Open Educational Resources and Geology

This collection was curated by an ASCCC OERI discipline lead. A comprehensive list of current discipline leads is available.

This page is currently under development.

OER by C-ID

Physical Geology (C-ID GEOL 100)

Physical Geology Laboratory (C-ID GEOL 100L)

Historical Geology (C-ID GEOL 110)

Historical Geology Laboratory (C-ID GEOL 110L)

Earth Science (C-ID GEOL 120)

Environmental Geology (C-ID GEOL 130)

Environmental Geology Laboratory (C-ID GEOL 130L)

Geology of California (C-ID GEOL 200)

Mineralogy (C-ID GEOL 280)


Additional Resources

The following are free and publicly available online resources. With the exception of On the Cutting Edge – Strong Undergraduate Teaching (National Association of Geoscience Teaching), these resources do not appear to be openly licensed. They are being shared here because they are widely used and well-reviewed by instructors and students:

  • Introduction to Climate Science – LibreTexts (Schmittner, 2021) (CC BY-NC-SA)
  • Mineral and Rock ID: A Practical Online Study Guide (Brande, Scott, 2019)
  • Webgeology (Kullerud, Kare)
  • IRIS Earthquake Science Consortium
  • Educational Multimedia Visualization Center (2022)
  • On the Cutting Edge – Strong Undergraduate Teaching (National Association of Geoscience Teaching)
    We encourage the reuse and dissemination of the material on this site for noncommercial purposes (like education) as long as attribution is retained. To this end the material on this site, unless otherwise noted, is offered under a Creative Commons license Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.
  • Petrology: An Introduction to Igneous and Metamorphic Rocks and Processes (Dexter Perkins, 2022) – Open Geology (CC BY-NC-SA)
    This textbook is clearly written and contains useful photographs of hand samples and outcroppings. It takes a “deep dive” into petrology, so it contains a significant amount of information that is outside of the scope of most community college geology courses. However, certain chapters, especially introductory chapters, could be very useful in a California Community College course.
  • Earth Science Field Trips in Southern California (Tor Lacy, 2023) (CC BY-NC)
    A detailed guide to popular Southern California Field Sites created by a CCC professor.
  • The Environment of the Earth’s Surface (Southard) (CC BY-NC-SA)
    This textbook is easy to read, well organized, and provides information that is both technically robust and practical. It provides a thorough treatment of surficial processes. However, it can not be recommended for any specific courses because it omits many important topics, including plate tectonics.
    The licensing is stated as: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0: 80.6% (87 pages) Undeclared: 14.8% (16 pages) CC BY-NC-SA 1.3: 4.6% (5 pages)
  • Geology Unit: Plate Boundaries; Plate Motion Simulation – Science Education for Public Understanding Program (SEPUP) from The Lawrence Hall of Science; UC Berkeley (Open-use?)
    This simulation program shows 4 simulations of tectonic settings that can each be run across several time intervals. Each has a legend to explain what the simulation’s components represent. Part of the SEPUP (Science Education for Public Understanding Program) by the Lawrence Hall of Sciences, mainly supporting 6-12 science education.
    • ADDITIONAL NOTES: Simulations only show epicentral locations and do not show hypocenters or structure deformation at depth. Instead, thickening or shortening are depicted without showing fault motions related to mountain/rift development.
    • In convergent simulations, mountains do emerge upon the surface of the plates, and so do volcanoes, but for the latter, no magmatic source is depicted within the cross-section of the simulations.
    • The transform simulation relies mainly on drainage displacement.
    • Divergence does simulate continental rifting, also with epicentral positions, and some volcanoes form, also without illustrating the magmatic source.
    • A final note is that with ocean-ocean convergence, the simulation begins with a single plate and as it progresses, a subduction zone forms, also with the limitations previously noted.
    • USE: These simulations do support general plate motions but might best be used either as an introduction ahead of more detailed characterizations, or serve as a quick mention in a course that does not require more than a cursory understanding, or perhaps as an introductory activity ahead of a lab or lecture session on tectonics since the simulations are accompanied by an instructional PDF and an student answer sheet, also as a PDF.

Using an OER resource that is missing from the list above? If so, please let us know.

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