Return to: [Eosc452 home ] Eosc452 Course Syllabus January - March, 2006

• Logistics
• Context (learning, professional and social)
• Learning objectives: Content (knowledge,) skills, attitudes.
• Learning activities (class, lab, outside), and their assessment
• The appendix provides details regarding assumed prior knowledge, learning and professional needs of students, and ground rules for teaching and learning in this course:

 

Logistics

1. Meeting times: Tu, Th,10:00 EOS-main 113, Tu 2:00 - 5:00, EOS-main computer lab.
2. Instructor: Francis Jones, fjones@eos.ubc.ca, 822-2138, EOS-east rm 146. Office hours: see http://www.geop.ubc.ca/~jones/pers-sched.html.
3. Teaching assistant: TBA
4. Materials:
1. The course home page at http://www.eos.ubc.ca/courses/eosc452/ will be used as a source for updates, delivery of papers, and other announcements.
2. Laboratory, assignment, and case history instructions and data will be supplied in class and via the web.

Context

This is one of two applied geophysics courses taken by students specializing in geophysics. There is usually a wide range of student interests, including engineering, exploration, scientific, and others. In these two applied (as opposed to primarily theoretical) courses, the focus will be upon learning why surveys are done, their design, and analysis of data sets produced. Most students will be pursuing careers or graduate work in geophysics, so we will also work towards improving the skills and attitudes expected for professional geoscientists.

One of the challenges (and benefits) of this course is that there is a mixture of 3^rd and 4^th year students. Where ever possible we will work in groups involving both years. Students who have more experience working with geophysical data and concepts will be expected to assist others who may be unclear about fundamental ideas. If you are a 3^rd year this time, you will be the 4^th year folk in next year's course. Learning in these two courses involves a combination of team work, self-directed learning and critical thinking. The instructor should be considered more as a guide than as the "expert" who only supplies information. See the appendix for more details on aspects of context for this course.

Learning Objectives

After completing the two applied geophysics courses, students should be able to apply or use geophysical information with a significant degree of professionalism. Because of the very wide range of potential topics, we emphasize skills rather than content. Instructors are facilitators rather than knowledge sources. With regards to eosc452, specific learning objectives fall into three categories:

1. Improving skills at using fundamental applied geophysical concepts.
1. Physical properties: relating geologic / geotechnical questions to geophysical information. Choosing appropriate surveys given a geoscience problem.
2. Interpretation contexts: mapping, profiling, sounding (1D), 2D and 3D models.
3. Depth of investigation.
4. Forward modelling and inversion.
5. Recognizing what is the “target”, then separating data features caused by the target, and features caused by not-target (associated geology, measurement physics, source effects, etc).
    
2. New geophysical surveys and interpretation techniques that will be encountered are:
1. Electrical properties of geologic materials.
2. Soundings - primarily DC and TEM
3. Profiling with DC resistivity and induced polarization methods, and inversion for 2D models.
4. Frequency and time domain electromagnetics: Terrain conductivity surveying and profiling.
5. Fundamentals of plane-wave methods.
6. Echo sounding with radar: GPR.

 
3. Improving professional skills relevant for practising geoscientists:
1. Enhancing critical thinking and self-directed learning skills are primary learning objectives.
2. Improve the capability to recognize what is known and what is not known, what must be known, and where to find out.
3. Using geophysical information requires practise. We will work with plenty of real data and case histories.
4. Recognizing whether or not geophysical services will be appropriate and cost effective. Costs of services and willingness of various industries to pay: affect of costs on types and quantity of geophysics carried out.
5. Dealing with unexpected results, or results that prove to be correct geophysically, but not useful geologically.
6. Explaining the benefits and limitations of using geophysics in a project to other non-geophysicists.
7. General professional skills:
1. Using the literature,
2. Communication. Your professional work is only as good as your ability to express your findings, decisions, opinions clearly and correctly to those that need to know.
3. Working as a member of a project team. No professional can work successfully in isolation, not even a student.

Learning activities, and their assessment

Each week there are 2hrs of class time, 3hrs of lab time, and 1-5hrs at home (depending upon what is due). Here are details of specific learning activities, including the ways each activity will be assessed.

Lab exercises

Instructions will be provided at least several days prior to beginning work. Students are expected to know what they are supposed to do before arriving at the designated time. Other assignments are not given out because lab exercises are expected to require some work at home. All lab exercises are due at 2:00pm on the Tuesday following the last assigned period for that lab. The schedule contains the list of lab activities.

Lectures

• Our 2hrs of lectures per week (Tues and Thurs) will be used to present new content, to discuss case histories, and to prepare for (or re-visit) some exercises.
• There will be at least 2 quizzes (in liu of a midterm) and a final exam.
• There are marks for class work and readings (see the marking scheme below). Class time will involve discussions, some "debates" or client-contractor role-playing situations, and peer marking (orals). Your mark for class work and readings will suffer if you are not involved in all these activities.
• Readings from notes or handouts will be assigned prior to covering relevant new content. See the reading list on our home page.

Literature search project

• Search, read, and summarize a paper chosen from a list.
• Each paper will involve some aspects of applied geophysics that are not discussed in class. This provides you with an opportunity to explore an area of your own interest.
• Present an oral summary of the paper. Presentations will be given during the last of our 3-hr lab periods. This enables the rest of the class to benefit from your learning.
• Project marks will be a combination of individual and joint marks (as a team). The instructor, the TA and all students will mark these presentations using a standardized form. The marking scheme will be provided with instructions.

Journals

Marking scheme for the course

Final 35% (includes some questions on lab content)
Quizzes 15% (examples of questions on the final, & a few questions on lab content)
Lab work 30%
Journalling and the research project 15%
Class work and participation 5%

Assumed prior knowledge, and expectations:

• You should have a reasonable level of understanding in the following areas:
• Maxwell's equations.
• Physics of electricity and circuits.
• Complex numbers.
• Signals, Fourier analysis, and other methods of analysing time (or spacial) series.
• Some familiarity with geological terminology will be an asset.
   
• Concepts you will become familiar with include the following. Details are less important than a firm understanding of how the concepts affect the usefulness of remotely sensed geophysical information.
• Describing the subsurface in terms of physical properties.
• Measured signals contain information about the distributions of physical properties that affect the energy source being used.
• Processing signals to enhance information contained in measurements.
• Forward modelling for assessing if data will be useful, or to "guestimate" models that could have caused the data.
• Inversion, which is carefully controlled estimation of plausible subsurface physical property models based upon data, prior information, and noise levels.

Student's learning and professional needs:

• Engineers and other professionals need skills in use of literature, oral presentations, team work, and self-directed learning.
   
• There will be many opportunities to practice using geophysical information - modelling, mapping, profiling, time sections, inversion, data processing, etc.
   
• Opportunities will be made for each student to use geophysical information in their own fields of interest.

Aspects of teaching and learning for this course:

• There is a trade-off between individual learning styles and the needs of a geoscience professional. While the existence of a range of preferred ways of learning is acknowledged, there are certain aspects of professional life that require practice. One example is the need for oral presentation skills. Some students prefer to not make presentations in front of an audience. However oral presentations will be expected when working as a professional or graduate student, so we will provide an opportunity to practice this method of technical communication.
   
• Scheduling and due dates: there is a well defined schedule with due dates for assignments. The policy regarding exceptions is as follows:
• A medical note is required if there are medical reasons for not taking a university scheduled exam.
• For each day that an assignment or lab report is late, a penalty of 10% will be assigned.
• In accordance with UBC Policy #65, students who are scheduled to attend classes or write examinations on the holy days of their religion must notify their instructors two weeks in advance of the religious holiday they wish to observe. Instructors will an provide opportunity for students to make up the missed work or examination without penalty. The full policy may be viewed at: <http://www.policy.ubc.ca/policy65.htm>. You may also wish to see the UBC Calendar entry on Religious Holidays at: <http://students.ubc.ca/publications/calendar/index.cfm?part=3&content=52>
• We try to be flexible about due dates, and we will respond to problems encountered by all students. Note however that it is much easier to be flexible BEFORE the fact. Problems that are brought to the attention of the instructor or TA after the event are much more difficult to accommodate. As an example, we often run into a conflict with the iron ring ceremony. It is up to students to inform the instructor of such conflicts well in advance (2 weeks minimum) prior to the problem.
   
• Here are a set of ground rules for classroom and laboratory behaviour:
• Late arrivals are disruptive to all. Please avoid arriving late.
• Handouts not gathered before class starts must be collected at the end of the class.
• Use of electronic phones, pagers, radios, cd-players, etc. in classes or labs is prohibited, unless there is prior approval from the instructor. Laptops may be used in class or labs but permission must be sought for their use in exams.
• See the previous item on due dates and scheduling problems.
• In general we strive for a classroom community based upon respect. The instructor and TAs will endeavour never to be rude, and all questions relevant to the course or it's content will be treated as "good" questions. Students are expected to behave similarly.
   
• There will be regular opportunities to evaluate the progress of the course, and/or individual activities.
• Anonymous feedback will be obtained roughly once a month regarding the amount of work, the relevance of the material, the level of inspiration provided by the instructor, and other aspects of the course or content.
• There will also be a suggestion box for anonymous letters outside the instructor's office.