An effective undergraduate mineralogy course provides students with a familiarity and understanding of minerals that is necessary for studying the Earth. This paper describes a strategy for integrating the disparate topics covered in a mineralogy course and for presenting them in a way that facilitates an understanding of mineralogy that enables students to apply it in subsequent courses and research. ... Full description.

NOTE: This is a large file, 55.7mb in size! This article describes the use of the rhyming peg mnemonic device to teach Moh's scale of hardness. The "pegs" consist of a set of words, each rhyming with a number from one to ten, to which the mineral names are linked. The mnemonic drawings are incorporated into a poem. This technique is effective because it is meaningful, helps students organize information, ... Full description.

This article describes how a high school earth science teacher and a college education professor team-taught a lesson to ninth graders on using poetry to learn about minerals. The professor, a geologist, shared an electronic slide show of poems she had composed about gem minerals that incorporated physical properties, formation, uses, and other information. After instruction, students researched a ... Full description.

NOTE: This file size is large, 16.52 mb. This article describes one educator's attempts to modify his Petrology course, changing the lab-lecture format to one that emphasizes studio and cooperative learning. The goals of the changes are to improve student learning by covering a smaller number of topics in greater depth, deemphasize knowledge-based learning and emphasize development of higher order ... Full description.