GEO 103 class characterizing the nature of the sediments of the Cohansey Formation in the NJ Pinelands. #geo103rocks #drexelcoas #acadnatsci #talkinboutrocks

A photo posted by Ted Daeschler (@teddaeschler) on Apr 18, 2015 at 12:29pm PDT

On a beautiful spring day, it’s not unusual for college students to ask to hold class outside. But this spring term, Ted Daeschler’s GEO 103 class, “Intro to Field Methods in Earth Science,” is all outdoors, all the time. The class, which meets on Saturdays, ventures to a different location in the greater Philadelphia region for each session to show students applied methods for studying Earth’s distant past.

And it’s also on Instagram.

Daeschler, a nationally known scientific figure for his co-discovery of the famous transitional fish fossil Tiktaalik roseae, got a smartphone and joined Instagram as a way to connect his students in Drexel’s Department of Biodiversity, Earth and Environmental Science to the…