Using a Geotrail for Teaching Geography: An Example of the Virtual Educational Trail “The Story of Liberec Granite”

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

I am glad to revise your interesting article. I think it could be accepted for publication, although I would like to share some impressions that I have also moved to the Editor:

1)    Introduction: I miss a section for theoretical framework, or just some 2-3 paragraphs on it in the Introduction. Geotrails are well defined and characterized, but there is not any mention to other educational studies on geotrails and similar tasks, such as didactic fieldworks. It would be interesting to know what other authors think about the educative management of geotrails and/or fieldwork or fieldtrips.

2)    Methodology: I miss a justification on the use of respondents with at least 3 geotrails experiences. It is mentioned in Conclusions (something about a pilot questionnaire), but it must be pointed here. In fact, it should be deeper explained: what is this pilot test and what was it about? Please give more details.

3)    Results: It is OK.

4)    Discussion: this section must include more scientific references, some of them maybe extracted from the missing theoretical framework. In fact, the 8 principles which are mentioned should be related to other scientific publications, to get an authentic discussion, not just some personal conclusions.

5)    Conclusions: this section is too long, there is a lot of ideas which are already detailed in the previous section. They must be shortened, in terms of single statements and not long repetitive arguments. The last paragraph is the most suitable one for Conclusions.

Finally, as closing impressions, I think the topic is highly interesting and the results can bring new input to the education of geosciences. Just some improvement in the article structure could be done to make it more suitable for an educative scientific publication.

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable comments. Below I comment on individual points:

ad 1: I slightly modified the Introduction chapter and added a Theoretical Background chapter, where I focus more on clarifying key terms. Now all your comments should be taken into account.

ad 2: I have added two paragraphs to the Methods chapter that describe in detail the pilot testing and my decision-making regarding the threshold for inclusion in the research.

ad 4: In the Discussion chapter, I have added links to studies that support my generalized conclusions. I have made other adjustments based on other reviews in another part of the text, but they relate to the same thing.

ad 5: I slightly shortened the Conclusions but left most of the text so that even the "lazy reader" who reads only the abstract and the conclusion can learn everything essential about the research.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is interesting and so is the idea of the urban geopark/trail. I would probably suggest that the authors seek answers from teachers who didn't use the trails more than once or twice, in order to find out why they didn't repeat the experience.

Please make sure that there is mercury in the granite (Line 141). I doubt it.

Author Response

Thanks for the helpful comments. In further research, we plan to focus on teachers who completed the route only once or twice. Their main answer was that teaching in the field brings increased demands on teachers, which may discourage some of them. Therefore, in further research, we want to focus on the main factors acting as barriers to field teaching and how to overcome them.

Mercury is a translation error; orthite is correct. Corrected.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper has a really good potential as a reference for the preparation of geoeducational materials, the discussion expresses this potential but comparison with other studies is lacking, so it doesn’t evidence the strengths of this study, the weaknesses and the innovation brought in the field of research.

Also, specifically geoeducation and geointerpretation concept should be mentioned in the paper and the relation with the presented work should be underlined.

In the attached review file the author can find my comments and suggestions, following this minor revision the paper can be published.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable comments. I tried to address all of them, but I couldn't find some sources (eg, Cayla, Martin, Grangier). Since there were a lot of changes in the article, I will try to summarize them below:

I have added a Theoretical Background chapter to better clarify key concepts.

In the methodological chapter, I added two paragraphs in which I explained how the pilot testing took place and why I decided to use the boundaries of 3 and 6 fieldwork for inclusion in the research.

In Figure 1, I added the country names to make the map clearer.

Unfortunately, there is no geological map that would reliably map the spread of Liberec granite. This is only one of the many types of granite found in the area. That's why I'm not including a geological map in the article, because it would only have a large red area labeled "granite."

I have added a link to the exact description of the qualitative coding method.

I have added the exact numbers of respondents' answers to Tables 1 and 2.

In the Discussion chapter, I have added references to the literature that reached the same conclusions.

 

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear Author,

this is a very fine contribution to the topic of geotrails applied to geoeducation and geoheritage promotion. It is very well organized and written, and the figure are of very good quality. I have only 2 minor issues:

1) You should mention Geoheritage both in the Abstract and the Introduction (now it is mentioned briefly only in the Conclusions) 

2) At line 391, quote the paper: " Venturini, C.; Pasquaré Mariotto, F. Geoheritage promotion through an interactive exhibition: A case study from the Carnic Alps, NE Italy. Geoheritage 2019, 11, 459–469.

After these minor adjustments, I think your paper is fine for publication in "Land".

 

 

 

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable comments. According to your advice, I put the term geoheritage both in the abstract and in the Introduction chapter. In the Introduction chapter, I added a whole other section, where I deal in more detail with the issue of geotrails and their function in the protection and promotion of geoheritage.

I have also included the quote you recommended in the article. Thanks for the tip on an interesting article.