Teaching Uncertainty: A new framework for communicating unknowns in traditional and virtual field experiences

Abstract

Abstract. Managing uncertainty is fundamental to geoscience practice, yet geoscience education generally does not incorporate explicit instruction on uncertainty. To the extent that students are exposed to scientific uncertainty, it is through in-person field experiences. Virtual field experiences – which rely on pictures, maps, and previously collected measurements – should therefore explicitly address uncertainty or risk losing this critical aspect of students' experience. In this paper we present a framework for teaching students to assess and communicate their uncertainty, which is grounded in best expert practices for conveying uncertainty and familiar terms-of-art in geology. The starting point of our framework is the recognition of uncertainty in both geologic data and models, the latter of which we use as an encompassing term to refer to potential geological processes and structures inferred on the basis of incomplete information. We present a concrete application of the framework to geological mapping and discuss how it could enhance student learning in both traditional in-person and virtual experiences. Our framework is extensible in that it can be applied to a variety of geologic features beyond those where uncertainty is traditionally assessed, and can also be applied to geological subdisciplines.