The Rock Garden team presented at the Geological Society of London's William Smith Virtual Meeting 2021: Geological Mapping - of our world and others on 19-21 October 2021.
Field work is integral to most geoscience degrees and is a requirement of Geological Society accreditation. Typically, field skills training is concentrated into infrequent whole-day or longer residential excursions. However, the infrequency of field courses over a degree programme – even more so during a global health emergency – means that students do not regularly practice field skills and can lose confidence in their abilities between field courses. Furthermore, residential field courses can form multiple barriers – physical, financial, cultural – to accessing geoscience degree programmes. Being able to provide field skills training locally, in a familiar environment, in university term-time, and in normal working hours may help in dismantling some of these barriers and building student confidence in their practical skills. The Rock Garden is a newly developed on-campus geological field skills training resource at Ghent University designed to mitigate these concerns.
Many geological field skills, including map-reading and field data acquisition and recording, are effectively taught in geological mapping exercises. The Rock Garden is designed to be comparable to an inland geological mapping exercise in Belgium. We produced an outcrop plan from a hypothetical geological structure to fit the available on-campus space, sourced outcrop material from local building stone companies and quarries, and dug the rocks in on Campus Sterre, around the Geology Department. The Rock Garden has already been used in partial mitigation of the impacts of coronavirus travel restrictions on undergraduate field teaching. Student mapping work was of comparable quality to that from ‘real-world’ field courses. Moreover, student enthusiasm for the Rock Garden was extremely high, and the students engaged in both the spirit and letter of the exercises. We do not consider the Rock Garden to be a substitute for ‘natural’ field courses, but do consider it a valuable asset to learning and maintaining geological field skills. The Rock Garden provides an introduction to geological field work in a familiar environment where accessibility barriers can be minimised. A campus-based resource like the Rock Garden provides one method for addressing accessibility and student confidence concerns in field skills training.
The Rock Garden team gave a poster presentation at the 7th International Geologica Belgica meeting at the Africa Museum, 15-17 September 2021.
You can download a copy of the poster here.
The Rock Garden is a newly developed resource for training geological field skills on campus at Ghent University. Developing specific field skills is an integral component of most geoscience degree programmes and is typically concentrated into whole-day excursions and longer residential field courses. Such field courses can have exceptional educational value, drawing together multiple strands of classroom theory and practical laboratory learning in the dynamic environment of student-led discovery in tackling real-world geoscience questions. However, field courses are expensive and time-intensive to run, and are consequently relatively infrequent over the course of a degree programme. From a student perspective, the infrequency of field courses means that key skills may not be practiced for long periods and students may lose confidence in applying these skills in the field. More fundamentally, long and especially residential field courses can raise multiple barriers to accessing geoscience degree programmes, from physical accessibility concerns to financial barriers either from direct course costs or from being away from home and work for long periods of time (e.g. Stokes et al., 2019; Giles et al. 2020). In 2019, we identified a need to bolster student confidence in practical geoscience skills and to increase the accessibility of field skills training in our degree programmes. When the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020, the need to be able to deliver field skills training locally became more pronounced.
Most key geological field skills, including orienteering, lithology identification, and measuring and recording structural data, coalesce around the mapping of outcrops and structures. We therefore decided to develop a training resource based on a geological mapping exercise. We reverse-engineered an outcrop plan by combining a hypothetical geological map and cross-sections with the available areas on campus. The availability of campus space constrained the maximum extent of possible outcrop areas, and we consequently aimed for an exercise comparable to mapping inland areas with limited exposure. Having produced an idealised geological map and identified usable outcrop areas, we sourced a variety of large rock samples from local building stone and quarry companies. Working with the University’s Directie Gebouwen en Facilitair Beheer, we prepared the ground on Campus Sterre and installed the rocks, aiming to match the strikes and dips as closely as possible to the original plan. Following installation, the area was re-mapped and both the rocks and the plan were adjusted to produce an interpretable distribution of geological outcrops and matching geological map.
We have already used the Rock Garden as a partial replacement for undergraduate geological mapping training in mitigation of coronavirus restrictions on travel. The quality of student mapping work was comparable to that expected from a ‘real-world’ field course. Moreover, student enthusiasm for the Rock Garden was extremely high, and they took the spirit as well as the letter of the activities at hand. However, we do not consider the Rock Garden as a substitute for existing field courses. Instead, it is a way to teach essential field skills in a more controlled environment where accessibility barriers can be minimised and students can become familiar with some of the exigencies of field work. Recently, there has been debate over the inclusivity of making field work a mandatory component of a geoscience degree, and indeed many graduates will not need to use the field skills they develop during a geoscience degree. However, accessibility issues should not be a barrier to learning key field skills and to developing an understanding of the methods and uncertainties inherent in geoscience field work. A campus-based resource like the Rock Garden provides one method for addressing accessibility and student confidence issues in field skills training and development.
We are preparing a formal written publication on the reasons behind and the construction of the Rock Garden. We will update this page with links and further details when the work is published.