New Orleans students land in innovative geoscience course

Students at the University of New Orleans (UNO) recently took part in a pioneering online geoscience course built on real-world data and online interdisciplinary instruction.

“Coastal Processes, Hazards and Society” was developed with a National Science Foundation grant. Three UNO educators helped build the course, which was overseen by Penn State University's Tim Bralower. The course was offered for the first time last fall.

“One of the huge challenges for writing and teaching this course is how to deliver online student-centered, active learning," Dinah Maygarden, UNO director of Coastal Education, said. “These materials are very different. They challenge the instructors and the students to use real-world data to explore different topics.”

Maygarden helped develop the class with UNO associate professors Ioannis Georgiou and Mark Kulp.

“Coastal science presents a perfect opportunity to address human interaction as we in south Louisiana are experiencing personally the consequences of sea level rise and coastal land loss,” Maygarden said. “It is a global issue, but there is a personal connection to it that resonated with UNO students across multiple disciplines.”

Students in the course covered both typical geological subjects, like sea level change, and human factors, like coastal engineering. But the course also challenged the class to utilize real-world data, such as shoreline erosion rates, to come up with solutions to complex issues. For example, the students might be asked how a community can best plan for an emergency involving the flooding of low-lying areas with dense populations.