Innovation and obsolescence in geoscience field courses: Past experiences and proposals for the future

Like many similar courses across the United States, traditional geology fi eld camps run by Boston University (BU) and James Madison University (JMU) faced a crisis at the turn of the twenty-fi rst century. Student enrollment was declining, and many geoscience professionals questioned the continued relevance of fi eld camps to modern undergraduate geoscience programs. A reassessment of fi eld course content, along with changes to management styles and attitudes, was required for survival. In our case, the combination of relocation, managerial improvements, curriculum innovations, and elimination of redundant exercises resulted in a vibrant course with a strong student demand. We believe that our reforms may serve as a guide to success for other courses that are facing similar diffi culties. The current JMU fi eld course in western Ireland is the product of reforms and modernizations to the previous BU and JMU traditional fi eld camps. To create time for new course content, we had to consider whether long-established exercises were still essential. Caution is needed in both adding and deleting course content, as the curriculum may suffer from inclusion of new technologies that turn out to be short-lived and from discontinuation of exercises that develop students’ core fi eld expertise. Nevertheless, we have implemented major changes in the ways students are taught to work in the fi eld, and we question the continued relevance of some existing procedures. Our criteria include level of pedagogical engagement and transferability of skills to nongeoscience professions. *ddepaor@odu.edu whitmesj@jmu.edu on January 8, 2010 specialpapers.gsapubs.org Downloaded from