Google Earth Geoscience Video Library (GEGVL): Organizing Geoscience Videos in a Google Earth Environment to Support Place-Based Geoscience Education

Place-based education (PBE) and active learning are effective strategies for geoscience education. However, traditional PBE via field trips requires significant resources, time, physical abilities, and expertise of teachers. We provide an alternative PBE experience by showing how different kinds of geoscience videos can be spatially organized into one digital interactive virtual environment. Here, we present the Google Earth Geoscience Video Library (GEGVL) which uses Google Earth and location specific videos about Earth events to create a virtual PBE experience. Using Google Earth, GEGVL organizes place-based videos by locations and links pertinent non-place-based videos and allows users to roam the globe in search of geoscientific videos that are pertinent to them or their students. Currently GEGVL contains 150 videos organized into ten different geoscience disciplines: Plate Tectonics, Minerals, Structural Geology, Metamorphism, Magmatism, Hydrology, Environmental Science, Sedimentology, Paleontology, and Paleomagnetism. Despite stability challenges with Google Earth integration, results of user surveys among lower division undergraduates show that the design logic of GEGVL is promising virtual PBE organizer for interesting students in and helping them learn about Earth sciences.