The Importance of Spatial Skills for Workforce Relevant Geologic Interpretations

Abstract

Within academia and industry, spatial skills are essential for success as a student or expert in the geosciences. Little work has assessed the relationship between spatial skill and upper level undergraduate, graduate, or expert level geologic interpretations. This presentation will discuss results of a pre-post study that assess spatial skill and sequence stratigraphic interpretation. Additionally, the presentation will present how spatial skills may impact conceptual errors on interpretation tasks. This study had students complete a geologic task that contained a sequence stratigraphic diagram and a Wheeler diagram. The Sequence stratigraphic diagram is a depth vs. distance diagram of subsurface sediment. The Wheeler diagram and a spatiotemporal diagram representing time vs. distance and corresponds to the layers in the sequence stratigraphic diagram. The results show that mental folding and unfolding significantly predicted student interpretation scores for the complete task and each diagram. Item level analysis of students’ answers on the geologic task revealed a set of unique geologic conceptual errors, some of which are integral to students’ spatial understanding of the diagrams. One specific error will be featured in this presentation, students’ assumption that the lateral contact between rock units represents gaps in the rock record. This is a unique issue as this is geologically implausible, and that the representation of these contacts mimics introductory level representations of gaps in the rock record and students either are over-relying on the spatial skill of pattern matching or have major errors in their conceptual understanding. An essential aspect of this study is that it starts to explore student needs for interpreting spatiotemporal diagrams. Additionally, it is the first study within the geosciences to assess mental folding and unfolding, a skill used across geosciences and other STEM disciplines.