Impacts of a CAREER Award on Advancing 3D Visualization in Geology Education
Abstract
CAREER awards provide a unique opportunity to develop educational activities as an integrated part of one's research activities. This CAREER award focused on developing interactive 3D visualization tools to aid geology students in improving their 3D visualization skills. Not only is this a key skill for field geologists who need to visualize unseen subsurface structures, but it is also an important aspect of geodynamic research into the processes, such as faulting and viscous flow, that occur during subduction. Working with an undergraduate student researcher and using the KeckCAVES developed volume visualization code 3DVisualizer, we have developed interactive visualization laboratory exercises (e.g., Discovering the Rule of Vs) and a suite of mini-exercises using illustrative 3D geologic structures (e.g., syncline, thrust fault) that students can explore (e.g., rotate, slice, cut-away) to understand how exposure of these structures at the surface can provide insight into the subsurface structure. These exercises have been integrated into the structural geology curriculum and made available on the web through the KeckCAVES Education website as both data-and-code downloads and pre-made movies. One of the main challenges of implementing research and education activities through the award is that progress must be made on both throughout the award period. Therefore, while our original intent was to use subduction model output as the structures in the educational models, delays in the research results required that we develop these models using other simpler input data sets. These delays occurred because one of the other goals of the CAREER grant is to allow the faculty to take their research in a new direction, which may certainly lead to transformative science, but can also lead to more false-starts as the challenges of doing the new science are overcome. However, having created the infrastructure for the educational components, use of the model results in future education modules will be straightforward. Overall, the CAREER award has made integrating research results and research tools, such as the 3DVisualizer software, into teaching a more natural part of my regular activities, and has increased the recognized value of similar teaching innovations from more faculty within my department.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2011
- Bibcode:
- 2011AGUFMED43B0567B
- Keywords:
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- 0599 COMPUTATIONAL GEOPHYSICS / General or miscellaneous;
- 0845 EDUCATION / Instructional tools;
- 8170 TECTONOPHYSICS / Subduction zone processes