 It's my pleasure this morning to update you on Geolab on behalf of my colleagues here to my right. I suppose Geolab is fair to say is a bit more focused in its aims and ambitions and I'll start off by I suppose just outlining what they are. In the first instance to deliver teaching and learning resources for geoscience programs particularly in the areas of optical macroscopy and petrology that's the core of what we're trying to do here and to do that in a technology enhanced learning environment so I hopefully generate a step change in how we teach petrology and macroscopy to our geoscience students. In addition and that third point which is key access high quality digital rock thin sections and the first instance I suppose build up a repository of high quality digital images of quality thin sections and then from that allow us to generate teaching and learning resources for practitioners in the main geoscience all the geoscience units here in Ireland. So work done to date I can quickly run through this this is following on pretty much from the structure of our work package. Work packages one, two and three were very much focused on acquiring the material quality thin section material. We reached out to all our colleagues in the geoscience departments here in Ireland and they provided that material very very smartly I have to say and we were able to then digitize that. We have 67 image samples which is impressive just from the Irish material okay and a number of those a significant number well not a significant number but I think it's about 30 of those came from the TCD collection so let me just flag that TCD already had this digital repository in place they have amalgamated their collection with ours which is fantastic. We've updated teaching and ongoing there's ongoing updating of teaching resources in our geolab website and the lads will talk a little bit more about that later on and I suppose finally we've implemented and this is the what we're calling in broad terms the implementation phase and that pretty much caked off from January of this year we've taken that virtual microscope as a resource and integrated it into a number of our modules. Now I think it's fair to say it when you look at the number of modules that this is now in very real terms embedded in the teaching protocol it's quite impressive bear in mind that pre geolab TCD were the only institution who were using the virtual microscope and I think we if I'm right about two modules I think that we're involved so we've gone from two to this impressive list here you'll notice they range from first year modules for instance UCD have a first year module they're right through two fourth year final year modules so that's to me a very impressive and very tangible evidence of the level of engagement and it touches on sustainability as well that we're dealing with so we're going to look through a couple of case studies and Emma's going to kick us off with that just to give you a flavor of the type of thing that we're doing with this okay yes so in the next few slides I'm going to run through a few examples of the way that the various geolab institutes are using the virtual microscope and these these exercises are being identified and shared between the institutes at the moment to make a better working tool so the one of the key advantages of the virtual microscope is that we can view a sample in both plain and cross polarized light as you see here which is exactly what you would do with a physical microscope so here a sample of a metamorphic rock from the Trinity collection is used at Cork where students are asked to describe the fabric of the rock and you can identify this in the cross polarized image at the bottom by the alignment of these brightly colored minerals the virtual microscope also allows you to rotate pre selected areas of the sample again as you would do with a real physical microscope and this is used in this example from ucd where the extensional angle of plagioclase is dependent on its chemical composition but to use this to calculate chemical composition you need to have a crystal the right orientation so by using the virtual microscope we can direct students to a specific area of the sample that we've pre selected in order to make those measurements and this makes it easier to identify student errors and provide useful feedback okay another use of the virtual microscope is that we you can use it to make measurements of lengths and angles on thin sections this is an example of a crinoidal limestone this is actually from the uk collection so we have access to samples beyond the iris geolab selection and here students are asked to to make descriptions of the mineralogy and class size and various features of the thin section but also to measure the fossils and then suggest a developmental sorry a depositional environment one of the key values of the virtual microscope is this ability to direct students to a specific area of the sample and this is something we can't do so well in the lab with a physical microscope where students each each have their own thin section um this is an example from gallway where students are directed to this olivine crystal and asked to describe its various features but also to to look at the alteration of the mineral at the edge this where this green mineral is replacing at the edge and along fractures and exercises like this are very useful because students get quite bogged down in alteration features and minor features in rocks and by using exercises like this we can explain the relevance or otherwise of the alteration um the virtual microscope can be integrated with our our teaching and learning environments at trinity this is blackboard this is a mantle peridotite rock that i use in my teaching this is a very rare sample we don't have enough thin sections to give one to each of our students so the virtual microscope allows us to use this sample in teaching where otherwise we wouldn't be able to um in this example students are directed to this brown mineral which is spinel and it's reacting to this white mineral but clear mineral around the edge which is plagioclase and then through blackboard they answer some multiple choice and short answer questions to discuss the the position of this the formation of this rock in the mantle um and so by integrating this thermodynamic and the visual patrology we get students to think more about the link between patrology and thermodynamics of the rocks so that example was a rare thin section in this example we use a sample where the students have already described in the lab so they've seen this in the lab and then in a post lab exercise they're given chemical data for two mixing n-member magma as a basalt and an an adesite and these mix to form a hybrid magma and so they perform some calculations answer some questions on blackboard and relate these to these disequilibrium textures that we see in the rock and exercises like this encourage students to investigate and interpret the rocks more than simply describe them um so we find the virtual microscope works very well when it's integrated with lab exercises this is a feedback and assessment table from gallway and the first nine exercises are lab based and the last five are based on the virtual microscope and you can see that the virtual microscope is very good for tackling specific features cleavage in color but you can also use it to do overall descriptions of the rock ensure exactly the same things that we can use that the physical microscope for and this is key because polarizing microscopes are expensive and they're used by a lot of students so lab time is at a premium and so here we see that at ucd also at trinity in fact we use the virtual microscope to introduce students to um the petrological microscope to prepare for practicals also to revisit practicals after they've received their grades and to revise for exams and this allows us to use the physical lab time in the most efficient manner possible and we'd very much like to to begin to further integrate the virtual microscope with field hand specimen geochemical data to provide a wider context for the sorts of parameters that control the mineralogy and petrology of um rocks okay so the feedback has been very good uh instructors like the virtual microscope because it allows the students to prepare ahead of time and that allows us to use our time more effectively at trinity we've been this is now our fourth year of using the virtual microscope and we've seen a definite improvement in our continuous assessment and our examination results and we also find that the students are more engaged um the students like the virtual microscope because they have unlimited access to the samples they can revisit the samples after they've received their their grades and they also very much like that they can use it at home on the sofa um which is where most of our use seems to be um we found that the virtual microscope encourages discussion peer to peer and peer teacher discussion both in tutorials in class and online and so so overall we've had a very positive effect the students are more motivated and they're more confident with their petrology yeah so um just in consideration then of the national impact and the evaluation uh certainly in terms of the impact as we um um have as well as observed it up until now um certainly through the project we've had contributions from each of the partners in the the universities in Ireland I think even that sense of ownership or sense of contribution makes everyone say well I've given in a little bit I'll take something out of it um so that certainly helped in a way um the in terms of the impact it has allowed the what was uh let's say a smaller library which was held by Trinity which is part of the the larger virtual microscope library to be expanded um and we are expanding it with the best quality samples so it's you know improving this library it's out there for not just students in Ireland for anybody around the world um so that I guess is one of the international impacts of it from a teaching and teachers point of view um this is introducing teachers um who may not have previously used this kind of a technology to um well I suppose a new approach in delivering what would be traditional uh teaching um methods and material uh where previously we would use physical microscopes now we're beginning to encourage and give teachers resources to bring technology enhanced learning into their programs um it allows teachers to develop new teaching strategies in other words there's a vast library of resources there we're also through the development of these online assessments it's giving teachers a little bit of um I suppose the resources to apply their own specific um uh exercises and to use the templates that we've developed ourselves um and it also facilitates student assessment we regard it um kind of equally because traditionally you may have 20 30 40 students in a room each with microscopes some may have very very good slides some may not but everyone gets the same question so in this way it's very very democratic and a lot fair and it also has great opportunities for distance learning and certainly Simon here from the open university uh would uh know about that in terms of learning and learners um from observations of students in classes we've you know there's been just a explosive improvement in efficiency and effectiveness I mean the setup of a lab with 40 or 50 microscopes is now what we can move on from that and save time and resources uh students have their laptops we're teaching them in a tool that they can take away from the lab and as Emma was saying look at on the couch or wherever else there's definitely a recognizable improvement in student confidence and I know myself from um pre millennium days of looking down microscopes it's a little bit like sitting beside somebody and pointing at the stars and saying can you see that star there not the one beside it that's the one I'm talking about it can be a little bit um vague whereas on a screen you can be looking at what somebody else is looking at beside you that also encourages peer to group learning I mean encourages students to sit and discuss what they see themselves it allows them to play being a scientist great um and I guess just to to move on to the the discourse and spreading the word I mean just a list of a number of the um conferences that we have presented this at both here in Ireland and internationally and some of them uh which will follow on from the determination of the project uh in summer so um just to follow on and just to to think back to one of the main reasons why we wanted to do this project was to address this resource issue not having enough material for all this to cater for all the the students that we have so in thinking about how we uh evaluate the the project and how how it's having an impact on the students we can see what we've eliminated and then in turn in hand so what we have eliminated in the guides have touched on these already is um material and facility restrictions so there's no restrictions the students have non restricted access to samples at home like the guides were saying um material loss and damage the the virtual slides are indestructible um some students do struggle looking down the microscope with um conditions like photophobia so that's at least uh reduced and ambiguity um what I mean there is um being clear on what we want the students to see so any uh any um uncertainty within them is at least reduced so then what we've enhanced is efficiency and effectiveness ease of delivery the opportunities for distance learning uh enhance student enthusiasm student confidence in peer group learning and consistency and accessibility so that's what we've enhanced so to quickly go through um what we're observing across each of the partners so I've spent some time asking them what what they're observing what what are the main impacts this this project is having so the main ones are increased student engagement and student um performance enhancement okay we can quickly identify the students who are struggling and students can access the material before and after class times and the students can use the image quality to build their own study guides and it's the two last points there that are important because it kind of gives an idea that there's a transformation in teaching and learning and assessment and to to draw on this idea of assessment of learning changing to assessment for learning and what I mean by that and to give you examples up on the board you can see there's two examples um of practical material the one on the left is the traditional way that we would uh perform a patrology practical so the student looks down the microscope identifies the mineral makes a sketch submits the practical and receives the grade okay and then on the right then is example of a practical using the virtual microscope now you can see the student can accurately identify the minerals and then they can use that and pull the images from the virtual microscope to um to begin to build their own study guides and to use that um in the future for further revision so this idea of not just assessment of learning but assessment for learning they can continually use this later down the later down the line and just to quickly go through to give you a measurement of the impact you know we are in the implementation phase of the project so we are currently using the virtual microscope in the courses across the partner universities so I took a group of students and asked them a couple of questions who were about a third of the way into their courses and some of the question that asked was on a scale of zero to ten do you think that the use of the virtual microscope was beneficial in your pathology course and enhance your student learning experience an average answer of eight point six five out of ten so that's a significantly high average and then I asked them to rank their level of agreement with some statements and that was the inclusion of the virtual microscope enhanced the teaching of the practicals 40 percent of students strongly agreed 50 percent students agreed and then 10 percent of students were neutral the 24 7 axis is of the virtual microscope is beneficial for my studies 80 percent of students strongly agreed 20 percent 20 percent of students agreed and then lastly I have accessed or will access the virtual microscope outside of class hours for further revision and study 80 of students agreed 20 percent of students oh excuse me 80 percent of students strongly agreed 20 percent of students agreed so just to note there that there's no and this none of the students were in disagreement with any of those statements and then the last two there again just to reiterate that there is this transformation and how we are teaching learning and assessing the students okay so this this idea of assessment of learning transitioning to assessment for learning that they can continually use this and and then just just to show you this this graph this is pretty nice it shows the users per day it's a google metric of the students accessing the virtual microscope so you can see we're in the implementation phase of the project and you can clearly see that spike there is when the geolab collection went live and we actually started using this within the coursework of the students and you can see that that it's jumping from a less than 40 users per day right up to nearly 120 so it just reflects the impact this is having now that we're moving into the implementation phase of the project and I might just pass it over to partners to wrap it up with the sustainability I appreciate we're we're over time look the sustainability the key point I want to get across here is already embedded in a large number of modules so that to me is going forward as a colleague of mine said to me the other day we're not going back on this this is definitely the way forward in terms of looking to the future and and the type of things we want to do as geologists we were obsessed with with scale and scale variation going from we were really doing well here with the microscopic and to some degree the mesoscopic but what we'd like to do is take this virtual slash digital approach and move it upscale to our crop scale mesoscopic scale and right up to remotely megascopic scale so this is something that we're thinking about as a group and particularly Julian and I are thinking about that in terms of field courses and embedding these type of digital resources into field activity okay