Physical Geology
This textbook covers all the material required for an introductory course in Physical Geology, to a reasonably detailed extent. At times the chapters might seem a little too schematic, lacking some at depth discussion of the topics, and might feel like good summaries of a particular subject. However I do not necessarily see this as a defect, since an instructor can add details in class, and the book still remains a good reference for the students.
I examined only a subset of the chapters, but based on what I read I did not find any errors or mistakes that could affect the usage of the book in a classroom (i.e. mislead or confuse the students). There are indeed parts where simplification is evident, but it’s nothing that an instructor could not clarify and examine in more depth in the class.
Obsolescence should not be much of a problem for a book that deals with well established principles of geology, and indeed I did not find any “old and now debunked” science in the text. Due to its open source nature, updating the book does not seem to be a problem. Again as I pointed out in other parts of this review, the role of the instructor remains important.
The author makes a strong effort to adopt a clear and simple language, to highlight technical terms and to use them in context. This is as expected from an introductory text, and does not seem to require any previous knowledge of the subject. It should be easy for an instructor to help students in particular areas of geology that can be more challenging to the neophyte, and to clarify doubts referencing the textbook.
The book follows a simple and consistent structure throughout, so that the reader will not be confused when going from a chapter to the following. Each chapter starts with a summary introduction, then the main body of the chapter itself, and finally a summary with review questions.
Chapters are not grouped in sections (as one can find in commercial textbooks for instance), however their order is logical (from the viewpoint of an introduction to geology). Since the book is free and modifiable, dividing it in subsections adding more bookmarks, or even reordering some chapters as needed for a class, should not be a overwhelming task.
The logical order of the chapters is similar to what can be found in commercial textbooks, with the added bonus here that everything can be reordered easily to accommodate the needs of a particular class or the teaching plans of a particular instructor.
This is where the book falls short when compared with commercial products, however this is not to be considered as a strong criticism of the final result. Commercial companies have access to resources and time that a writer/publisher who gives away the product for free cannot afford. The final result is still good. Main problems are to be found in the visual support built into the book. The images are always too small, and if a student (or an instructor) wanted to actually print the book, it would be difficult to use them. All the images are live linked, so it is possible to access higher resolution versions, and they seem all hosted on the same site (https://opentextbc.ca), reducing the possibility that those links might become broken. In addition the book is available in an editable format (ODT), and that makes it possible to reformat the whole thing. It would take quite a while though. Moreover the bookmarks of the chapters are in the wrong section (under acknowledgments), but as I noticed before, these can be easily rearranged. All in all navigating the book is easy, at least in the PDF version I examined.
I did not notice any grammatical errors or typos in the chapters I examined.
I confess that I have a hard time thinking of how any of these geologic topics (or geology in general) could be culturally insensitive or offensive. As per the cultural relevance of geology, well it affects the development of civilizations, so this aspect seems to be pretty straightforward to me. However an instructor would have to elaborate on this in a class, especially when dealing with Earth’s resources and their usage.
I was favorably impressed by Dr. Earle's effort to produce a free and overall robust textbook in Physical Geology. The book indeed covers all the topics that are typically presented in an introductory Physical Geology class, and also includes a chapter on the geology of Canada, a welcome addition that can be used as way to illustrate to the students how to connect all the geologic information presented in the course. I would not have any problem in adopting this as the only official textbook for my class (I teach Physical Geology), if I were teaching a face to face and relatively small class. Unfortunately I teach a fully online large (250+ students) class, and I need a textbook with more support for the students. With this I mean that it does need to have a more in depth examination of each topic, and a better high quality visual support. I can of course compensate for that, but only to a certain point. In an online asynchronous class students are supposed to face most of the work by themselves (albeit of course the instructor is always available to help), hence the support textbook has to be as exhaustive as possible. Additional material is offered in the course, along with online video lectures, but still .. an essentially self-contained textbook is – in my opinion – still necessary. The free alternative is possible, but it does require much more effort and time on the part of – already overworked – instructors. For instance commercial textbooks come with material (especially high resolution images) that the instructor of an online (but also face to face) class, can use to create lectures, eliminating the need to start completely from scratch. At the moment I would adopt the book as complementary to my official (and .. yes commercial .. textbook), so that the students could use it as reference (i.e. to review material). On the other hand .. in a face to face small, or relatively small class, there is constant contact (or at least there should be) between the teacher and the students, which should compensate for any shortcomings of the text.