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Small-Scale Learning and Teaching Research and Development Projects: 2004

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The contribution of support staff to student learning in GEES disciplines

Carolyn Roberts, School of Environment, University of Gloucestershire

The role of support staff such as administrators, laboratory and field technicians, cartographers, subject librarians and ICT specialists in contributing to the quality of students' experiences of GEES disciplines is frequently unrecognised. A recent conference (June 2004) entitled 'Supporting the Supporters' organised by the GEES Subject Centre in conjunction with the University of Gloucestershire attracted a large number of participants from these groups, and testified to the fact that they frequently felt undervalued, but had a wealth of knowledge and experience that could usefully be harnessed. The main difficulties which individual support staff cited as handicapping them included weak understanding of the changing HE context, poor communications within Departments, lack of involvement with institutional policy agendas and teaching & learning initiatives, and limited staff development opportunities. The conference itself served to initiate a reflective process for those who attended, and also identified some areas that need further generic support.

This project develops previous work undertaken as part of a HEFCE-funded project relating to effective support for disabled and, through structured telephone interviews and focus groups, is designed

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Using real-world forms to focus undergraduate learning

Duncan Reavey, University College Chichester

Sometimes students find it difficult to focus on precisely what is required of them. One way to help achieve a precise focus and to increase students' motivation is to require them to complete the kinds of detailed forms that practitioners use in their professional activities. For example, Environmental Science undergraduates have completed NERC's Application for a Small Project Grant to propose their own innovative field projects by answering the questions that real-life applicants must address and having their proposals judged by the same criteria. Using such forms helps students focus their energies on providing only relevant information, address important aspects that might otherwise be forgotten, and occasionally process information in a way that gives it new significance. It also makes assessments of student learning more effective. In this small project, I propose to source, modify and trial forms through which students undertake risk assessment of field work, environmental impact assessment for specific activities in the environment, and risk assessment for those leading groups in environmental education activities. Together with the NERC form (discussed above) and the British Ecological Society's Expedition Grant Application Form, both already in use at UCC, forms will be made available for downloading by the wider GEES community. In parallel with this proposed project, I plan to complete an overview of the disparate literature on this subject.

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Enterprising Geography and Earth and Environmental Sciences students: Turning skills into profitable businesses

Inge Struder, School of Earth Science and Geography, Kingston University

This project aims to develop a credited module in workshop format for undergraduate GEES students which prepares them for setting up in business. The main objectives are to bring self-employment as a career option to students' attention and enhance students' business skills and thus their employability. The objectives of the course are to give students an understanding of the entrepreneurial process, to provide a framework in which they can practice some of the skills involved in creating new ventures and to promote self-employment as a career option. The developed teaching and learning material will be useful for other GEES departments in the UK. All material will be available for download from a webpage.
The funding for the project will be key to initiating and supporting the development of learning and teaching tools for enterprising GEES students, designed to be innovative and interactive in their approach.
The course contents will include idea generation, opportunity identification and screening, market analysis, business planning. The outcomes include:

Interdisciplinarity will be achieved by creating general interactive learning activities useful for all disciplines, in addition to case studies and examples relating to specific GEES disciplines. An interdisciplinary advisory panel will further contribute to ensuring interdisciplinarity.

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Developing undergraduate career management skills using employer job descriptions and person specifications

Nigel Richardson, Department of Natural Geographical & Applied Sciences, Edge Hill College of Higher Education

Academic Departments in HE institutions are having to consider the integration of careers education within the curriculum of degree programmes following the recommendations of the Dearing Report and the publication of the QAA Code of Practice on Careers Education, Information and Guidance. GEES graduates have a wide range of skills and attributes that graduate employers are generally looking for. However, students are generally weak at articulating the skills and qualities they have to offer, especially through the graduate recruitment process. This project focuses on the development of a resource of job descriptions and person specifications from employers of Geography graduates, and associated learning activities for use with Geography students to enhance their career preparation skills.

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Field safety training for staff in Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences in HE: establishing a framework

Pauline Couper, Geography, The College of St Mark & St John

Field work is an integral part of Geography, Earth & Environmental Science (GEES) subjects in Higher Education (HE), often using potentially hazardous locations, but at present there is no available staff training in fieldwork safety tailored to the requirements of HE. Outdoor Adventure staff members undergo considerable training in leading students in comparable outdoor environments, through nationally recognised qualifications, and have experience of delivering such training. The long-term aim of the project is thus to combine the experience of the latter with the requirements of the former, to provide opportunities for continuing professional development in field safety & leadership tailored specifically to GEES subjects.

Pump-priming is required for an initial 'consultation' project, the aim of which is to create a framework within which such courses can be developed and delivered. This consultation phase will involve establishing a 'steering group' consisting of representatives from GEES subject-related organisations - thus representing the HE teaching community - and organisations with outdoor leadership expertise. The purpose of the group would be to:

  1. identify the requirements of such staff development provision
  2. agree essential curriculum elements necessary to meet these requirements
  3. identify whether or not accreditation is necessary
  4. make recommendations regarding the practicalities of provision

This project thus represents an innovation in the provision for professional development for staff in all GEES subjects, applicable to all levels of HE (Foundation Degrees, Undergraduate and Postgraduate programmes), in every UK institution (and potentially beyond), and is based on collaboration between departments, institutions and subjects.

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Skills at Master's Level In Geography Higher Education: Teaching, Learning & Applying

Jay Mistry, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway University of London

The taught Masters programmes in Environment and Development within the Department of Geography, Royal Holloway and in the Systems Department, Open University are in the process of restructuring, and skills development has been identified as a key element for improvement. However, there is a lack of national consensus on what 'skills' are and little guidance on how they can be effectively integrated into taught Masters programmes. We believe that we can learn from students, past and present, and their eventual employers on selecting the type and level of skills taught within Masters programmes.

Our research will review 'skills' at the taught Masters level in the literature and through interviews with Masters programme coordinators within the Environment and Development domains across the UK. We will then compare perceptions of 'real world' skills between students, teachers, alumni and employers through interviews and focus groups. A detailed database of examples showing how particular skills have been taught, learnt and then applied, will be produced and made available on CD. The database will directly feedback to our programme development. Skills acquisition will be evaluated in the subsequent cohort of students to see whether there is an improvement in our skills teaching. Research progress will be regularly reviewed by a panel representing the academic, student, alumni and employer groups. The researchers will share their findings and contribute to the national debate on skills development at Masters level through publications in Planet, the Journal of Geography in Higher Education, and by participating in relevant GEES Subject Centre events.

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Combining Student Independent Learning and Peer Advice to Improve the Quality of Undergraduate Dissertations

Margaret Harrison, School of the Environment, University of Gloucestershire

The aim is to develop a student-centred learning website facility to assist students undertaking a dissertation in the GEES disciplines. There are guides about 'how to undertake / survive your dissertation', but many students are daunted by independent work. Consequently, they may not perform as well as they should. Yet students often provide good advisers of their peers and may be better suited to this than their tutors. Thus, we shall use students who have produced dissertations to provide advice for those about to undertake the task. As dissertations are a means of promulgating independent learning this combination of peer-peer contributions should encourage and support independent learning. Video clips will be used to convey information in addition to the more usual 'links to useful sources'. The development of a user-friendly website (with some inter-activity) is designed to have more appeal to current students. We shall obtain information from former students about how they went about their dissertation. We hope they will give their advice on time allocation and scheduling etc. Students at each institution will be interviewed and video-taped. Extracted vignettes will be incorporated into a website. The overriding theme will be 'what worked well for you?', 'what advice would you give to students preparing a dissertation?' etc. Graduates will also be asked to give examples of how dissertation experience has helped them obtain employment or move on to the next phase of their studies/careers.

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Embedding 'disability and access' into the environmental sciences curriculum

Emma Treby, School of Conservation Sciences, University of Bournemouth

The emergence of inclusivity as a societal goal has led to many changes in the way we manage our environment and in turn, this has implications for HE environmental science curricula design and implementation. In responding to SENDA (now DDA part 4) Universities have made significant efforts to address inclusivity in terms of the way students are able to study. However, little attention has been given to ensure staff are well informed to incorporate issues of disability and access into the curriculum, which would in turn, raise students' awareness.

For an environmental science curriculum to be inclusive, there is a need to integrate disability and access, not as an add-on issue or even as part of a student's essential skills development, but rather, in a way that enables the students to think more inclusively. Many environmental science graduates will hope to begin a career in environmental management and it is here that issues of inclusivity will be acted upon in day-to-day activities.

The aim of this project is to provide staff training in order to disseminate good practice and appropriate advice to GEES staff on how they may effectively embed issues of disability and access into the curriculum. This project will be undertaken as a partnership between Bournemouth and Kingston Universities, harnessing existing and emerging expertise, with a view to national dissemination to other HE institutions. Whilst the primary focus of the project is environmental sciences, it is intended to be transferable to wider communities within and beyond GEES disciplines.

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Getting ahead with the Hat - the Mexican Hat Approach in the GEES Disciplines

Paul Wright, School of Maritime and Coastal Studies, Southampton Institute

The Mexican Hat approach, or MHA, is a systematic learning intervention that has been successfully developed within the Engineering and Computing disciplines, and has attracted funding from the LTSN within this subject area. However, whilst the approach is claimed to be transportable into any classroom situation, its use has not been more widely investigated nor evaluated. This project aims to adopt the MHA in a number of environmental science and geography units, and evaluate the learning experience by a series of focus groups run for both students and teachers.

The MHA takes as its model a conception that students exhibit one of three characteristics; not participating, participating but not yet achieving, and participating and achieving. The intervention creates a learning experience where students prepare before class, complete an activity, and then reflect back on their experience and the product from this work. Here they assess themselves against session outcomes and then record their perceived levels of participation and achievement. A 'learning conversation' is then struck up between teacher and student to address any mismatches in perception between the students and the tutor. The promotion of this self-assessment, and the development of this conversation is part of the journey towards true independent learning.

Evaluation of these experiences, in conjunction with an independent evaluator, will allow conclusions to be drawn about transportability of technique, and facilitate a wide discussion about the development of teachers as guides through the learning process rather than keepers of knowledge.

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Student recruitment for GEES degrees in the 21st century: mobility, socioeconomic and geodemographic background of GEES undergraduates

Seraphim Alvanides (with David Croot, Plymouth), School of Geography, Politics & Sociology, University of Newcastle

Despite early warnings of falling applications for geography degrees and increasing threats to academic geography as a discipline, recent statistics from UCAS suggest that applications for JACS codes F8 (BSc) and L7 (BA) have stabilised to about 35, 000 (2002-03). The new challenge for institutions delivering geography related courses is to meet the widening participation agenda promoting geography as an inclusive, rather than an elitist subject. There is also increasing evidence of a divide between 'selecting' and 'recruiting' departments. Although this is the result of perceptions and admissions policies at the institutional level, personal experience confirms that BSc applicants (F8) come from different social backgrounds compared to BA applicants (L7). In addition, earlier work by Croot & Chalkley (1999) concluded that although geography students are highly mobile, geography departments tend to recruit from their local region. The synergistic effect of these factors is a geographical (Croot & Chalkley, 1999) and socioeconomic (Alvanides, 2004) mismatch between applications and acceptances shaping the inequitable distribution of GEES degree provision.

This project will expand on earlier research by Croot & Chalkley (1999) by looking at recent UCAS data for wider range of GEES courses at finer levels of geography, while taking into account the socioeconomic background of applicants and geodemographics of their areas. More specifically, the objectives of the project are:

  1. To construct a complete dataset of applications and acceptances for degrees in UCAS subject lines F8 and L7
  2. To conduct initial analysis on mobility of undergraduate applicants by type of degree and socioeconomic background at regional and sub-regional level
  3. To consult with HEFCE on the suitability and robustness of the 'location adjusted benchmark' for the WPA
  4. To develop a proposal for an ESRC small grant looking into mobility, socioeconomic background and geodemographic composition for all undergraduate applicants for all degrees in the UK
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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