Small-Scale Learning and Teaching Research and Development Projects: 2009
- Linking student research and internationalisation in geoscience
- Location, location, location: the application of mediascapes to Geographical fieldwork
- Diversifying assessment across the 'Two Cultures': student-produced podcasts in geography
- Linking micro-climate and atmospheric pollution around the Dee and Mersey esturies: a University-School collaborative approach to education for sustainable development
- Building and testing incremental on-line assessment and feedback systems for Level 1 undergraduates in GEES
- Geography students' perspectives on improving the transition from school to university
Linking student research and internationalisation in geoscience
Simon Haslett, Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT), University of Wales, Newport
Given the nature of the subject area, it is surprising that internationalisation in geoscience subjects appears to be as problematic as other disciplines. Many institutions consider internationalisation to mean the recruitment of international students, whereas of equal concern is the raising of awarenss of international issues and appreciation of cultural diversity by students and staff, and the contribution that these areas make to the University curriculum.
Within the geosciences, field courses to international destinations are often cited as a deliverable against internationalisation targets yet, other than experiencing visiting another country, there is often very little tangible curriculum content that addresses the issues of internationalisation and the field trips are sometimes little more than guided tours. This proposal provides an opportunity to explore embedding internationalisation within the curriculum through student research projects (dissertations and theses) to be undertaken collaboratively with students studying at an overseas institution.
The University of Wales, Newport, has a timely opportunity to pilot this approach through a newly forged formal relationship with Osmania University in Hyderabad (India). It is proposed that a cohort of UK students would visit India to undertake joint research with their peers from Osmania University, both in the field and laboratory, and through pre- and post-visit online supported correspondance and a conference. It is suggested that the focus of the research would be the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami of 2004, reflecting the expertise of the proposer and project partner Dr Linda Prabhakar of the Department of Earth Sciences at Osmania University.
Location, location, location: the application of mediascapes to Geographical fieldwork
Richard Jones, School of Geography, University of Exeter
There has been growing interest in the use of locative media to support on-site fieldwork activity. This project makes use of HP Labs' Mediascapes authoring tools used to create CPS-enabled rich media resources (www.mscapers.org). These tools allow the creation of highly immersive locative media experiences that take advantage of the multiple sensors (such as GPS) built into pervasive mobile media devices such as PDAs. The Mediascape platform will form the core of a formative piece of coursework designed to run within an existing 2nd year palaeoenvironmental course currently running at Exeter. The coursework exercise will centre on the creation of a Mediascape examining the role human activity has played in the evolution of Dartmoor. Students will be tasked both with the generation of rich media digital assets and the creation of the Mediascape experience itself. The assessment will require students to carefully consider the audience for their Mediascape and may involve them creating materials for a general, non-scientific user, for instance. The project will be evaluated through a combination of workshops, focus groups and on-line blogs, which will focus on the staff/student experience of using and developing a mediascape and the potential role, if any,this approach has in learning and assessment in Geography in HE.
Diversifying assessment across the 'Two Cultures': student-produced podcasts in geography
Justine Kemp, Division of Geography, Northumbria University
Geography is unusual as a discipline in that it occupies the science/humanities divide, providing strengths but also significant challenges to teaching and learning. Teaching and learning styles and also assessment is broadly different between science-based and humanities disciplines, and engendering tolerance in students towards different methods has always been problematic. Many humanities students have a greater ability to use personal judgement and to evaluate complex issues compared to their peers from science-based courses who tend to focus on learning new measurement methods, understanding accuracy and precision, and interpreting data within their sub-disciplines. On the other hand, science students develop more domain-specific knowledge, better motivation and self reguation. Offering innovative assessment types encourages different and broader learning skills and increases engagement and motivation in students. The recent emergence of user-friendly tools has made student-produced podcasting an accessible learning tool, combining flexible provision, and efficient, cost effective teaching of oral presentation skills, and its broader benefits to undergraduate student learning are only beginning to be explored. Whilst there is the potential for new technology to enhance teaching, learning and assessment, there is equally a need to investigate its effectiveness through empirical investigation (HEFCE 2005). This project evaluates student assessment preferences in geographical courses covering the natural and social sciences and the humanities by objective comparison of student-produced podcasting with other types of summative assessment. Specifically, we aim to evaluate the effectiveness of podcasting as an assessment tool, and to better understand the challenges of teaching and learning in different geographical sub-disciplines.
Linking micro-climate and atmospheric pollution around the Dee and Mersey esturies: a University-School collaborative approach to education for sustainable development
Jenny Sneddon, School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University
Estuaries are environmentally sensitive locations. The two bounding the Wirral peninsula provide contrasting conditions for long-term environmental monitoring. The Wirral coast of the Dee Estuary is a Wetland site of International Importance for migrating wildfowl overlooked by Deeside Industrial Estate. The Mersey Estuary is abutted by urban development and industry on both sides.
Estuaries are often associated with unique and unpredictable microclimates and weather patterns. These may influence environmental quality of areas in their vicinity. Reliable longitudinal data sets are rare and yet are of cruicial importance in education, to the scientific community and for informing local government policy on environmental issues. We will monitor environmental quality in the vicinity of both estuaries for a year. Carbon monoxide, sulphar dioxide, sound, and light pollution will be logged at fixed locations in urban and rural settings on the Wirral side of the Dee estuary and at fixed points in Liverpool on the Mersey estuary. These data will be matched with data from weather stations situated on site or within 5 miles. In this School-linked but University-based project, data wiht inquiry based guidance will be accessible to Environmental Sciences students at GSCE, A Level and University via the Participate web site for Schools (http://www.participateschools.co.uk/).
Building and testing incremental on-line assessment and feedback systems for Level 1 undergraduates in GEES
Tim Stott, Faculty of Education, Community and Leisure, Liverpool John Moores University
Computers have been used for some time to improve learning and assessment in higher education and for formative assessment in Geography. At Liverpool JMU on-line tests have been developed in the Blackboard (Bb) Virtual Learning Environment and used in formative assessment since 2002 (eg. Stott & Meers, 2002; Stott et al., 2004) and have largely received positive feedback from students (eg. Stott, 2006). However, while such on-line formative tests have been used for several years now, student evaluations indicate that there is still scope to improve the ways in which they are deployed, and in particular the nature and timing of feedback delivered by them. This project aims to develop a suite of incremented on-line formative assessment tests for a 24 credit Level 1 Introductory Earth Science and Climatology double module for 50+ students which will deliver instant feedback and allow students to progress through a series of levels, based on their response to the generated feedback.
A suite of 16 on-line tests (already developed) covering all topics taught in the module will be synthesised into seven new formative tests with increasing levels of sophistication and difficulty (Levels 1-7). Feedback to incorrect answers at each level will be linked to questions at the next level so allowing students to progress by using the e-feedback. The on-line assessments will be evaluated both through students’ performances (stored in Bb’s on-line grade centre) and through an on-line evaluation questionnaire (also developed in Bb), interviews with individual students and through focus groups.
Geography students' perspectives on improving the transition from school to university
Simon Tate, Department of Geography, Newcastle University
The aim of this project is to use the experiences of current undergraduate geography students to identify ways in which all university geography departments can build more effective relationships with their local schools, with a view to a) improving the transition from school to university for local geography students; and b) increasing the number of local students applying for geography degrees -- particularly where these students come from backgrounds with traditionally low rates of participation in higher education.
Specifically the research has 3 objectives:
- To understand local students' perceptions of the academic transition from school to university geography.
- To understand local students' perceptions of the socio-cultural transition from school to university associated with the move from youth to adulthood, and the pressures that might prevent a successful application to university being made.
- To understand what changes to the relationship between local schools and universities students think would be most effective in widening participation within higher education.
In order to address these aims, the project will use participatory research techniques, focus groups and semi-structured interviews with first year undergraduate geography students from the North East who are studying for a degree at Newcastle University. Newcastle University's geography degree programmes provide an ideal case study for this research as, while the University is a member of the Russell Group, attainment at A-level in the North East is the lowest in any English region (BBC, 2008).