• Project Goals
• Requirements
  • Due Date
• Tips
• Note on Parks and Monuments
• Grading Rubric

Project Goals

The first goal of the term project is to choose an outdoor site and propose your hypotheses about what you will find there geologically. You must choose a site with accessible exposures of geology that you can visit in person -- a site which is not a park with displays or a visitor center featuring geological information.

It is OK if you have scouted out or visited the site previously, and it is OK if you have not yet visited it, as long as you can visit it one or several times to complete the field research for your term project, and it has accessible geological exposures. Some students may have accessible geological exposures where they live or within walking range, others may have to drive to find a site with sufficiently exposed geology.

To complete the first goal of choosing a site and writing down your hypotheses about what exactly you will find there geologically, you will research its geology using written and published sources (including online). Based on what you have read, write a proposal as to what (briefly) the site's geologic history is and what rocks, sediment layers, landforms, and geological structures you predict that you will find there when you go there in reality.

By completing this first goal, you will be completing your Term Project Plan, which is required by the fifth or sixth week of the quarter (or fourth/fifth week if you are taking an eight-week summer quarter class).

The second goal is to do the field work and field-based research to produce the term project itself. To do this, you must visit the site -- in person, up close, and hands on -- and examine it to see which of your hypothetical predictions you can confirm and document, and bring your evidence back in the form of digital photographs and notes, and perhaps some labeled rock samples for you to keep. Then you will write up your term project in which you explain what you found there in the field, and what your field evidence supports in terms of the site's geology and geologic history. The heart of the term project, besides the written narrative, will be in the form of pictures with detailed captions, a location map, and a labeled stratigraphic column, along with a full bibliography of your information sources.

Requirements

1. Your term project must be based on your own photographs, taken during the same academic term that the class takes place.
   
2. Information you find in print or on the Web is important in developing your hypothetical predictions of what you will find at your site. However, as explained in the next point, more important is what you find in the field yourself.
   
3. What is most important will be your photographs and your documentation of what you actually found at your field site.
   
   If you did not find evidence there of something you read regarding the geological history of that area, you should make it clear that you did not confirm that prediction.
   
   Instead of reading online or in books for "answers," you should spend most of your time featuring and explaining in detail those geological things that you did find evidence of at your field site.
   
   In particular, you should specifically and carefully:
   • Identify all the rock types you encounter and photograph.
   • Photograph and do your best to name the minerals and other details within the rocks, which might include:
     • vesicles in volcanic rocks
     • sedimentary structures in sedimentary rocks
     • grain sizes and shapes and minerals in clastic sedimentary rocks
     • fossils in sedimentary rocks (if you happen to find any, which is not common)
   • Photograph and identify any geological structures, such as:
     • faults
     • folds
     • tilted layers that were originally horizontal
   • Observe and document evidence of relative age of the rocks and layers of sediment, based on the principles of relative age relationships in geology that you have learned in this class.
     
4. Your term project is likely to succeed to the extent that you are able to identify and explain what is in your photographs in terms of geology.
• On the other hand, as long as you attempt to identify the rocks, minerals, geologic structures, and relative geologic age sequence of your field site, you may earn lots of credit, even if, for example, some of your rocks and minerals are misidentified. You might not get a perfect score, but if you try your best to identify and describe the actual geology you saw and documented in your photographs and notes and rock collecting, some mistakes along the way will not detract all that much from your score.
  
5. The most successful term projects (those that might earn an A score) will include discussion and evidence of the relative age relationships among the rocks and layers of sediment. This information should also be represented in the stratigraphic column that is required as part of your term project.
   
   
6. The photographs should include close-ups of the rocks and the things they contain, such as minerals, as well as medium-distance shots of outcrops, and broader-view photographs of the landscapes at your field site.
   
7. You must logically and explicitly connect the things you show in your photographs to a coherent geological description, and a geological history of your field site. This is the text of your term project, which goes beyond the photo captions to put the whole story together.
• This text, this geological description and history, can be the same as your term project summary, which is to be posted online on Monday of the last week of the quarter. Or, you can choose to make your geological description and history part of your term project longer and more detailed than your term project summary.
  
• The best approach for your text is to describe where your site is, what you predicted you would find there, when and how you explored it, and what you found there geologically, citing the photos by number as you describe the geology of your field site. You should compare what you actually found to what you predicted you would find. This description is to be followed by your written-out geological history of your field site, including the age sequence.
  
• In your term project, you are expected use and apply such principles of relative geological age determination as the principle of original horizontality, the principle of superposition, the principle of cross-cutting relations, the principle of faunal succession, or the principle of inclusions.
  
8. Your photo captions are very important. They must provide the details, such as the types of rock being shown, the minerals in the rocks, and the structures in or between the rocks.
   
9. To be eligible for full credit, each student must create his or her own, unique term project, with his or her own writing and photographs.
   
10. Each term project must have a location map. If you use a map from the Web or copied from a book, as with anything else you get from other information sources, you must cite the source.
• Be sure you mark and label your field site clearly on the location map.
• The location map must be detailed enough for the reader to go exactly to your field site. It should be detailed enough to show the specific secondary roads in the area.
  
11. Each term project must have a stratigraphic column, showing the sequence of rocks (and any layers of unconsolidated sediments, which may be on top of or between some of the rock formations).
    
12. All sources of information and any outside sources of images (such as maps) must be cited. Plagiarism can result in not only a zero, but in flunking the class.

Your work on this project should result in a final product that is somewhat similar to the Virtual Field Sites in the course Web pages, only with more close-up photographs of your rocks and geological layers, AND with a more detailed description and written-out geological history, AND with a discussion of what you predicted you would find there compared with you actually did find there. You may not use any of the field sites that are already in the Virtual Field Sites for your term project, although you can use another location nearby. For example, you can use Echo Cove, which is a tributary valley to the Frenchman Coulee Virtual Field Site, but you cannot use Frenchman Coulee itself, because it is already featured in a Virtual Field Site.

You must submit your term project in hard copy, by US mail. If you want to be sure it is received on time, you can, in addition to the hard copy, send in your term project as an attached, single Microsoft Word or PowerPoint document, or as a PDF document, or as a URL to a Web page you created.

Your written summary, which is not the whole term project but just a written summary, is to be submitted to the Term Project Plans and Written Summaries section of the Discussion Board in the online classroom.

Here is a more detailed listing of how you will implement the term project:

0. Turn in your Term Project Plan by the end of Week 5. (Turn it in by the end of Week 4 if this is an 8-week summer quarter). Turn it into the Term Project Plans discussion forum. (Or a week later if necessary, but post your initial thoughts toward a term project plan during the first due week.)
1. Pictures are the key to the term project. Use more than five photographs. You may use up to ten or more pictures, which is fine. The pictures can be either photographs that you take yourself during the project, or drawings that you make yourself. You may not use postcards, pictures from earlier vacations, or pictures a friend gave you. It must be either photos you took or drawings you made, yourself, this quarter, at the field site. If you choose the drawing option, you do not have to be an artist, but take time to make the drawings as carefully as you can with as much detail as possible.
2. Provide rock identification for the types rock you find and photograph in your field site (e.g., granite, basalt, sandstone, gneiss, whatever the main rock types are), and include the rock names in your picture captions. Include close-up photographs that allow others to verify the rock types. Also include close-ups with enough detail to see any minerals, clasts, holes, sedimentary structures, or other features in the rocks.
3. Put together a labeled stratigraphy showing the layers of rocks in your field area - oldest at the bottom, youngest at the top (see examples in the Virtual Field Sites).
4. All term projects require a map that makes it clear where the field site is located and how to get there.
5. All term projects also are required to have a geological description, and a geological history of your field site. This is the text of your term project. It explains the geology and geological history, backed up by evidence and examples in the photographs.
6. Combine items 1-5 (pictures with captions, rock ID, map, stratigraphy, and text) together.
   • It must be a bound document, with a staple or clasp or binder, not with a paper clip. Or post it on a Web site or make a PowerPoint-type slide show out of it to submit.
   • Be sure the title and your name are on the front, without having to open it to read that key information.
7. If you use information from any other sources that tells you about the geology or geologic history of your field area, include a detailed list of references (bibliography) at the end of the text.
8. Finally, write a written summary (500-2,500 words, not including bibliography) that briefly states the location of the field area, what you predicted you would find there, when and how you made your field study, and fully describes the geology of the field site, and most importantly describes the geologic you found there and the geologic history of the field site, consistent with the pictures and the stratigraphy. Post your summary in the main discussion area of the online classroom, by Monday of the last online Week of the quarter.
   DO NOT POST YOUR TERM PROJECT WRITTEN SUMMARY AS AN ATTACHMENT. Put it in the body of the ness age you post in the Term Project Written Summary forum in the online classroom.

Due Date

Remember that there are two parts to your completed term project, the written summary and the actual term project itself. The term project itself contains the pictures with captions, the location map, and the stratigraphy.

The written summary must be posted in the Term Project Written Summaries online forum no later than Monday of the last week of this quarter. (DO NOT POST YOUR TERM PROJECT SUMMARY AS AN ATTACHMENT. Put it in the body of the email you send to the online classroom.)

And the term project itself, the pictures with captions (and location map and stratigraphy and written report), is due in the instructor's mailbox no later than Wednesday of the last week of the quarter -- in other words, it must be received by the last day of the quarter. If it does not arrive by that Wednesday, it does not matter what the reason is, you will not receive credit for it. Do not let that happen to your valuable term project!

(See notes below about the option of sending in your term project digitally. This is an option, and if it succeeds you do not have to send in a hard copy. However, digital submission of your term project may not work well unless you are experienced with authoring, posting, and sending digital documents or slide shows.)

Mail the hard copy of your term project to:

Checklist of a complete term project:

• Term project plan posted on time in the Term Project Plans forum online, in which you briefly describe the probable geological history of your proposed field site, and predict the types of rocks, geological structures, unconsolidated sedimentary layers (such as glacial till or sand and gravel from megaflood sand bar deposits), and geological landforms you will find there, based on your reading.
• 6-20 pictures you took of your field site, including some close-ups of rocks that you identified, and geological things within, in-between, or on top of the rocks, along with one or more broader landform views.
• Detailed captions explaining what is in each picture.
• Location map showing where your field site is exactly.
• Stratigraphy (stratigraphic column diagram).
• Written text, which describes the location of your field site and when and how you studied it, what you predicted you would find there, and fully describes the geology and in detail narrates the geologic history of your field site, based on the photos you took. The geologic history (or the photo captions, or both) should include reference to and use of principles of relative geologic age determination, such as original horizontality, superposition, or cross-cutting relationships.
• References (at the end of the text portion)
• Written summary posted online by Monday of the last week of the quarter in the Term Project Summaries forum. This can be the same as the text part of your term project, or somewhat shorter.
• Term project submitted so that it is received by Wednesday, the last day of the last week of the quarter. It does not matter when your term project is sent. It must have arrived at the instructor's mailbox by the last day of the quarter as scheduled for this class.
• Submitted as a single document. On paper, that's a bound document with the title and your name on the outside cover. In digital form, that's also a single document, i.e. a single email attachment.
  • Not acceptable: Separate photographs that are not embedded in pages in a bound document with captions on the same pages as the photographs
  • Multiple email attachments are also not acceptable as a way to submit your term project.
    If you do not have experience creating and emailing (or posting online) a Word document or slide show containing all your term project -- photographs, captions, stratigraphy, location map, references -- you would probably do better to snail-mail a bound hard-copy of your term project.
  • Note that attempts to turn in term project as digital attachments often fail, due to problems in knowing how to handle the technology, the software not being available on the receiving end, students' internet services not processing large documents, or files being corrupted or contaminated with viruses. Term project mailed as hard copy always come through. Therefore, by far the best way to submit your term project is as a hard copy document that you mail early enough for it to arrive on time, for example by US Post Office second-day mail, sent at least two full days in advance.

Tips

• Pick an interesting field site and take many photographs along with lots of notes and sketches in your notebook.
• Take plenty of field notes to record your observations while you are visiting the site.
• Record in your notes what rock types you observe in your field area. Collect some pieces of the main rock types and label them to keep track of which part of your field site they came from.
• Do not pay much attention to loose rocks on the surface. Loose rocks are not necessarily the same thing as the bedrock (solid rock) in the ground underneath. Remember that wherever there was once a glacier there is now likely to be a mixture of rocks that was carried by the ice. This mixture of rocks is usually made up of rocks from some distant area that the glacier flowed across and those rocks are not relevant to the geologic history of your site, except as evidence that a glacier was once there. Do not bother to identify the glacially deposited rocks, except to note the presence of glacial till or glacial erratics.
• Take notes on any geologic structures at the site. Examples include layers that are tilted or folded and dikes or veins cutting through outcrops. Make rough sketches of geologic structures in your notes to aid your memory and to help you focus on what you are seeing.

Important Note: Parks and Monuments with Geology Displays are Not Allowed, and certain other sites are Not a Good Choice

Virtual Field Sites that are already in the Pacific Northwest Geology Web site are not eligible as sites for your term project.

Almost ALL PARKS ARE ELIGIBLE, ARE OK for the term project. This includes hundreds of state, county, and city parks, natural areas, and wildlife areas in the Pacific Northwest. Those are all fine. You see one you like, with good geologic exposures, go for it, even if it's a park. Only the ones listed below are not eligible.

The parks and national monuments listed below as not eligible are parks and monuments that feature geological information in plaques, visitor centers, and published guides.

In Washington State, there are only three state parks that are not eligible as term project field sites:

1. Gingko Petrified Forest State Park (near Vantage)
2. Sun Lakes State Park (which includes Dry Falls)
3. Palouse Falls State Park

All national parks and national monuments are ineligible (not eligible, off limits) as term project field sites. In the Pacific Northwest, these are:

Olympic National Park, Mount Rainier National Park, Mount Saint Helens National Volcanic Monument, North Cascades National Park, Crater Lake National Park, Craters of the Moon National Monument, Yellowstone National Park, and Glacier National Park.

In addition, the following sites, while eligible to be tackled as term project field sites, have almost always produced poor results as term project field sites: Saddle Rock near Wenatchee, Peshastin Pinnacles in the Wenatchee Valley, Burlingame Canyon near Walla Walla, and Twin Sisters near the Columbia River in the vicinity of Wallula Gap (off of Highway 12 between Tri-Cities and Walla Walla). If you take on one of these sites, do not expect to get an A unless you can do a better job than all the previous students who have tried these sites and fallen short of expectations. The main way that previous attempts have fallen short is that students have not looked closely and have not taken close-up pictures of the rocks, rock layers, and geologic structures in the field site, nor have they identified all the rock types, detailed rock contents, sedimentary structures, and layer sequences in the pictures, nor have they looked at the broader landscape to spot evidence of mega-flooding, nor have they looked for evidence of orogenic uplift, tilting, or folding.

Evaluation Rubric for PNW Geology Term Project - Use this as a checklist to make sure you have completed the project properly
Criterion	Points	Standards
Plan	5	Turned in on time in the online Discussion Board. Answers all assigned planning questions. Made specific predictions as to what would be found geologically at the field site.
Written Summary	20	Turned in on time in the online Discussion Board (in the Term Project Plans and Written Summaries folder). Gives name of student and title of project at beginning of message. Summarizes the geology of the field area as seen by the student. Compares what was found to what was predicted. Interprets the geologic history of the field area on the basis of the geology that the student observed.
Term Project with Captioned Photographs	75	Hard copy (or else see next note) received by the instructor by the last day of the online quarter. (Alternatively, you are allowed to submit the term project as a working, single-document, digital version posted online or attached to email. This is optional, and sometimes students cannot make attachments work as a single document. Nonetheless, the term project may be posted as a Microsoft Word attachment in the online Discussion Board - Term Project Plans and Written Summaries folder. Or it can be posted as a Web page or online slide show created by the student, with the URL to the Web page or online slide show provided in the online Discussion Board.) Name of student and title of project, including field site name, on outside front cover. Adequate number of photographs to show landscape views, rock close-ups, and layering or cross-cutting of rocks (and faults or folds, if present). Photographs captioned with sufficient detail to explain the geology of the landscape and the rock types and geologic structures portrayed in the photographs. Location map. Written report portion of term should at least match the criteria of the term project written summary, and may go into more detail. Stratigraphy (stratigraphic column).
The Following Cause Point Deductions		Summary posted later than due date. Loses many points. One term project turned in with two student names on it. Each student receives half of the points that the assignment earns. (Or two separate but virtually identical projects turned in, which were clearly done together and not written up individually.) Lots of information taken from the literature but little reference to what is actually portrayed in the pictures. This is a common mistake. This project is based on what you see in the field and can show in pictures, not what you read about. No title. No location map (or written field site access instructions - must have one or the other). No stratigraphic diagram. Project field site is a public park or monument that is on the ineligible list (above). This is not allowed and causes MAJOR point loss. Poor writing, such as not capitalizing the first letters of proper names, lack of coherent paragraphs, and numerous misspellings. Lack of detail in picture captions, such as not naming the rock types that are portrayed. Not neatly packaged together as a single document but just stuck as separate pieces in an envelope. (Or, similarly, not sent in as a single attachment but, instead, emailed in as multiple attachments.)

 

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