Exploring the Earth System through online interactive models

Upper level Earth Science students commonly have a strong background of mathematical training from Math courses, however their ability to use mathematical models to solve Earth Science problems is commonly limited. Their difficulty comes, in part, because of the nature of the subject matter. There is a large body of background ';conceptual' and ';observational' understanding and knowledge required in the Earth Sciences before in-depth quantification becomes useful. For example, it is difficult to answer questions about geological processes until you can identify minerals and rocks and understand the general geodynamic implications of their associations. However, science is fundamentally quantitative. To become scientists students have to translate their conceptual understanding into quantifiable models. Thus, it is desirable for students to become comfortable with using mathematical models to test hypotheses. With the aim of helping to bridging the gap between conceptual understanding and quantification I have started to build an interactive teaching website based around quantitative models of Earth System processes. The site is aimed at upper-level undergraduate students and spans a range of topics that will continue to grow as time allows. The mathematical models are all built for the students, allowing them to spend their time thinking about how the ';model world' changes in response to their manipulation of the input variables. The web site is divided into broad topics or chapters (Background, Solid Earth, Ocean and Atmosphere, Earth history) and within each chapter there are different subtopic (e.g. Solid Earth: Core, Mantle, Crust) and in each of these individual webpages. Each webpage, or topic, starts with an introduction to the topic, followed by an interactive model that the students can use sliders to control the input to and watch how the results change. This interaction between student and model is guided by a series of multiple choice questions that the student answers and immediately gets feedback whether the answer is correct or not. This way the students can ensure they understand the concepts before moving on. A discussion forum for the students to discuss the topics is in development and each page has a feedback option to allow both numerical (1-10) and written feedback on how useful the webpage was. By the end of exploring any given process students are expected to understand how the different parameters explored by the model interact to control the results. They should appreciate why the controlling equations look the way they do (all equations needed to develop the models are present in the introduction) and how these interact to control the results. While this is no substitute to students undertaking the calculations for themselves this approach allows a much wider range of topics to be explored quantitatively than if the students have to code all models themselves.