'Good Learning & Teaching Ideas' Swap Shops for Earth and Environmental Sciences

The LTSN Subject Centre for Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences (LTSN-GEES), in association with the Committee of Heads of Environmental Sciences (CHES), hosted a regional 'Good Learning & Teaching Ideas' swap shop for earth and environmental Sciences at the TechnoCentre, Coventry on Tuesday, 26th February 2002. A second Regional 'Good Learning & Teaching Ideas' Swap Shops for Earth and Environmental Sciences will take place at the Millennium Hotel, Glasgow on Monday, 29th April 2002. This Swap Shop is free of charge (with the possibility of free overnight accommodation for long-distance travellers) but participants will have to pay for their own travel expenses.

Short presentations (10/15 minutes) are invited on any of the following topics:

1. Learning Outcomes and Assessment
2. Learning and Teaching with C&IT
3. Fieldwork
4. Practical and Laboratory work
5. Helping New Undergraduates Transition into HE
6. Linking Teaching and Research

The Swap Shop format aims to provide a supportive forum for practitioners to share, develop and enhance their ideas and practices but it also encourages practitioners to write up their ideas in the form of an abstract that can then be submitted to GEES Resource Database.

The forthcoming Swap Shops are also linked to a new LTSN-GEES project to produce a set of Learning & Teaching Guides for Earth & Environmental Sciences (titled as for Swap Shop topics 1-5) similar to those produced for Geography. The good ideas presented under these topics can be put forward to the Guides' authors and considered for inclusion as case studies. Topic 6, 'Linking Teaching and Research' reflects a project which LTSN-GEES is currently developing. We recognise that students in our subject areas may benefit from research in a variety of ways including, where:

* the content of courses is informed by staff research;
* they learn about research methods;
* teaching methods adopt a research-based approach, such as through problem based learning;
* they undertake their own research projects, whether individually or in teams;
* they participate in staff research projects as subjects, as in, for example, perception studies;
* they assist staff with their research projects;
* staff undertake pedagogic research which benefits the quality of their teaching.

The deadlines for submissions to the
Glasgow Swap Shop - 28th March 2002

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Details of the Swap shop on Tuesday 26th February 2002 in Coventry

Swap Shop Venue: Coventry TechnoCentre

Location: Top Floor - Room CC2.1 (Registration and refreshments will be in the in foyer of room CC2.1)

Equipment: Data Projector and Overhead Projector will be available for all presenters, if required.

Programme:

10.00 REGISTRATION & COFFEE
10.30 Welcome (Jennifer Blumhof)
10.35 The "Guides" Project - Introduction & Update (Phil Gravestock & Neil Thomas)
10.55 Allocation of groups and rapporteurs
11.00 Session 1 - Presentation/discussion of 'learning & teaching ideas'
12.30 LUNCH
13.30 Session 2 - Presentation/discussion of 'learning & teaching ideas'
15.00 Plenary Session (Chaired by Jennifer Blumhof)
-Feedback from groups
-Discussion
-Concluding remarks
15.30 TEA AND DEPART

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