and colleges worldwide have quickly moved campus-based classes to virtual spaces due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This article explores the impact of this sudden transition of learning and teaching based on experiences and evidence from six institutions across three countries. Our findings suggest that although online and remote learning was a satisfactory experience for some students, various inequities were involved. Many students lacked appropriate devices for practical work and encountered difficulties in securing suitable housing and workspace. Students were stressed, and faculty were, too, especially those in precarious employment. The lack of fieldwork and access to laboratories created special challenges. We are concerned that the lack of hands-on experience could cause a decline in enrollments and the number of majors in geography over the next few years. This issue must be addressed by making introductory courses as engaging as possible. It is too early to determine the extent to which online and remote learning can replace campus-based, face-toface geography education once the pandemic ends, but the new academic year of 2020-2021 will be revealing. Nevertheless, the COVID-19 crisis has revealed preexisting problems and inequalities that will need our collective effort to address, regardless of the pandemic's trajectory.

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Like other disciplines, physical geography has seen substantial recent interest in research on ways to improve undergraduate teaching and learning. Most of this research has taken place in a constructivist framework in which students construct knowledge in ways that are meaningful to them. Constructivist theory forms the basis for a wide range of active learning approaches, such as inquiry-based learning and problem-based learning. These approaches are inductive in that students build theory and generalizations from case studies rather than more traditional approaches in which the students learn the theory and then study some examples. Students are typically more engaged in their active learning than they are in traditional approaches, but the impacts of the newer approaches on student learning are unclear. Experiential and service learning, together with fieldwork, offer considerable organizational challenges, but the learning rewards are clear and unchallenged. Attempts to replace fieldwork with virtual field trips have met with resistance, but there has been little research on the ways that virtual fieldwork could be improved. Introductory physical geography textbooks have failed to keep up with changes in teaching the subject, although there have been some recent innovations that offer promise. Animations in particular seem to engage students, although there is no evidence that they enhance the learning of physical geography. The nature of the relationship between research and teaching continues to fascinate, yet eludes clarification. The scholarship of teaching and learning physical geography offers challenges and opportunities for new and experienced faculty who have not previously published in this field.

Genetic interpretation of massive, unstructured diamict and diamictite facies is a commonly encountered problem faced by sedimentologists. Data are presented concerning the magnetic characteristics, namely, anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility (AMS) and natural remanent magnetism (NRM) of facies deposited by (1) lodgement processes at a glacier base (lodgement till) and (2) subaqueously by pelagic mud deposition and ice-rafting ("rain-out" diamicts). Lodgement tills have an NRM that is distorted around the geomagnetic pole position to form a girdle approximately 90° in length, either transverse or parallel to ice flow direction. This distension appears to be the result of subglacial shear processes because other diamicts, deposited passively by melt-out below stagnant ice and modelled by a laboratory experiment, show a nondeformed NRM clustering around the geomagnetic pole. The AMS data show that lodgement tills have only a weakly orientated magnetic microfabric.Glaciolacustrine "rain-out" diamicts show a precise NRM clustering as in marine and lacustrine muds. This reflects the lack of nongeomagnetic forces acting upon magnetic grains during deposition followed by postdepositional remanence "locking" at depth in the sediment column. These facies show both random AMS fabrics, typical of undisturbed pelagic sediments, and preferred microfabrics resulting from local sediment flow on the lake floor.It is concluded that NRM and AMS offer considerable assistance in genetic studies of massive diamict facies; AMS is particularly useful because the large populations of samples can be rapidly processed. The wider use of this technique by sedimentologists—for investigating other sedimentary facies types—is anticipated.

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