Syllabus
ESCI 4701/8701: Geomorphology
Description
ESCI 4701/8701: Geomorphology
Credit Hours: 4
Official description: Landscapes and the processes that shape them, encompassing fluvial, hillslope, glacial, aeolian, and coastal environments. Mechanics of solids and fluids at Earth’s surface. Erosion, deposition, and sediment transport.
Prerequisite(s): MATH 1271 (Calculus I) or equivalent; PHYS 1301 (Physics I: Classical Mechanics) or equivalent. Instructor consent is required to take this course without the prerequisite courses or their equivalents, and it is recommended to take these classes at least concurrently (as co-requisites) with geomorphology. No help will be given on material covered in prerequisite courses.
Instructor
Andrew Wickert
awickert@umn.edu
Office Hours: Thursday 10-11 am
TA
Shanti Penprase
penpr001@umn.edu
Office Hours: Tuesday 10-11 am, Wednesday 12:30-1:30 pm
Office Hours are held on Gather, see the course announcements on Canvas or email Shanti for the link.
Group meetings
You will be assigned small groups to discuss problems and course work. You will meet and work with your groups in the Gather “classroom”.
See the Canvas announcement for group assignments. Email Shanti if you have questions.
Texts and Readings
No official textbook was listed this year, but the following book will be very helpful to your understanding of the material and your ability to work through the problem sets. However, no problems will be taken directly from the book, and there are no exams.
- Geomorphology: The Mechanics and Chemistry of Landscapes, 1st Edition Author(s): Robert S. Anderson and Suzanne P. Anderson; ISBN-13: 978-1139788700
- Supplementary readings that will be freely available or provided to the students, as noted in the calendar.
Readings in the textbook will supplement your learning in class, but there will not be a 1:1 overlap between readings and lectures. Sometimes they will be close to one another, and sometimes they will diverge but be complementary.
Grade Distribution
| Problem sets, lab reports, and lesson-response exercises | 80% |
| Final project | 20% |
Note that this grade distribution may change slightly if the distribution of primary coursework vs. final project effort changes as we all learn together how to manage online learning. All changes will be to reflect proportional effort in the class.
All grades will appear and be updated on Canavs.
Assignments
All problem sets and labs will be due one week from the date on which they are assigned. You may expect 1–2 assignments per week. For the purposes of online learning, this means that they are due on the Friday following the week in which they are assigned. Assignments are noted within the lessons as deliverable items. If this date falls on a weekend (e.g., last day of a field trip… which we won’t have :( ), then they are due the first weekday after one week passes. If that Friday is a holiday, then they are due the first subsequent business day.
We aim to return all assignments one week after their due date. All work handed in between the due date and the date at which we return graded assignments will be worth half credit. After we return graded assignments, we will no longer accept late work.
Of course, reasonable exceptions to these penalties and deadlines will be accepted (e.g., family or medical emergency), with arrangements for late work designed to accommodate these real-life events without causing undue stress (see below). Late or missed work due to reasons that the students knew about beforehand (i.e.: scheduled events) will be accepted only if arrangements are made before the assignment is due; the definition of “beforehand” can be stretched for some circumstances (found out you broke your leg shortly before class) and not in others (scheduled absence due to a normal event, e.g., athletics, ROTC, …). This requirement is to ensure that the instructors know all of your schedules as early as possible in the semester and are able to maintain the pace of the course while making reasonable accommodations.
If there is a reasonable excuse that causes a student be less than one week late, such that they do not see the answers, we will award full credit. If a reasonable excuse causes the work to need to be handed in greater than or equal to one week late, we will handle the situation on a case-by-case basis.
All completed assignments should be submitted via Canvas.
Final Projects
For this year’s final project, students will turn a undeveloped or nonexistent page on Wikipedia into a full-fledged and well-referenced article. This process will include multiple steps over the course of the semester, including:
- Researching and proposing topics to the instructors
- Learning about proper style and referencing; this applies to scientific and professional writing as well.
- Selecting your topic and putting together an initial draft
- Editing and improving the Wikipedia article
- “Finalizing” your contribution following instructor feedback
The Wikipedia Education Program has significant information for students that can help you to set up an account and learn how to manage your project.
- Students enrolled in ESCI 4701 will work in pairs.
- Students enrolled in ESCI 8701 will work in alone.
Expectations: 4701 vs 8701
Students enrolling in ESCI 4701 will be expected to demonstrate their knowledge base and ability to synthesize information to understand geomorphology. Towards this end, students are expected to complete all assignments, participate actively in course instructional material and activities the labs and field trips, and to develop quality final projects. Students enrolling in ESCI 8701 (a graduate-level course number) will be expected to include more detailed interpretations and syntheses in their assignments, where possible, field-trip reports and may have additional questions to answer on assignments or problem sets that delve more deeply into the topic(s) at hand.
Course format and content
As noted on these pages, the course will be arranged as a set of modules that can be structured together to build your network of knowledge in Earth-surface processes. There are particular destinations to which you are expected to arrive in order to complete assignments, and due to the shift to online learning, many of these modules will be created over the course of the, well, course. Please feel free to offer feedback, and we will respond to it as best we can.
The content of the course crosses many media; for an example, see the introductory lecture, including:
Podcasts
These are designed to introduce you to material when visuals are not required, freeing your hands / mobility to multitask, if you so choose.
Videos
These YouTube videos are screen-captured lectures in which I/we go through images, equations, and more. I aim for them to be 5-15 minutes each, breaking down topics into their constituent components.
Virtual Reality (VR) tours
We will be running VR tours using Google Expeditions. Most are also possible to view on a computer; please be in touch right away if you have problems viewing these or do not have a smartphone, and we will work to accommodate you. These VR tours can be more fun with a smartphone + viewer, such as Google Cardboard. It’s not required, and you’ll have to buy it on your own… but it’s the closest way that I can find to help you experience the field without actually going there!
Images
We may include a few images on a page that are relevant to the topic.
Interactive web activities
We may also post links to resources that can help you explore our world through modern scientific data.
Activities / reflections
There may be ungraded pre- and post-lesson activities and reflections.
Problem sets / labs / assignments
Deliverable (i.e., graded) lessons may be associated with specific problem sets and/or laboratory activities. The former will help you to understand some core concepts and equations. The latter are designed to help you visualize how landscapes evolve and to gain practice with topographic analyses and geomorphic modeling.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.