Changing Trends and Rethinking Geoscience Education in the Context of a Global Crisis

Abstract

It is somewhat ironic that I am sitting down to compose this Geoscience Canada article one day after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 US election on the Biden-Harris ticket, and I won’t deny that the result of a more forwardlooking agenda in regards to safeguarding our planet has inspired me! Under normal circumstances this article would follow from my GAC Presidential address delivered at the annual GAC-MAC meeting in mid-May, but, needless to say, this year has been anything but normal. As it turns out, the annual CSPG-led Geoconvention, in which we, along with MAC, were partnered together with other professional geoscience societies, was significantly delayed and ultimately held in an online format in midto late-September. All normal GAC and MAC meeting-related functions, including luncheons, awards, ceremonies and keynote talks, were also postponed with the idea that we could have a double cohort in a future face-to-face (F2F) setting in London, Ontario (Western University), in May 2021. The circumstances at GAC have been a microcosm of what is happening across society as a whole, with continuous adjustments, delays in plans and new systems put into operation as the situation continually changes and evolves. In short, the global pandemic, felt acutely in almost every region of the world, is forcing us to rethink the ways we do things. In spite of extreme tragedy, including thousands of lives lost, the results have been positive on several fronts. For example, in this time of crisis, many in mainstream society have recognized the need to address several fundamental and persistent problems facing humanity including, but not limited to, the current climate crisis, issues with poverty and the increasing divide between rich and poor, as well as underlying issues of inequity and systemic racism, awareness of which has been enhanced by events in the USA and the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. As global citizens, we all have a role to play in these issues, but as geoscientists we also need to realize our potential to assist in the area of the global climate crisis, an issue I will address toward the end of this article. One of the areas that have been impacted most by the COVID-19 situation is education, both at the K–12 and college/university levels. At the time of lockdown, all teachers and university professors and instructors had to quickly (within the space of 2–3 weeks) navigate the transition to online teaching, with little or no preparation time. Course platforms were created, learning materials were amassed and distributed to students at short notice (in clever ways, maintaining distance), instructors got up to speed with online platforms such as Zoom and MS Teams. It was a crazy time during which our own Faculty Association urged its members to refer to these as ‘emergency teaching measures’, recognizing that they by no means approached the requirements of traditional ‘distance education’ delivery. In addition, while there was breathing room for additional preparation in the summer, serious concerns continue around adequate resources and time to continue to deliver effective online programs. Speaking to our own discipline, the highly applied nature of geology, across both solid Earth and environmental fields, obviously presents significant challenges for teaching in an online format. There is also a genuine concern, among us all, for the outright loss of experiential (F2F) learning in practical sessions and laboratories. This being said, it has been encouraging to see the enormous spirit of collaboration among geoscience departments, as well as individual like-minded geoscience educators, across the country since the emergency began in mid-March. This underscores the important role of the Council of Chairs of Canadian Earth Science Departments (CCCESD), comprising geoscience heads from across the country, which has been in regular communication on its email network since the pandemic began. Although I am no longer formally a head, as President and now Past-President of GAC, I have remained on this network, recognizing the important linkages it provides. An enormous range of topics has been discussed by this group, from delivery methods and related resources for specific sub-disciplines, to conferring on numbers of classes and protocols for F2F learning. In April and May, and continuing into the summer, there was also a significant discussion and sharing of ideas on plans for geological field schools in various departments. My sense is that very few departments were able to offer traditional F2F field schools and that many had to improvise, opting for some combination of digital, map-based assignments, coupled with virtual field trips/excursions, or some hybrid of these activiVolume 47 2020 167