Use Case: Interactive geology teaching (in‑person and online) using gigapixel macro imagery

Organization: Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC); previously Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA)

Champion: Callan Bentley, Distinguished Faculty (AACC), Robin Rohrback (NOVA)

Products Used: Magnify2 imaging system; GIGAmacro Viewer

Timeframe: Early adoption through present (textbook launched 2021; ongoing)

 

Screenshots showcasing just a few of the thousands of gigapixel images used in the Historical Geology curriculum.

 

Background

Callan Bentley has dedicated his career to making geology engaging and accessible to introductory students. While at Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA), and now at Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC), he recognized that teaching geology often depended on students having physical access to rock and fossil specimens. For in‑person labs, this worked well, but online and asynchronous students were often left out.

Bentley became one of the earliest adopters of GIGAmacro technology, acquiring one of the first ten Magnify2 systems ever produced while at NOVA. He and lab director Robin Rohrback at NOVA began capturing high‑resolution imagery of hand samples, thin sections, fossils, and sediments and embedding them directly into web pages and exercises. This approach blossomed into an open, digital‑first Historical Geology textbook launched in 2021, which continues to grow and evolve through grants and widespread adoption. Today, the work is influencing geology educators across the country.

 

Challenge

Geology education depends heavily on tactile engagement. Students are expected to handle rocks, view thin sections under a microscope, and practice recognizing grain size, texture, and fossil features. Traditional textbooks could only offer static images that lacked the clarity, resolution, and interactivity required for students to learn effectively.

The challenge grew more urgent during the COVID‑19 pandemic. When labs shut down, most geology instructors were forced to scramble for digital solutions. Without access to collections and microscopes, students risked losing an entire year of essential lab practice. Bentley needed a way to replicate the hands‑on lab experience for both remote and on‑campus learners, while maintaining rigor and authenticity.

 

The Solution

Bentley turned to the Magnify2 imaging system to capture gigapixel macro images of the samples his students needed most—rocks, fossils, thin sections, and sediment samples. These images were processed and delivered through the GIGAmacro Viewer, which gave students the ability to interact with the samples on any device.

Key features of Magnify2 system for the geology lab:

  • Thin section cross polarization and backlighting allows geologists to identify materials and structures not normally visible with standard lighting. ****
  • The system accomodated both small and large geologic samples, many of which were difficult or impossible to view with other microscopes.
  • Batch imaging templates and processing allowed Bentley and Rohrback to image multiple samples at a time saving time and resources.

Several key features of the viewer proved transformative:

  • Rotation controls allowed students to test orientations of geologic structures, helping them understand “which way was up” when rocks formed.
  • The dynamic scale bar and measurement tool gave students constant awareness of feature size, a crucial skill in geologic reasoning.
  • The Comparative Viewer let students see plane‑polarized and cross‑polarized thin‑section images side by side, a capability that even physical microscopes could not provide in real time.

The system made it possible to embed imagery directly into assessments, labs, and textbook chapters, creating a cohesive and interactive learning environment. Bentley emphasized not just content delivery, but student exploration—encouraging learners to zoom, rotate, and measure for themselves.

Thousands of publicly accessible images available in the GIGAmacro Viewer from the Mid-Atlantic Geo-Image Collection; https://viewer.gigamacro.com/collections/foIlWZTPiuDZmcbz

 

Results

The implementation of Magnify2 and GIGAmacro reshaped geology teaching at NOVA and now at PVCC. Bentley’s labs and textbook transitioned seamlessly online during the pandemic, ensuring that students could continue their studies without disruption. While peers at other institutions scrambled, his classes were fully prepared.

Adoption has grown significantly: 80 instructors now report using the open textbook, with an estimated ~3,000 students per semester engaging with the imagery and exercises. The project also secured additional funding to expand content development, enabling further growth and refinement.

The materials have become widely used beyond their original courses. The open textbook ranks highly in online searches, meaning that learners outside formal classes are also accessing and benefiting from the content.

https://opengeology.org/historicalgeology/

 

Screenshot of the intro page to the curriculum.

 

Impact

The impact extends well beyond continuity during a crisis. Students gain a deeper understanding of geology through interactive learning. They learn scale independence—the ability to zoom between landscape and microscopic scales, a fundamental skill for geologists. The ability to rotate, measure, and compare samples develops real observational intuition.

The work also showcases how open educational resources (OER) can transform teaching. By publishing an openly available, digital‑first textbook, Bentley ensures that students avoid the high costs of commercial texts while benefiting from continuously updated, state‑of‑the‑art content. His approach has inspired other colleges, such as El Paso Community College, to explore similar adoption.

The system has also enabled unique teaching narratives, such as the Rathlin Island project, where imagery spanned scales from kilometers‑wide cliff outcrops down to micron‑scale fossils, demonstrating geology’s multiscale nature in a way that few other tools could achieve.

 

Customer Quotes

  • “I’m charged with getting students excited about studying the Earth. GIGAmacro lets them zoom, rotate, measure, and truly see what geologists see.” — Callan Bentley
  • “It allowed us to give students the same experience as picking up a sample in lab—and to do it on a phone or laptop.”
  • “With the comparative viewer, students can see PPL and XPL at once, which goes beyond what a single microscope can show in real time.”
  • “The scale bar that updates with zoom is crucial. Students always know how big a feature is.”
  • “Rotation matters—geology cares which way was up. Letting students rotate builds real intuition.”

 

Future Opportunities

Looking forward, Bentley sees opportunities for GIGAmacro to expand beyond geology:

  • Partnerships: Collaborating with state‑funded textbook initiatives in biology, chemistry, or engineering to create interactive open resources.
  • Industry applications: Using Magnify2 for imaging and archiving petroleum and mineral cores at repositories in the U.S., Japan, and Europe.
  • AI augmentation: Applying computer vision to quantify grain size distributions and mineral proportions, automating tasks that geologists traditionally perform by hand.

 

Call to Action

Educators and departments can adopt this approach to strengthen both in‑person and online labs. By starting with a pilot collection of specimens, captured with Magnify2 and embedded into course materials, they can quickly build resilient and engaging labs that prepare students for real geological reasoning.

 

The Team at GIGAmacro

At GIGAmacro, we are proud to play a role in this incredible work. We worked directly over the past 10+ years with Bentley sometimes with late night discussions on feature requests for the viewer, system, and how we can keep expanding the capabilities of our technology. Those collaborative discussions resulted in capabilities that are now available to other researchers and educators and we look forward to continuing this partnership for many years to come.