student success through geoscience careers exploration. The goal is to enable students to succeed in transitioning to the workforce by detailing the diverse career field options available to them, and to do so early in the curriculum. This was in part driven by my interest in careers as a strategy to bring students into (recruitment) and through (student success) geology curriculum. Doing this in GEOL 100 was done because most of our students are transfers, and this course is often the first majors course they take. Building community amongst a new cohort is critical and the careers exploration gives them something to discuss and bond over.

The redesign aligns with many needs/goals at various scales. Better emphasizing the fundamentals of mineral and rock identification aligns with the original intention of the course. This in turn is important for aligning with the overall goals of our department curriculum, ensuring students are better prepared for upper division coursework. Through emphasizing self reflection, students will gain this learning strategy, enabling success in future coursework across campus. Tackling many challenges our society faces related to global climate change will be highly dependent on scientists knowledgeable on how our world works. This pressing need is met with the inexplicable complication of a dearth of geoscientists available and the shuttering of geoscience departments nationally.

Assessment of the Redesign Project

Assessment of the redesign was done through formative and summative exams, along with reflective exercises. Formative quizzes administered in class were/are an opportunity for students' to assess their learning in a low stakes environment. It was also an opportunity for me to see how students are grasping the more focused fundamental content. Utilizing a similar summative lab exam to the previous year will provide some comparison to see if more instruction on fundamentals carries into successful mineral and rock identification skill development. A muddiest point lecture slide was presented at end of each lecture class prompting a muddiest point activity where students reflect on their learning and leave lecture with a plan on what to follow-up with when studying. They also provide the instructor feedback on what the students' feel they were and were not getting from the lecture.

This table shows three ways I assessed my course redesign.
Updated Lab Exercises	Muddiest Point	Careers
A grueling protracted single laboratory session focused on the fundamentals of mineral identification was broken into three newly designed labs, expanding the detail covered of each of the important mineral identification properties. Furthermore, more experimental type exercises were developed. For instance, I added an exercise where students determine the specific gravity of minerals weighing them in air and in water.	As part of an effort to standardized the structure of lectures, the example lecture slide was presented at end of each lecture class prompting a muddiest point activity where students reflect on their learning and leave lecture with a plan on what to follow-up with when studying. They also provide the instructor feedback on what the students' feel they were and were not getting from the lecture. I also added a standard slide at the beginning which discussed the main learning goals of a given lecture.	I added a module on careers to better prepare students to be thinking about their eventual career path while they continue their education. The module consisted of a lecture and laboratory exercise. I used AI to help write both the lecture and laboratory exercise. The lecture was an overview of the vast array of career possibilities and a little more detail on some of the popular fields our students go into. The lab asked students to write a resume and cover letter to a job posting as well as reflect on their current thinking related to careers.

Reflection

A major challenge was the implementation of the laboratory exercise redesigns. While this was aided by adapting previous materials, it did require rewriting and in many cases the curation of new materials and exercises. In short, this often took more time than I had anticipated. However, I feel comfortable in saying that the labs now offer more hands-on experimental learning activities for the students rather than simply asking them to look at and review sample specimens.

The implementation of the lecture restructuring was complicated by simultaneously rewriting several individual lectures to go along with the newly updated labs. However, I am very excited about the new lectures going forward as being something that will provide a consistent structure so students can focus on learning goals/outcomes rather than simply trying to predict or follow along with what is being taught.

The careers module was a great success. I had many, albeit anecdotal, conversations with students who greatly valued the experience. I also heard from some of our seniors who heard about this adoption and say they wished I had done it previously. Through the conversations I have with students, and some I overhear it appears the students are now focused on what their eventual career trajectories are, rather than simply what the next course they're taking is.

A major redesign of our department curriculum is underway. As part of that redesign, I will continue to adapt this course to fit the department needs. I look forward to further refining some of these redesigns to reflect the challenges and successes from this semester. Furthermore, I also intend to further develop a coupon book community building activity that I began to develop during the summer workshop but was too overwhelmed to implement this semester.

Faculty Biography

This table includes my faculty biography.
	Erik Haroldson is an assistant professor of geology in the Department of Geology at California State University, Sacramento. Prior to Sac State he taught for 6 years at Austin Peay State University (Clarksville, TN). He holds a Ph.D. in Geoscience from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to graduate study, he worked in the mineral exploration industry in areas of the southwestern US, Mexico and Canada. Dr. Haroldson's primary interest is to better understand ore deposits, valuable concentrations of metals in our planet, and the geologic processes that concentrated them. As an economic geologist he works at the intersection of many disciplines, and is always looking for innovative ways to answer old and new questions alike.

**Program Sponsors**
	This work was supported by: Sacramento State Academic Affairs - Center for Teaching and Learning