Abstract:

Geological Mapping I in the Faculty of Geological Sciences of the Complutense University of Madrid, is an introductory course during the 2nd year of the Degree in Geological Sciences that is followed in later courses by two long fieldtrips: Geological Mapping II (3rd year) and Geological Fieldwork (4th year). This 2nd year introductory course is mostly practical, based on 1-day field trips (4 in total, accounting for 20 face-to-face field learning hours) and on 2-hours seminars by week, 12 in total, accounting for another 24 hours of practical learning.

The main goal of this course is to develop the basic graphical and spatial abilities and skills of the students so they can interpret advanced geological maps to reconstruct the geological history of a complex region, can draw geological cross sections from real geological maps information and they are also able to draw their first geological maps in the field. These tasks need a trained ability to work with changing scales of space and time: from 3D (spatial distribution on the surface of rocks and geological structures) to 4D (how the geological elements are placed underground) to, finally, 2D (how this information is drawn on a map); from using the geological time concept to ordering the events in the geological history of an area, to understand the order of processes in a real outcrop.

The regular exam is quite exhaustive and contains three parts: the drawing of a real geological cross section (usually takes two hours), exercises on map reading (around one hour), and a field exam in which the students must get orientated in the field, choose their own way and waypoints, identify rocks and formations in the outcrops and, finally, draw a geological map and a geological cross section. This exam lasts almost a whole day.

The COVID-19 crisis has pushed us to innovate in online teaching of a practical field-based course and on its evaluation. When the face-to-face classes were cancelled we had attended to half of the field trips and about a third of the practical seminars. The rest of the course was reoriented, having in mind that, most likely, we could not reinitiate the field activities. Therefore, we thought how the students could obtain similar skills with only online teaching and remote learning and how we could evaluate the field skills in an equilibrated, objective, and fair way.

The aim of this paper is to present the new focus of the course, the new methodology to obtain the required skills, the technical tools that were used, the results of the teaching-learning process and the main advantages and adversities for the development of the abilities and skills of the students. Thanks to the opinion of the students, we will be able to identify the main strengths of the “crisis-teaching-learning” in order to enhance them when we are finally back to the regular face-to-face teaching.

Keywords:

Field work, field exam, remote evaluation, strengths and weaknesses, students survey.