Teaching Mineralogy to Earth Scientists Using Spiral Learning and Computer Animations

Mineralogy classes in the new millennium rarely serve only a narrowly-defined group of geology majors, but must now accommodate a diversity of student needs and perspectives ranging from science teachers to geologists, across the broader earth sciences, to connections with cognate disciplines like chemistry, physics, mathematics, and biology. Mineralogy and Optical Mineralogy (Dyar & Gunter, 2008, Mineralogy Society of America, www.minsocam.org/MSA/DGTtxt/) was developed with NSF CCLI support to serve this need, making mineralogy both accessible and relevant to students. The text incorporates innovative methods that have the potential to improve the quality of science teacher preparation, add diversity to the textbooks in this field, and provide for integration of technology into earth science and related curricula. To this end, the text is structured to encourage use of modern pedagogy (e.g., spiral learning and inductive learning methods) as well as the correct use of the computer (i.e., interactive animations, searchable databases, videos). On the accompanying DVD-ROM, every text illustration is reproduced in color 3-D with animations and exercises; an all-inclusive mineralogical database that can be used for mineral identification, movies of crystal structures, optical properties, is also included. We discuss here how the spiral learning structure and use of animations and movies promotes learning of this subject matter. We will also discuss ongoing development of tools to support faculty members who seek to balance both the need to teach specific concepts and the responsibility of developing student thinking and metacognition. We are currently seeking insights from the cognitive psychology literature on the mental processes involved in making use of interactive animations, and using those insights along with the general cognitive psychology literature on teaching and learning to make some suggestions for the appropriate use of our animations in teaching mineralogy and optical mineralogy.