This course will provide students with a comprehensive overview of the Earth's physical environment from the atmosphere to the lithosphere through a physical geography perspective by examining the processes that create this environment. By successfully completing this course, students will have an appreciation for the Earth's natural systems of weather, climate, geologic structures, and topography.
Note that this course is offered for 5 credits and it automatically includes a lab. Along with their online activities, students will also be doing lots of work off-line, mostly reading in the required text and working on lab exercises from the lab manual. Students are strongly encouraged to schedule regular times for doing both online (on the Web) and off-line ("homework") activities for the class, totaling at least 15 hours per week (and if this is the summer version more like 25+ hours per week). The comprehensive nature of this course means that students will be studying lots of different topics. Note while this might seem unreasonable, this is actually the recommendation for any class. The rule of thumb is 3 hours per week per credit during a regular academic year semester. For the traditional class, this time includes any time a student spends in the classroom, whether it is a "real" classroom or a virtual one. If students cannot make this commitment of 15 hours per week, they should consider dropping before they have invested too much time in the class. The instructors will expect a lot from their students. This is a college course and just because it is delivered online does not mean it has been "dumbed" down.
To be successful, before the semester starts students should make a weekly schedule in which they determine specific time periods for working on this class. Students should review their schedule and adjust it if need be after a couple of weeks to make sure they have enough time to complete all of their learning activities.
UW Colleges Catalog Course Description for GEO 125 Physical Geography - 5 credits. The geography of Earth's physical characteristics, including weather and climate, climatic types, water, soil, Earth materials, landforms and Earth resources; study of the processes and interactions creating Earth's physical geographic patterns. Two or four hours of lab per week depending on the credit. May not be taken for credit by students who have had GEO 120, GEO 123, or GEO 124. This course fulfills the UWC requirement for Natural Sciences (NS) and Laboratory Sciences (LS).
Geography is not a collection of arcane information. Rather, it is the study of spatial aspects of human existence. People everywhere need to know about the nature of their world and their place in it. Geography has much more to do with asking questions and solving problems than it does with rote memorization of isolated facts (Source: Geography for Life. The Geography Education Standards Project. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Research & Exploration, 1994).
Physical geography is an integrative discipline that is a synthesis of a number of natural sciences—especially atmospheric science, hydrology, geology, geomorphology, soil science, and ecology—in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the natural world.
Physical geography attempts to describe the characteristics and world distribution of physical factors, which in combination form natural environments: elements of weather and climate, climatic types, earth materials, landforms and earth resources. More importantly, physical geography attempts to understand the processes that create the natural environment and particularly how those processes work differently from place to place.
Successful completion of this course will enhance students' ability to
By completing this course, students will
Microsoft Word.
The most current edition of MS Office (containing MS Word, Excel and other valuable programs) is available to University of Wisconsin students at discounted prices through the Wisconsin Integrated Software Catalog.
Cary Komoto
Keith Montgomery
