Differences Between Traditional and Digital Field Notebooks for Inclusive Geoscience Courses

Abstract

Field notebooks are an instrumental tool for geologists. However, they pose challenges for students with physical disabilities, mainly related to limited fine motor skills or because of the need for assistive mobility devices to navigate field sites. Students with diverse physical abilities cannot always effectively handle the pencil and paper approach to typical field notebooks. A GEOPATH project led by a team of researchers associated with the International Association for Geoscience Diversity and funded by the National Science Foundation brought together a cohort of undergraduates with and without physical disabilities examined the use of iPads and other mobile technologies to record field observations on projects ranging from stratigraphy to field mapping. These trials occurred in northern Arizona in 2016 and western Ireland in 2017. Throughout each of the projects, several advantages and disadvantages of electronic field notes were observed, ranging from functionality to cost. The benefits included rain resistant notes that were stored and shared in the cloud, the ability to annotate images to immediately add to notes, carrying fewer tools due to available apps, and GPS services to accurately determine exact outcrop locations. Several disadvantages were also noted, such as the cost of the iPad and apps, battery life, sun glare, and the technological competency of users new to utilizing mobile devices. Despite these disadvantages, this novel approach to a classic field task successfully improved student engagement, allowing them to equally participate alongside their peers. Methods:A survey was conducted after the field experiences to better understand the students perspectives on the effectiveness of digital field notebooks, if they believed that they helped promote inclusive field research experiences, limitations of these notebooks, and suggestions to further increase inclusion for all physical ability levels of students in the geosciences. The survey consisted of 17 questions. Familiarity and comfortability questions were rated on a 10 point scale; short answer spaces were provided for responses focused on specific likes/dislikes or advantages/disadvantages; and multiple answers could be chosen for questions asking which apps worked better or worse for specific tasks.Graph 1: Average familiarity with iPad usage prior to and after the GEOPATH project on a scale of 1 to 10. A 13% increase of familiarity prior to GEOPATH 2016 and post GEO-PATH 2017 was found (7.4/10 familiarity prior to and 8.5/10 familiarity post GEOPATH experience). This suggests that students are capable of learning and building comfortability with new technology in the field in relatively short periods of time with moderate assistance.

A multiple case study of inclusive learning communities enabling active participation in geoscience field courses for students with physical disabilities

“…Project 3 was a multi-institutional project, formally entitled Engaging Students in Inclusive Field Experiences via Onsite and Remote Partnerships. This project (Cases 3.1 and 3.2) utilized findings and key outcomes from Projects 1 and 2 to develop methods of inclusive onsite field learning with collaborative teams and technology integration (Haddock et al, 2017;Marshall, 2018;Thatcher et al, 2017). The population comprised of 12 undergraduate geoscience students in year one, with 11 returning in year two.…”

“…northern Arizona in year one (Case 3.1), and western Ireland in year two (Case 3.2). For both field trips, each student was provided with a digital tablet for field data collection and communication with their team mates (see Haddock et al, 2017).…”