Digital Solutions
Teach with a clear learning path
- An active learning path consists of six main parts: Focus on Concepts, Concept Checks, Give It Some Thought, Concepts in Review, Examining the Earth System, and Data Analysis. By breaking up chapters into smaller modules, the text changes the way students learn and retain information. Rather than passively read through long passages of exposition, students can absorb manageable bits of information, assess their knowledge of it, and go back and review the material if needed.
- Brief, end-of-chapter Data Analysis activities send students outside of the book to online science tools and datasets from organizations such as NASA, NOAA, and USGS, empowering students to apply and extend chapter concepts and develop their data analysis and critical-thinking skills. Students can use these data resources to create their own maps in MapMaster 2.0.
Provide an enhanced learning experience
- Content, data, and information ensures Earth Science is current, relevant, and highly readable for beginning students. Many discussions, case studies, examples, and illustrations have been updated or revised.
- Organization in the geology portion of the text ensures better comprehension of the material. The unit on Forces Within now precedes the unit on Sculpting Earth’s Surface. This was done in response to many users and reviewers of previous editions who wanted the theory of plate tectonics presented earlier in the text because of the unifying role it plays in our understanding of planet earth. Of course, each unit is basically independent of the others and can be taught in any order desired by the instructor.
- QR Codes link to over 200 SmartFigures, giving readers immediate access to the five types of dynamic media below to help visualize physical processes and concepts:
- 10 SmartFigure Project Condor Quadcopter Videos. Three geologists, using a quadcopter-mounted GoPro camera, ventured into the field to film 10 key geologic locations and processes. These process-oriented videos can be accessed through QR codes in the text, and are designed to bring the field to the classroom and improve the learning experience within the text.
- 24 SmartFigure Mobile Field Trips take students to iconic locations with geologist–pilot–photographer Michael Collier in the air and on the ground to learn about iconic landscapes in North America and beyond that relate to discussions in the chapter. These extraordinary field trips are accessed by using QR codes throughout the text. New Mobile Field Trips for the 15th edition include Formation of a Water Gap, Ice Sculpts Yosemite, Fire and Ice Land, Dendrochronology, and Desert Geomorphology.
- Over 150 SmartFigure Tutorials present students with a 3- to 4-minute feature (mini lesson), most narrated and annotated by Professor Callan Bentley. Each lesson examines and explains the concepts illustrated by the figure in the text. With over 150 SmartFigure Tutorials inside the text, students have a multitude of ways to enjoy art that teaches.
- 36 SmartFigure Animations created by text illustrator Dennis Tasa animate a process or concept depicted in the textbook’s figures. With QR codes, students are given a view of moving figures rather than static art to depict how geologic processes move throughout time.
- 17 SmartFigure Videos. These short video clips help illustrate such diverse subjects as mineral properties and the structure of ice sheets, and include new media such as quadcopter drone videos of coastal erosion in California. Accessible via QR codes in the text.
Use art that teaches
- An unparalleled visual program. In addition to more than 100 new, high-quality photos and satellite images, dozens of figures are new or have been redrawn by illustrator Dennis Tasa. Maps and diagrams are frequently paired with photographs for greater effectiveness, and figures have additional labels that narrate the process being illustrated and guide students as they examine the figures.