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GEES Subject Centre Residential conference 2005

9-10 June 2005 Wellington Park Hotel, Belfast

Contents:

What is this Conference About?

Presentations on current and emerging issues are invited from all those involved in GEES subjects in higher education (and HE in FE) for the discussion sessions at this event. The following suggested topics link to the Subject Centre’s main project themes. Presentations on other topics are also very welcome.

The programme will run from Thursday 5.30pm – Friday 3.45 pm, with an optional Saturday morning visit to the Giant's Causeway and Bushmills Distillery. There will be an Interactive keynote on Thursday evening with Dr Norman Jackson, Senior Advisor, Higher Education Academy (geologist!). This event will provide opportunities:

There will also be an optional pre-conference workshop on Thursday 9th 13:00-16:00. The aim of the workshop is to share 'effective e-learning practice within the GEES community'. One of the outcomes of the workshop will be a publication in late 2005.

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Programme

Thursday 9 June

13.00-16.00 OPTIONAL PRE-CONFERENCE E-LEARNING WORKSHOP

17.00 Registration and coffee

17.30-18.00 Welcome and Introductions

18.00-19.30 What does creativity mean in GEES? Interactive Keynote with Norman Jackson, Senior Adviser, Higher Education Academy

19.30 Dinner and Bar

Friday 10 June

Employability and Education for Sustainable Development

09.00 Introduction: Yolande Knight, GEES Subject Centre

09.05-10.30 Presentations

10.30-11.00 Coffee

11.00-12.00

12.00-13.30 Lunch

Enabling Student Learning

13.30-14.30 presentations

14.30-15.30

15.30 Final remarks and close

Saturday 11 June

Optional: visit / fieldtrip to Giant’s Causeway and Bushmills Distillery

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Abstracts

What does creativity mean in GEES?

Interactive Keynote with Norman Jackson, Senior Adviser, Higher Education Academy

The world (current and past) is a very complex place. In one sense it is unknowable - there are so many factors, so much data that feed into knowing and understanding. It requires people to engage in complex thinking and learning to partially understand how it works/has worked/or might work in the future. By definition, complex thinking in order to learn must engage all of our capacities for processing and imagining. This interactive session will seek to harness your imaginations to examine what creativity means to you.

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Teaching Sustainable Development: Encountering ‘The Other’ Through Geographic Fieldwork

Teaching Sustainable Development: Encountering ‘The Other’ Through Geographic Fieldwork

Max Hope, University College, Chester

As O’Riordan, T. (2000) suggests, sustainable development is “the bonding of people to the planet in a placenta of care, equity, justice and progress”. Thus, fundamental to teaching the theory and practice of sustainable development is instilling in students a sense of themselves as members of communities of humans and non-humans, for which they care and have responsibilities. But how do you teach such a sense of community?

One possibility lies in the ideas of bell hooks (2003) and others who suggest that the learning experience should be a vivid encounter with ‘the other’ which ‘calls us to account’. Experiencing the full reality of others means we change our established views to accommodate their perspectives, and this engenders a sense of connection and community with them. Geographic fieldwork as a direct encounter with people and place is an effective means for pursuing this pedagogical model (Hope 2005).

With these ideas in mind I have developed a second year university level module GE2 198 Sustainable Community, based around residential fieldwork with communities in the Western Isles of Scotland. The hope is that a ‘face to face’ encounter with these communities acts to deepen understanding of sustainable development.

I am in the early stages of an action research project that is exploring the relationship between the student experience of this module, their sense of community and connection with the place and their interest and understanding of sustainable development.

This presentation reports on the early findings of this project and raises some questions for future consideration.

Hooks, b. (2003) Teaching Community: a pedagogy of hope, London, Routledge.
Hope, M. (2005) ‘Keeping it Real’: John Macmurray, Geography and the Good Life, International Journal of the Humanities, Volume 1.
O’Riordan, T. (Ed) (2000) Environmental Science for Environmental Management, Pearson, Harlow.

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Integrating SD across Built Environment Disiciplines - opportunities & barriers!

Alan Strong, University of Ulster

This paper is based on 5 years of experience at UU in the School of the Built Environment in developing a Sustainable Development Group. This group now embraces 11 professional disciplines and its undergraduate programmes with a. Awareness Teaching at Level 1; b. Development and delivery of both Large and Mini Case studies on Sustainable Development (SD) and c. integration of SD into final year Dissertations and Design studies.

The paper will take a critical look at lessons learned, potholes to be avoided and issues for future development as the ESD agenda starts to feature at all levels of society. Evidence of pedagogy material will be shown, while the appraisal of module outcomes and use of SD auditing mechanisms are examined as parts of the bigger SD jigsaw in academia.

Delegates will be challenged to get on board as the ESD train gains momentum into all areas of the HE sector.

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“-graphy: the remains of a British discipline”

“-graphy: the remains of a British discipline” (2mb PowerPoint)

G.P.Chapman, Department of Geography, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YB, UK - g.chapman@lancaster.ac.uk

The chronic lack of basic geographical knowledge about the world by young British and Danish geography students is exposed through a factual quiz. The reasons for this are elucidated, including the abandonment of regional knowledge at school, and the abandonment of regional expertise in university level geography, in favour of nomothetic approaches, a change illustrated by analysis of popular works by Stamp in the 1930s and Haggett in the 1990s. This is followed by the more recent inward subjective turn of new cultural geographers. Geography’s relationship with area studies is examined, particularly given the new struggle for area studies to survive in the post Cold-War era. The impact of the RAE on regional knowledge within geography is also examined. It is argued that geography as a discipline can survive if it acknowledges and uses some of its traditional strengths, and if there is a serious commitment to linking physical and human geography in regional contexts.

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Creating an understanding of the role of intrapreneurs for students

Creating an understanding of the role of intrapreneurs for students (120kb PowerPoint)

Pauline Kneale and Samantha Aspinall

The long-term health and survival of any business depends on its ability to adapt and change to meet new markets and new technologies. Innovation may occur through large scale radical developments in product or process, but equally important can be small scale developmental innovations which incrementally develop a business or organization.

While research to date has considered examples of innovation arising from technological developments, this research seeks to use the case study approach to explore the nature of innovation and the role of the individual within an organization to promote and develop their organization or products.

This research and aims to build on the model of Pinchot (19 ) in understanding the ways in which individuals can operate as intrapreneurs. The cases seek to draw out the attributes and skills required by individuals, as well as the challenges and difficulties that and intrapreneurial approach meets. The intrapreneurs referred to in this paper have been chosen because they are relatively junior in their organizations and are therefore accessible, and potentially inspirational, role models for students. The individuals are deliberately not in the heroic ‘Branson’ mould.

One product of this research is a series of Context style case studies which can be used with students to develop the understanding of the role of intrapreneurs in business, and the skills and attributes that are involved. We will consider how these cases and the associated teaching materials may be used in the GEES disciplines to further develop and enhance student employability and enterprise skills.

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Employability Skills For Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Employability Skills For Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) (30kb PowerPoint)

Julie Gallimore, Project Consultant, PRS and GEES Subject Centres

We are interested in hearing how you and your students are engaging with the issues of sustainability, ethics and the place of business in the community.

The two subject centres Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences (GEES) and Philosophical and Religious Studies (PRS) are beginning to look at the ways in which these issues are incorporated in the curriculum and how students are developing skills and values linked to CSR which may enhance their employability.

In this session we will focus on the potential added value of students who can assess their impact on the wider environment and reflect on complex questions. Are they making these skills and values explicit to employers?
And how does it enhance their employability?

Because this project is a scoping study, it would be great to hear from you and discover more about your teaching practice. We have already uncovered some excellent inter-disciplinary initiatives. Come and inspire us with your examples. This will help us to build a platform for more work in this area in the future.

Julie Gallimore is an Independent Careers Consultant and Skills Trainer with over ten years experience of working in Higher Education most recently as the Deputy Director of the Careers Service at the University of Warwick.

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Did the ‘Hat’ Fit? – Reflections on an LTSN Small Project

Did the ‘Hat’ Fit? – Reflections on an LTSN Small Project (89kb PowerPoint)

Paul Wright, School of Maritime & Coastal Studies, Faculty of Technology, Southampton Institute

This paper will describe the context and implementation of learning intervention within two units of a Marine Environmental Science curriculum. This intervention was based upon the ‘Mexican Hat Approach’ or MHA, developed through funding by LTSN-Engineering, and the study examined, in part, the transferability of this model to GEES subjects.

The MHA approach was implemented by use of activity-based sessions. To begin, students were required to prepare before hand, and an explicit message was conveyed that this preparation would be evidenced and used for the activity. The classroom activity was problem based, often requiring a synthesis of the prepared work, creating an artefact. This artefact was then used to promote discussion and reflection on the attainment of session outcomes. The recording of student preparation, engagement and self-assessment allowed the tutor to identify ‘at risk’ students, and developing issues within the unit.

The study suggested that whilst the MHA was transferable across disciplines, the model had limited value for some students, questioning whether it was tutor or student centred. Secondly, evaluation of the activity based approach suggested students both liked and valued the sessions more than using the MHA under lecture conditions. Reflections on the process, along with detailed student feedback from focus groups, has established a refined model for subsequent delivery, and identified a key barrier to students attaining true independence in learning.

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Towards reusable educational objects in physical geography/geomorphology

Brian Whalley, School of Geography, Queens University Belfast - b.whalley@qub.ac.uk

Educational (or Learning) objects are chunks of information which convey a specific learning outcome, which may be small or large. If these objects are available in electronic form then it becomes, in principle, possible to re-use them (becoming REOs or RLOs). This re-use can be individual or available with a wider community. If the latter then certain problems arise: actual content, authenticity and respectability, location and locating, IPR as well as cost. We are immediately in a potential 'can of worms in a minefield' related to standards, meta data and access to such data. There are some existing repositories of REOs (e.g. MERLOT, and AAG Geomorphology Speciality group image CDROM at different ends of a spectrum) but these may not be suitable for a variety of reasons. This presentation explores the main requirements for REOs use in physical geography (concentrating on geomorphology) and then suggests collaborative ways in which some degree of interchange could be achieved. It will examine the possibility of sharing REOs ranging from PowerPoints though 'text book' diagrams to digital images. A variety of mechanisms to enable this will be suggested together with a consideration of costs and financial models, metadata and educational quality of resources.

(possible poster: integrated curriculum delivery / active learning)

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Widening Participation

Geography undergrads: Who are they and where are they coming from? (350kb PowerPoint)

Seraphim Alvanides

E-learning

GEES practitioner consultation on E-learning: Initial themes (79kb PowerPoint)

Derek France, University College Chester

Real-time voting

Real-time voting: activity and interactivity in large student groups (705kb PowerPoint)

Stephen Bostock, Keele University

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Poster:

A learning resource to support Masters-level training of geologists in professional practice

Norman Moles, School of the Environment, University of Brighton

Familiarity with professional practice increases students’ employability and assists their transition from a graduate student to a practicing geoscientist or geotechnical engineer. Postgraduate-level training is essential to enable students (a) to understand business management and the role of geologists, civil engineers and environmental scientists in industry, and (b) to advance their skills in report writing, oral presentation, negotiation and financial acumen. This is best achieved through exposure to ‘real world’ case study material.

With GEES support we are developing a multi-media learning resource for students to explore the interactions between environmental legislation, corporate strategy, financial constraints, geotechnical engineering and applied geology. Our case study is an investigation of wastewater treatment by means of sub-surface dispersion within a Chalk aquifer in southern England. We have evaluated the course with groups of students on final year undergraduate and Masters level geology courses.

Issues which we have faced during course development include achieving a suitable balance between individual and group work, between scientific understanding and professional skills development, and between specialist knowledge and transferability to other GEES disciplines. This poster explores these issues and provides a ‘taster’ of the courseware which will be available on-line in autumn 2005.

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The Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences,
Buckland House, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, PL4 8AA
Email: info@gees.ac.uk Tel: ++44 1752 584529 Fax: ++44 1752 584880