recent online resources and distance learning … natural disasters such as hurricane katrina and...

ABSTRACT

The study of natural hazards is an effective way tocapture the interest of students in the earth sciences.Recent natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina andthe December 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the IndianOcean highlight the powerful magnitude of such eventsand our vulnerability to them. There are several effectiveways to use online resources to study natural hazards. AtCSULA, we have incorporated several online activities toenhance the learning experience in earth science classes.We have also piloted an online Natural Hazards coursein addition to our traditionally-taught lecture course. Wediscuss the merits of the online course and the onlineactivities used in our undergraduate earth sciencecourses as well as review several other online resourcesuseful for earth science education. Student surveyssuggest that online activities increase student interest inthe earth sciences. We share our experiences using onlineresources for the benefit of other instructors who areinterested in adding multi-media to their earth sciencecourses.

INTRODUCTION

The study of natural hazards is one of the mostcaptivating portions of earth science courses. Not onlyare natural hazards topics more interesting to our earthscience students, but students also tend to achieve ahigher level of understanding in these fields, although arigorous evaluation of this has not been done to ourknowledge. Anecdotally, student-instructor interaction,questions, discussions and sharing of experiences, alsoseem to increase when hazards topics are presented,presumably because natural hazards typically involveimmediate impacts on human societies.

By introducing Internet resources using naturalhazards topics, we hope to improve students'understanding of earth science concepts. While evidenceis mostly qualitative, Newman et al. (1989), Buttles (1992)and Mestre et al. (1993), among others, show that usingvisual technology helps students understand scienceconcepts better and improve test scores. Student surveys,discussed later in this paper, show increased interest andachievement in our courses.

Not only do we wish to improve studentunderstanding of earth science concepts, but we hope tofurther capture and stimulate student interest andlearning in the earth sciences through the developmentof online activities and the online course, NaturalDisasters. Figure 1 confirms the popularity of the OnlineNatural Disasters course, in which enrollments rangefrom 400 to 600 per academic year. An objective is toincrease these enrollments. Additionally, the online

course and Internet activities allow us to use moretechnology tools and exploit a wealth of superb webresources to better illustrate earth science concepts andphenomena and improve learning. Online activities alsoallow our mostly working, urban students to completeassignments around their busy schedules.

Our experiences suggest that online activities helpstimulate interest in our earth science courses. However,basic Internet access for our students, perceivedinordinate length of time required completing onlineactivities, and time consumed developing materialsproved challenging. Our students are overall quitereceptive to these innovations and have stated that theseInternet resources are very useful in their learning. Ourexperience using these resources may be equally usefulto others. We also describe the experiences gained inpiloting a distance-learning version of Natural Hazards.Numerous excellent websites describing specific naturalhazards or hazards in general have been developed.Many of these sites contain related educational activitiesappropriate for undergraduate college- level courses. Inthis paper, we review some useful website resourcesused in our introductory earth science college courses, aswell as others suitable for such courses. We also describeonline resources that we have developed andexperiences gained in piloting a distance-learningversion of Natural Disasters.

The online resources developed at California StateUniversity, Los Angeles (CSULA), include modulescentered on waves, El Niño/La Niña, and naturaldisasters. Other online resources used include thoseavailable from governmental agencies such as NASAand the USGS and from sites focused on earth scienceeducation such as sciencecourseware.org.

Furthermore, Natural Disasters is an undergraduategeneral education course offered by the GeologicalSciences department. Taught originally as a lecturecourse, it was recently piloted as a distance-learningonline course, using WebCT, a course-delivery softwareprogram. In this 10-week online course, students canaccess syllabus, lecture notes, photo library, onlinequizzes (both for practice and for grades), classassignments, chat room, and progress reports. Studentshave responded favorably to the online version of thecourse.

EARTH SCIENCE ONLINE RESOURCES

Increasingly, earth science educators are takingadvantage of a large and growing number of onlineresources, many of them featured in the Web Resourcescolumn of this journal (Francek, 2002a, 2002b, 2003;Francek and Kluge, 2004; Francek and LeBlanc, 2003).Several digital libraries of varying sizes and purposesnow support the earth sciences. These include the

202 Journal of Geoscience Education, v. 55, n. 5, May, 2007, p. 202-210

Recent Online Resources and Distance Learning Experiences inNatural Hazards

Steve LaDochy Department of Geography & Urban Analysis, California State University, LosAngeles, 5151 State University Dr., Los Angeles, CA. 90032,[email protected]

Pedro Ramirez Department of Geological Sciences, California State University, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA. 90032, [email protected]

Dave Mayo Department of Geological Sciences, California State University, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA. 90032, [email protected]

National Science Digital Library, the Alexandria DigitalLibrary and Alexandria Digital Earth Prototype(ADEPT) at UCSB, the Center for International EarthScience Information Network (CIESIN), Europe'sCommittee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), andDLESE, Digital Library for Earth Science Education. Box1 lists the web addresses of these library resources alongwith short descriptions. Other online resourcescontaining a rich assortment of useful earth scienceeducational materials, activities and simulations include:Carleton College's Science Education Resource Center(SERC), Central Michigan University's Resources forEarth Science and Geographic Instruction (RESGI), andthe Virtual Resource Site for Teaching with Technology,University of Maryland University College, UMUC (seeBox 1 for web addresses and descriptions).

Additionally, NASA's strong commitment to spaceand earth sciences has resulted in collaborations withoutside institutions to establish earth science digitallibraries and resources. In 1997, NASA developed TheFederation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP)and later formed DEVELOP (Digital Earth VirtualEnvironment and Learning Outreach Project) at LangleyAeronautical Research Center. NASA's Digital Earth,another digital library of earth science resources, recentlybecame Geospatial Applications & Interoperability(GAI). Recent additions to NASA's online earth sciencescollections include Visible Earth and Earth Observatory.Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA's home for theEarth Sciences Directorate, hosts Earth-Sun Explorationdigital resources, while John C. Stennis Space Centerhouses the Earth Science Applications website. TheNASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) earth scienceportal includes a vast resource of satellite data for theEarth's oceans, OCEAN ESIP. Other very useful digitallibraries in oceanography include the University of EastAnglia's Oceanography Virtual Library, NOAA's OceanExplorer and Virginia Institute of Marine Science'sBridge program (Box 1).

The aforementioned resources proved useful to ourown earth science courses or have been identified asuseful by other colleagues in the field. Earth scienceeducators not familiar with these resources will findthem invaluable. Other meritorious resources exist, buthave not been included for brevity.

CSULA EARTH SCIENCE ONLINEACTIVITIES

Computer applications and online activities effectivelysupplement more traditional lab activities (Hall-Wallace,1999). CSULA faculty in the Geology and BiologyDepartments at CSULA have developed NSF-fundedVirtual Courseware (http://www.ScienceCourseware.org), a collection of acclaimed web-basedinstructional simulation activities designed tosupplement high school through college-level sciencecourses. The simulation activities include GlobalWarming, Earthquake, Virtual River, and Virtual Dating.Another set of activities used by our earth science andoceanography classes focuses on Earth's atmosphere-ocean interactions, called Air-sea Interactions, whichincludes resources and exercises on ocean waves and ElNiño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) at (http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/sladoch/web_page2/home_test.htm).

NATURAL HAZARDS ONLINE RESOURCES

DLESE is a peer-reviewed collection of resourcescompiled to meet the needs of K-12 or undergraduatestudents and instructors (Boyd, 2001). DLESE's digitalresources include natural hazards activities searchableby topic, grade level and media type. DLESE evolvedfrom an earlier program, PAGE, Program for theAdvancement of Geoscience Education, which

LaDochy et al. - Online Resources and Distance Learning Experiences in Natural Hazards 203

Figure 1. Enrollment growth in Geology 158, Natural Disasters, 1998-2004.

concentrated on atmospheric sciences, consequentlyrelating to meteorological hazards.

The Library of the Natural Hazards Center, at theUniversity of Colorado, is a clearinghouse for one of themost unique hazards-related collections. The library'sprimary focus is on research and information about howsociety prepares for, responds to, recovers from, andmitigates natural hazard damage and losses. TheCenter's HAZLIT database and search engine are athttp://www.colorado.edu/hazards/.

Government agencies serve as important sources ofnatural hazards educational material. The USGS isknown for its extensive online information in earth

sciences. Its Gateway to the Earth has been replaced byEarth Explorer and Global Visualization Viewer and itsReal-time Hazards Information website (http://geology.usgs.gov/realtime.shtml) links to separatehazard websites, such as earthquakes, volcanoes,landslides and tsunamis. At http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/, current and archivedevents are available by hazard type and geography. AtGoddard Space Flight Center, NASA's National DisasterReference Database (NDRD) accesses a collection ofNASA resources and articles by hazard topic athttp://ndrd.gsfc.nasa.gov. Goddard's Disaster Finder(http://disasterfinder.gsfc.nasa.gov) contains over 500


Names and Internet Addresses Description

National Science Digital Library http://www.nsdl.orgResources, tools supporting innovation inSTEM education.

ADEPT http://Alexandria.ucsb.eduGeo-spatially referenced multi-medianatural and social science materials,especially for undergraduate instruction.

CIESIN http://www.ciesin.orgOnline educational resources in earthsciences, emphasizing environmentalaspects.

CEOS http://cils.dlr.deProvides remote sensing information of theEarth, particularly for developing countries.

DLESE http://www.dlese.orgPeer-reviewed collection of earth scienceresources for K-16 educators and students.

SERChttp://serc.Carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/visualization/collections.html

Provides earth science digital resources forGeoscience instructors using visualizations.

RESGI http://webs.cmich.edu/resgiLarge collection of resources for earth andenvironmental sciences instructionorganized by topics.

UMUC http://www.umuc.edu/virtualteaching/vt_home.htmlResources for specific learning objectivesand for faculty educational activities.

ESIP http://www.esipfed.org

Network of researchers and associatedgroups that collects, interprets anddevelops applications for satellite-generated Earth observation information.

DEVELOP http://develop.larc.nasa.govEducational enterprise providing studentsaccess to virtual representation of the Earthfrom collection of satellite data.

Earth Observatory http://earthobservatory.nasa.govInteractive database for current events, ie.,natural disasters, detected from space.

Earth-Sun Exploration http://earthsciencesportal.gsfc.nasa.govCollection of over 280 science and researchwebsites covering atmosphere, climatestudies, earth science, global change data.

Earth Science Applications http://www.esa.ssc.nasa.govProvides products and technology tools inapplied earth science research usingsatellite data.

JPL Earth Science http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jpl/earth/index.htmlHomepage for all earth science relatedprojects at JPL.

OCEAN ESIP http://oceanesip.jpl.nasa.govLarge collection of satellite data andeducational products based on space-baseddata collection on the Earth's oceans.

Oceanography Virtual Library http://www.mth.uea.ac.uk/ocean/vl Digital library contains large collection ofdata, resources and imagery by location.

Ocean Explorer http://www.oceanexplorer.noaa.govDigital resources include lesson plans,educators' professional development, explorations, photo and video gallery.

VIMS Bridge program http://www.vims.edu/bridge/index.htmlSea Grant Ocean Science educational centercontains lesson plans, classroom data,resources, K-16.

Box 1. Earth science internet resources.

links to resources and agency homepages by topic.NASA's ESE (Earth Science Education) ResearchActivities website (http://www.earth.nasa.gov/research/hazards/index.html) also contains naturalhazards research resources along with solid earthinformation, using satellite imagery. NOAA's NationalGeophysical Data Center also provides a directory ofpost-event hazards data collection for both researchersand the public (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/hazards/hazards.shtml).

Textbooks today are often accompanied by CDs andInternet homepages. De Blij, et al. (2003) PhysicalGeography, (http://www.uop-usa.org) providesstudents using the text with a Natural Hazards website,developed by two of the authors of this paper. PrenticeHall also provides earth science textbook readers withonline natural hazards webpages and geoscienceanimations(http://esminfo.prenhall.com/science/geoanimation/animations.html). Other publishers of earth science textsinclude CDs, webpages or both.

Several websites also focus on more specific hazards,or deal with only atmosphere, oceans, geological topics,or human-induced hazards, such as air pollution. Recentinterest in tsunamis has yielded several new websites,including many on the December 24, 2004 Indian OceanEarthquake and Tsunami. For example, NASA's Jason-1recorded the event with measurements of seismic seawave heights and directions from space. Thesemeasurements were then quickly placed on their newswebpage. These measurements were used along withother observations to re-create the global dissipation of

the tsunami waves in simulations (http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tsunami/Mov/indo_gl2.mov).

CSULA NATURAL HAZARDS ONLINERESOURCES

In our earth sciences courses, we have developed ourown online natural hazards resources and activities tohelp students better visualize concepts and processes.These serve several purposes. For those studentswanting more than the brief discussions afforded eachtopic in a fast-paced 10-week course, these resourcesoffers more depth and breadth, with illustrations, casesstudies, simulations and hands-on activities.Additionally, online activities are used as labassignments and/or make-up assignments for those whomiss work or need to show their mastery over material.They also serve to bring up-to-date events and newtechnology into the course.

The homepage for our hazards webpage ishttp://instructional1.calstatela.edu/sladoch/Geog101/naturalhazards_home.html (Figure 2). Natural hazardspresented are divided into geological hazards,meteorological hazards, and biological and technologicalhazards. Each hazard has its own webpage, with links tothe following categories: geography, science, mitigation,resources and photo gallery.

For example, the recent devastating earthquake andtsunami in the Indian Ocean led to renewed interest inunderstanding tsunamis. Students visit our tsunamiwebpage from the tsunami hazard site (Figure 3).Tsunami occurrences are described in terms of thegeography of earthquakes, especially the largest events.In the science section, we cover the causes and propertiesof tsunamis. A section on mitigation deals with ways toreduce losses of life and property. Resources include


Figure 2. The Natural Hazards homepage containslinks to the various geological, meteorological andtechnological & biological hazards. Available at:http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/sladoch/Geog101/naturalhazards_home.html.

Figure 3. The Tsunami hazards webpage includesthe geography, science, mitigation and Internetresources available. Available at:http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/sladoch/web_page2/Tsunamis.htm.

activities, simulations and links to various agencywebsites. Images of past tsunami events are shown in thephoto gallery section.

In discussing the properties of ocean waves,especially tsunamis, we illustrate how large coastalearthquakes might generate seismic sea waves that travelaround the world. A simulation of the December 24, 2004Sumatra Earthquake and Tsunami is used to completeseveral quantitative and geographic lessons. By using thevarious depths of the ocean that the waves travelthrough, students are able to calculate wave speed,wavelength and period. Then, through the distributionof wave heights around the Indian Ocean and even theAtlantic and Pacific Oceans, students relate higherrun-ups along coasts to the ocean basin topography(Figure 4). Comparatively, wave measurements showhigher amplitudes over elevated sea floor features suchas mid-oceanic ridges and other shallower depths, thanover deeper water basin features.

Another lesson derived from this exercise iscompleted using a globe. Whereas in Figure 4, the higherwaves appear to follow arcs on the flat Mercator map,they actually follow straight lines or Great Circles on aglobe. This activity shows distance relationships usingGreat Circles.

We also try to update each hazard webpage as eventsoccur. At the end of the exercise, a review questionnairetests the students' understanding and queries thestudents' evaluation of the activity. The last fourquestions on the survey focuses on evaluating the meritsof the exercise (see Figure 7). Overall, survey resultsshow that students think online activities are useful intheir understanding of earth science concepts.

THE CSULA ONLINE NATURAL DISASTERSCOURSE

Natural Disasters Online (NDO) was created at CSULAas part of a campus-wide Provost's Online Learning andTeaching Initiative in 2002. The initiative supported theconversion of existing courses into online formats. Ourtraditional Natural Disasters course enrolls about 500students each year in lecture sections ranging from about30 to 100 students. Natural Disasters Online was firstoffered in spring 2003 with enrollment limited to 30students. Instructor and students meet face-to-face onlytwice during the 10-week quarter: for an initial courseorientation and for the final exam. Course design is basedon principles adapted from Graham et al. (2001): clearly


Figure 4. A model simulation of the December 26, 2004 tsunami event in the Indian Ocean show thepropagation of waves across the Earth’s oceans on a Mercator projection. Available at:http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tsunami/Mov/indo_gl2.mov

Know the natural processes underlying the most common natural disasters.Be familiar with case studies of historical natural disasters.Know the strategies and methods used to forecast, prevent, and mitigate the most common natural disasters.Be able to form opinions on controversial disaster-related issues and defend your assertions using factual evidence.Be able to work effectively in small groups.Be able to use online sources of information about natural disasters.Improve your ability to use technology (word processing, spreadsheets, Internet, etc.) to accomplish scholarly tasks.Improve your ability to express yourself clearly through writing

Table 1. Learning objectives for Natural Disasters Online.

stated expectations and procedures, easily accessiblelessons and assignments with prominently posted duedates, and frequent opportunities for communicationand feedback. The learning objectives for NDO (Table 1),like the traditional version of the course, emphasizeknowledge, skills, and critical thinking. The coursedelivery platform, WebCT, supports both synchronousand asynchronous distance learning. Synchronouscomponents of the course include small-group electronicdiscussions and regularly scheduled electronic quizzes.Asynchronous components include a variety ofweb-based assignments, as described below, as well asreading from a required text.

Natural Disasters Online comprises a series of tenlessons (one lesson for each week of our 10-weekquarter). The first lesson is an orientation to WebCT anddistance learning, the second lesson is an introduction tofundamental geologic principles and plate tectonics, andthe eight remaining lessons are devoted to differentnatural hazards: earthquakes, landslides, volcanoes,floods, tsunamis, hurricanes, climate change, andmeteorite impacts. Each NDO lesson consists of severalassignments designed to provide both formative andsummative assessments of learning. McConnell et al.(2003), using Bloom's taxonomy (Bloom et al., 1956) as aframework, provided examples of specific questionssuitable for formative assessment over a range ofcognitive levels. Online resources are used toformatively assess relatively high-level skills in NDO:application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation (Table 2).Below we describe representative NDO assignments thatutilize online resources and correspond to each of theselevels.

Outcrop interpretation assignment - This assignment,part of the lesson on fundamental geologic principles,uses outcrop photographs selected from the KeckGeology Consortium Structural Geology slide setcompiled by H. Robert Burger (http://www.eos.ubc.ca/public/resources/slidesets/keck/keck.html) and similar resources. Fill-in-the-blank and or multiplechoice questions ask students to apply the principles ofsuperposition and cross-cutting relationships tointerpret the relative ages of strata and structures and to

distinguish normal from reverse faults and anticlinesfrom synclines.

The impact of landslides assignment - Studentsanalyze the socioeconomic and environmental impactsof landslides in the United States and South Americaafter reading USGS Open File Report 01-0276(http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0276/). Theanalysis is summarized in an essay that is scored with arubric that is also given to the students along with theassignment. This assignment assesses students' ability toscrutinize a large amount of information, and recognizethat the impact of landslides on countries depends onmany factors, including the size and diversity of theireconomies and the size and distribution of theirpopulations, in addition to physiographic and climaticconditions.

Home seismic preparedness assignment - Studentscreate and implement an evaluation of the seismichazard preparedness of their homes and families (Figure5). This assignment is particularly motivating to ournon-traditional students, many of whom own homes andhave extended families in the Los Angeles basin. Theresource used is the online version of Putting DownRoots in Earthquake Country - the popular homepreparedness guide created by the Southern CaliforniaEarthquake Center (http://www.earthquakecountry.info/roots/contents.html). To complete the assignment,students have to synthesize information from the guideto create a checklist, apply the checklist, and report theirfindings along with recommendations for how to correctany deficiencies. The assignment is as successful withstudents that live in apartments as it is with those wholive in houses.

Future Climate Change Assignment - This assignmentuses one of several free interactive Virtual Coursewaresimulations (http://www.ScienceCourseware.org) andserves as an assessment of relatively high-level thinkingskills. Virtual Courseware is a collection of interactiveweb-based simulations designed to supplement highschool through college level science curricula. Thesimulations include instructions and tutorials, and allowstudents to make measurements and enter and save data.


Bloom'sTaxonomy Learning Skill NDO Assignment

Application Using knowledge

Outcrop Interpretation. Apply principles of superposition and cross-cuttingrelationships to interpret outcrop photographs in the Keck GeologyConsortium Structural Geology slide set compiled by H. Robert Burger(http://www.eos.ubc.ca/public/resources/slidesets/keck/keck.html)

Analysis Taking apartinformation

The Impact of Landslides. Read Socioeconomic and Environmental Impactsof Landslides in the Western Hemisphere (USGS Open File Report 01-0276;http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0276/). Write an essay on the factorsresponsible for the differences in socioeconomic and environmental impactsof landslides in the United States and South America.

SynthesisReorganizinginformation

Home Seismic Preparedness. Using information in Putting Down Roots inEarthquake Country (Southern California Earthquake Center;http://www.earthquakecountry.info/roots/contents.html) make a checklist and use it to assess the preparedness of your home for the next largeearthquake.

Evaluation Making judgements

Future Climate Change. Use the Virtual Courseware module Future Climate Change (http://www.sciencecourseware.org/eec/GlobalWarming/) toevaluate the impact of various levels of CO2 emissions on averagetemperatures in the United States in the year 2100.

Table 2. Bloom's taxonomy and examples of Natural Disasters Online assignments that utilize web resources.See text for a more thorough description of assignments.

The Future Climate Change simulation used for thisassignment (http://www.ScienceCourseware.org/eec/GlobalWarming/) allows students to quantitativelyinvestigate future global temperatures and sea levelchanges for varying rates of future CO2 emissions.Future emissions scenarios are adapted from the SpecialReport on Emissions Scenarios published by theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) andavailable online at http://www.ipcc.ch. ContrastingCO2 emission scenarios can be run side-by-side and theresulting global temperature distributions immediatelycompared on screen (Figure 6). The mouse can be used toread and compare temperatures at any latitude andlongitude. This is a challenging and somewhatopen-ended assignment, so students are directed to the

Future Climate Change module to go through thedemonstration and complete several preliminaryexercises first.

STUDENT SURVEYS

Online activities - Student surveys and writtencomments suggest that we are making progress inaccomplishing goals of increasing student interest inearth sciences through the use of online activities.Responses to two of the more revealing questionsexcerpted from our survey have been compiled andplotted in Figure 7a. The data, which were collected froma total of 55 students enrolled in four different earthscience courses, show that students largely agree that


Home Seismic Preparedness Assignment

The objective of this assignment is to evaluate how prepared you, your family members, and your home are for the nextlarge earthquake. The Southern California Earthquake Center provides an online earthquake preparedness handbook -Putting Down Roots in Earthquake Country. Use the guide to assess the preparedness of your house or apartment andfamily for a large earthquake.

Putting Down Roots in Earthquake Country (http://www.earthquakecountry.info/roots/contents.html)

First, read the guide thoroughly. Then, using information from the guide, create a checklist that can be used to assess theearthquake preparedness of your house or apartment. Organize your checklist to assess earthquake preparedness in thefollowing three areas.

• Potential hazards inside the home• Building design and structure• Preparedness of family members

Provide space on your checklist for comments. Use your checklist to evaluate the earthquake preparedness of your home. Record your results neatly.

Write a report that describes your findings and recommends actions that should be taken to better prepare your home orapartment for the next large earthquake. Estimate the monetary costs of implementing your recommendations.

Submit your report with a copy of your complete checklist attached.

Figure 5. Example of a Natural Disasters Online assignment.

Figure 6. Comparison of future global temperatures for two different scenarios of future CO2 emissions.

online activities are useful for learning earth scienceconcepts. Additionally, written comments on the surveysignify that students enjoy online activities because theywere informative and because they used a variety ofmedia to present activities (Figure 7b). Writtencomments also revealed that some students werechallenged by computer problems as well as thedifficulty of the assignments required by the activities.

Natural disasters online course - Similarly, writtencomments by students are very supportive of the onlinecourse (Table 3). These comments show a consensus thatthey would prefer more online courses in the sciences.Furthermore, working professionals appreciated theability to complete online courses despite their busy

work schedule. Students also commented that the classwas well organized.

ASSESSMENT

We generally create scoring rubrics to accompanyassignments based on online resources that involvewritten responses. This alleviates students' anxiety bymaking our expectations clear and makes grading easierfor us. Perhaps more importantly, creating the rubricsforces us to focus on exactly what we want students totake away from each particular online resource. TheFuture Climate Change simulation concludes with anelectronic quiz, the results of which we can access anddownload from the Virtual Courseware server.


Figure 7a. Responses to student survey questions pertaining to the use of online activities. Figure 7b.Student survey for air-sea interactions activity.

"I am taking Geology 158 online. I jumped at the chance to take an online course. I am a working professional and it is sodifficult to try to take courses during the day. I would have graduated earlier if I could have taken more online courses."

"More online courses should be available for natural science courses. The reason why I think that is because sometimes labrequirements are very hard for people to find time and meet those expectations."

"I have enjoyed the opportunity to take an on-line course. It was challenging and forced me to really dig into the material inorder to find the answers."

"Any info we needed was on the net and he (the instructor) was always helpful."

"Really well-organized class- for once I understood what was going on in a science class."

Table 3. Written comments for the Natural Disasters course.

Nevertheless, we generally require a written summary ofresults.

CONCLUSIONS

Our experiences with the online Natural Hazards courseand the use of online computer resources show us thatthese techniques add an exciting visual component toour earth science courses and stimulate interest in thetopics presented. Student responses have been favorable.On assessment questions tied to assignments, a largemajority of students replied that online activities areuseful in learning earth science concepts. Many of theonline activities mentioned enhance geoscienceeducation and we are finding that our resources areeffective means to teach challenging concepts. NaturalDisasters Online has also met with favorable responseand has increased enrollment in earth science classes.Both of these online earth science resources may be easilyadopted by others.

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Buttles, S., 1992, A model for incorporating andevaluating use of a computer laboratory simulationin the non-majors biology course, The AmericanBiology Teacher, v. 54, p. 491-494.

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Francek, M., 2003, Web resources: The cryosphere andthe pleistocene, Journal of Geoscience Education, v.51, p. 272-273.

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