the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 06 Mar 2026
Implementing a Modern Hybrid Geology Curriculum: A Case Study from a South African University
Abstract. Contemporary geology education is increasingly required to advance adaptability, intellectual agility, and professional competence in response to 21st century societal and industry needs. Whilst quality assurance and accountability frameworks underscore employability, limited clarity remains regarding the alignment between university geology curricula and the evolving societal and industry demands. This study examined the implementation of a geology curriculum at a recently established university in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa using a hybrid learning model. The model incorporated conventional face to face interactive discussions with pre-recorded online learning materials leveraging smart technologies to support authentic, personalised learning. The implementation efficacy was evaluated through solicited comments from external examiners, peer reviews, institutional and industry experts, and by using students’ performance and feedback. Students’ learning was evaluated through moderated online and in person theoretical assessments, complemented by field and laboratory-based practicals, and ultimately looking at pass rates. In contrast, students’ feedback was collected anonymously using a suggestion box and by following a standardised institutional questionnaire designed for quality promotion and assurance evaluation, administered at the end of 2025. Statistical triangulation across the diverse data sources show that the hybrid delivery model can enhance students’ theoretical comprehension, practical competencies, preparedness for professional practice, and sustainable societal involvement. The study contributes empirical evidence from a resource constrained and under researched context, demonstrating how aligned hybrid curriculum design can strengthen teaching, learning, and assessment practices in geology education. These insights inform ongoing debates on curriculum innovation, quality assurance, and industry relevance in higher education.
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Status: final response (author comments only)
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2026-1008', Glenn Dolphin, 10 Mar 2026
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Lowanika Victor Tibane, 05 Apr 2026
Dear Dr Dolphin,
We thank you for meticulously reading through the manuscript and for the constructive arguments given. The feedback has helped us to revise and improve the manuscript, paying more attention to the research design, the instructional model, and the interpretation of the results. Detailed responses have been given to each comment made as in the attached response file, which accompany the revised manuscript.
Regards, Victor
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Lowanika Victor Tibane, 05 Apr 2026
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CC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2026-1008', Soroush Sabbaghan, 13 Jun 2026
Dear authors,
I want to begin by acknowledging the value of the manuscript. The study focuses on a potentially publishable geoscience education case in "a recently established university in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa" and in a "resource constrained and under researched context". That setting matters. The manuscript also identifies real institutional and pedagogical constraints, including "absence of dedicated laboratory facilities" and "Language and literacy barriers". These features could make the article useful to readers, especially if the contribution is framed as a careful account of implementation, constraints, and transferable lessons rather than as evidence of broad institutional validation.
At the same time, I don’t think the current version can support its central claims. The reviewers differ mainly in emphasis. The methodologist sees the evidentiary flaws as most serious. The ethics reviewer foregrounds participant protection. The theoretical and structural reviewers stress underdeveloped framing and presentation. I agree that the manuscript evidence supports all three concerns. These are not minor revisions.
The ethics approval and student protection procedures need to be documented much more clearly. I recognize that South African research ethics procedures may differ from Canadian procedures, so I’m not assuming that one national process should be applied to another context. My concern is that the manuscript currently states that the study was conducted with "consent from the dean of faculty", but it does not make clear whether this constituted formal research ethics approval, institutional exemption, or another recognized process for using student records and feedback in publication. The statement that "participation was voluntary" is also too general for an instructor linked study with "13 participants". The manuscript needs to explain how consent was obtained, when it was obtained in relation to grading, and what safeguards were in place to reduce coercion and social desirability bias. The figure labelled "Unedited student’s email to lecturer" is especially concerning. In a class of 13, an unedited individual email may be identifiable, even without a name. The authors need to provide clear evidence of ethics approval or exemption, consent procedures, anonymisation steps, and explicit permission for any quoted student communication.
The central effectiveness claim also needs to be substantially reframed. The abstract states that "the hybrid delivery model can enhance students’ theoretical comprehension, practical competencies, preparedness for professional practice, and sustainable societal involvement." However, the study is described as a "qualitative case study design" using "curriculum documents, assessment records, peer review reports, and students’ feedback". This design may support a descriptive case of implementation and student perceptions, but it does not establish enhancement unless there is a baseline, comparator, longitudinal evidence, or a clearly justified learning outcomes analysis. Claims such as "This positive outcome is attributed to" the hybrid model and alignment should therefore be removed or rewritten as cautious, context specific indications.
The manuscript also needs to separate student satisfaction, quality assurance, and learning. The manuscript reports that "Students’ feedback collected from 13 participants" showed "high satisfaction", and that curriculum legitimacy was "validated through moderation". These are useful sources of evidence, but they do not independently demonstrate learning gains, field competence, or professional readiness. I would encourage the authors to provide an explicit map from learning outcomes to assessments, rubrics, samples or summaries of student work, and the interpretation of that evidence. Without that map, claims about "practical competence" and "conceptual understanding" remain overstated.
The qualitative analysis is not yet auditable. The manuscript states that the qualitative data followed a "thematic analysis approach" and lists criteria such as "curriculum alignment, pedagogical approaches, assessment practices, and implementation challenges". However, it does not show who coded the data, how themes were generated, whether negative cases were considered, or how researcher positionality was managed. The authors should include a codebook, a theme table, representative extracts, and a reflexive statement.
Several important elements also remain under specified. Phrases such as "pre-recorded online learning materials leveraging smart technologies" and "AI generated feedback" do not identify the platforms, frequency, workflow, or pedagogical purpose. Because geology "relies heavily on experiential learning, field based and laboratory practicals", the manuscript needs to specify which field and lab activities actually occurred. This is especially important because "Fieldwork faced logistical challenges" that caused "delays and subsequent cancellations". Similarly, the statement that "Industry experts were invited" is not enough to evidence professional readiness unless those activities are linked to competencies, assessments, and outcomes.
In the end, I see promise in the manuscript, especially because of its setting and the realities it documents. However, the current version needs major revision before it can be considered publishable. I would encourage the authors to reposition the article as a careful, ethics grounded case study of curriculum implementation in a resource constrained geoscience education context, with more modest claims, clearer methods, stronger participant protection, and more transparent evidence.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2026-1008-CC1 -
RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2026-1008', Anonymous Referee #2, 16 Jun 2026
The paper is well-structured and clearly formatted, and the topic addresses a timely and relevant area of inquiry. However, I have several concerns regarding the clarity of contribution, methodological transparency, and alignment of the literature review with the research aims.
Contribution & Framing
The abstract and introduction present the broader context effectively, but the specific contribution of this work to hybrid learning models remains unclear. While the authors identify several relevant themes, they do not sufficiently narrow the niche their approach occupies within the existing literature. Clarifying this positioning early would significantly strengthen the paper's framing.
Literature Review
Several points in the literature review read as broad claims applicable to contemporary teaching and learning generally, rather than to geoscience education specifically. For instance, the assertions about deep critical deduction in geology, or curriculum as an intertwined system, would benefit from geoscience-specific grounding and citations. Without this, it is difficult to understand why these points are particularly salient to this field, and therefore the presented curriculum study.
The characterisation of experiential learning as a competing theory to constructivism also requires revision. Experiential learning is more accurately understood as underpinned by constructivism, rather than in tension with it. Furthermore, it is unclear how experiential learning has been applied in the design directly. Given that the learning content ranges from lectures, to hands-on activities, to field reports, it feels more appropriate to consider a wider range of teaching modalities from active to passive learning strategies.
More broadly, the literature review's current structure moving from experiential learning, to industry alignment, to COVID-driven hybridisation, to AI in geology feels loosely connected to the research outcomes. I would suggest reorganising it around two areas: 1) the specific pedagogical needs of geoscience education, and 2) how hybrid/AI integration has been shown, or proposed, to meet those needs. This would make the review far more purposeful and directly relevant to the study that follows.
Methodology
The methodology section requires considerably more detail. The nature of the curriculum under study is not clearly established. It is assumed from context to be hybrid (pre-recorded content) and AI-supported, but neither the structure nor the content is described. Readers are left without an understanding of how geoscience topics are taught, or how the AI feedback component was designed and implemented. Specifically: when and how was AI feedback introduced? How were students guided in its use? What are some example prompts? How often did students leverage AI feedback versus lecturer feedback?
This lack of detail makes it very difficult to assess the validity of the findings or to extract transferable insights. A reader wishing either to build on this research or to design a comparable hybrid AI curriculum would have insufficient information to do so.
Findings & Discussion
The first time that the unit topic is presented is in the results section, ideally this would be highlighted in the methods which clear learning goals/outcomes. In some of the discussion, findings and claims are introduced that do not appear to be grounded in results presented earlier in the paper. These should either be traceable to the data or re-positioned as directions for future research.
Overall
As it stands, the paper reads more as a call for research than as a self-contained empirical contribution. The results are encouraging, and there is clear potential here, but the work would be significantly strengthened by a more precise articulation of its contribution, a restructured and field-specific literature review, and a methodology section detailed enough to allow replication or adaptation. I would encourage the authors to revisit these areas with an eye toward making the work as actionable as possible for the geoscience education research community.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2026-1008-RC2
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I think the authors are approaching a strong problem. Undergraduate geoscience education is the place where most people get introduced to geology, so putting our best foot forward here is important. That said, I think the manuscript requires major revisions prior to being published. Most of this critique will lie with the methodology.
1. The authors claim to use qualitative methods, at least in part, for the data collection.
2. The authors claim an innovative instructional design to help students learn geology.
3. The authors are testing the efficacy of the innovative instructional design.
First, the authors claim to be using qualitative methods for at least part of the data collection. This is not a qualitative investigation. The authors may have used some qualitative (open-ended) data, but only to create bins for completing some descriptive statistics (how many said this or said that). I saw no interpretation of the qualitative data. I don't even know how much was collected. Was it just survey data, or were there interviews? Qualitative research is mainly about investigating how theparticipants make meaning. This requires a LOT of data (writing, interviews, conversations, etc.) to try and understand how the participants are developing their understanding of the content material (in this case). Qualitative research is NOT about whether an instructional intervention was effective or not and how much. It would be more about how the participants experience this instruction and how they learn from it. Qualitative research is not supposed to be used for generalizing to larger populations. IT is about the individual and hearing the voice of the participants or observing the thinking of the participants.
Second, the authors are exploring the efficacy of a novel instructional structure. This is fine, but they don't describe (AT ALL) the design of the instruction. What is novel about the instruction? Why is it considered a hybrid? What parts are hybrid? Why those parts? What content material was presented? Who were the students? Were they majors? Did they have any experience? What were the assessments of the students? How did the authors use them to come to their conclusions? How long was the intervention? Did they spend every day or every other day? How many field excursions? How were they different from any regular geoscience course? How did AI play a role? Was the remote part of the hybrid aspect synchronous or asynchronous? Basically, what was the design of the course? What effective teaching strategies did instructors use? Why those particular ones? Was there more traditional instruction? What parts? Why those parts? It is hard for the reader to understand what the participants are going through.
Third, this is an investigation into the efficacy of an innovative instructional design. However, if the authors do not know where the participants' knowledge was in the beginning (I did not see any pre-intervention measurements), how can they say anything about the effects of students' participation in the instructional intervention? Efficacy should be a measure of growth. This manuscript does not show growth, only the endpoint. And with an n of 13, making any kind of generalization is dubious. I mean, there are some statistical methods (and I am not a statistician) that can be useful in showing some difference between pre- and post-intervention. Mainly, what I saw was participant self-report (Did you like the instruction? Were you engaged? etc.). While these kinds of metrics are important, they are not measurements of the efficacy of instruction. For this, you would need to assess what they understand after instruction and how they understand it. The authors talk about how there is alignment among the goals, the content material, the assessments, and the teaching strategies, yet this is never described or displayed. The reader must just take the authors' words for it. I am sure the authors are honorable, but as a reader, I like to see some empirical evidence so I can also make some judgments about the success of the project, to check my interpretation of f some of the data against the interpretation of the authors. This will give me, the reader, more confidence in the results. Oh, and since this is not qualitative research, the use of Lincoln and Guba (etc.) for the reliability assurances is not warranted. Even if it was warranted, I would shy away from Lincoln and Guba, anyway.
Lastly, there are a bunch of typographical errors, additional words, missing words, peculiar phrasing, incomplete sentences, etc. that also need tobe addressed. I am attaching a PDF of the manuscript with my comments added. This will show the exact locations of the issues I had with the paper. Thanks for the opportunity to review.