Let students do the talking (Vincent Guermond)

I’ve been supervising five masters dissertations this year. This entails 30-minute meetings every month for five months, reading drafts of chapters and giving feedback as well as marking dissertation proposals and final papers. Here, I want to talk about different techniques I used, started to use and will use in the future during supervision meetings.

One of the most important things I have done was to clearly establish from the very start what students can expect from me, e.g. they can expect feedback on writing and advice but it should be clear that this is independent research. Another important thing I’ve done at the beginning was to manage expectations in terms of what a MSc/MA thesis actually is; students should not think that they have to revolutionise the field. This can relieve some of the anxiety students may feel in relation to the type of work they need to produce (Shadforth and Harvey, 2004). I also found out that telling students about my own experience of going through a masters and/or a PhD, and the challenges I faced, tends to make them feel better about the difficulties they may face (see Derounian, 2011).

After a couple of meetings, I’ve realised that discussions are more productive when I have concrete feedback to give. As such, I started asking students to send me a piece of writing - even very short - a few days before we meet. Obviously, it’s not always possible but this can be very helpful both for students and supervisors. Furthermore, I also realised that it’s sometime difficult to keep track of what was discussed in previous meetings and/or what the students’ action points were. I now ask students to send me a short email with some bullet points summarising what we discussed after each supervision meeting. It’s also a good way for students to reflect on what was said and what needs to be done.

Several techniques I am yet to fully develop relate to (1) how to turn dissertation writing into an opportunity for students to interact with each other, and (2) how to let students lead the conversation when discussing some difficulties they may encounter. Here, creating appropriate spaces and structures in the department for students to share feedback, including about supervision, can help host a constructive and reflexive conversation (Bulat, 2019). What’s more, one thing I’d like to experiment during supervision meetings is to try to ask more questions instead of providing answers, especially when the discussion is related to key arguments, analytical frameworks, etc. By letting students lead the conversation, and asking them follow up questions, they usually find answers to the questions they may have at the start of the meeting. This happened a few times with a couple of students and I’d like to find ways to make it more systematic in how I approach supervision meetings.

Bulat, A., 2019. The good supervision guide: A guide for new and experiences supervisors. London: University College London.

Derounian, J., 2011. Shall we dance? The importance of staff-student relationships to undergraduate dissertation preparation. Active Learning in Higher Education, 12(2):91-100.

Shadforth, T. and Harvey B., 2004. The undergraduate dissertation: Subject-centred or student-centred? Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods, 2(2): 145-52.

Responses

Thank you, Vincent, for your reflective post. I like the way you have structured it in three sections that clearly illuminate your past, present and future supervision techniques. I particularly resonated with your point about asking your students more questions, rather than simply providing them with answers; this allows them to explore their own ideas and queries fully. I have found this technique to be effective in my own supervision sessions with my PhD supervisor. Great work! (Nour El Gazzaz, English)

Response

This was a highly thoughtful post. The idea that resonated with me most was your highlighting of how valuable it is to have a piece of work to discuss. Coming from a Creative Writing background, a key component of our course is the workshop, where we discuss drafts in progress. This provides us with concrete material to analyse, and we are thus enabled to offer thoughts on how to help it develop. It can be daunting for students to share work that they do not consider 'finished'. But by encouraging them to share their formative works, it makes the discussions more valuable, taking it out of the speculative. (Michael Wheatley, English)

Teaching Podcasting Online: Coping in a COVID crisis (Saskia Papadakis)

How do you teach podcasting over MS Teams? This was the question that confronted me in October 2020. Having never taught a seminar, or on podcasting, I was now having to do both on an unfamiliar platform, to a group of students I didn’t know, in the midst of a global pandemic that has transformed teaching and learning in the academy. Discussions of ‘e-learning’ (Morss and Murray 2005) seem quaint when you're trying to cope with the stresses and anxieties of the COVID-19 crisis. In higher education, these stresses have included delivering all of our teaching online, a situation which has challenged us to develop creative methods of engaging students.

One of these creative teaching methods is podcasting. Podcasts are a brilliant resource for teaching and learning, both within and beyond the academy, a tool for democratising access to information, ideas, and critical thinking. Setting asynchronous work is a way to overcome ‘Zoom fatigue’ for students and teachers, and this can be provided through podcasts, which have the added advantage of allowing students to take a break from looking at screens all day (Strickland et al 2021).

In this seminar, I was teaching students how to record and edit their own podcasts. Because of the digital nature of podcasts, I was able to use the online setting of the seminar to my advantage. I put all the materials I had created online in advance of the session, and encouraged the students to download the editing software they would need. This meant that, not only did they have the opportunity to edit audio files in the seminar whilst I provided guidance and support, but they had access to the software on their own computers, as well as all the detailed guides I had written for them to make the process as easy as possible. In the end, the main problem I had was nerves – not only was teaching my first seminar scary, but it’s daunting talking to an online audience where you can’t see anyone’s faces (Saxena and Khamis 2021)! Six months later, I have a lot more experience with teaching online, as well as speaking at and attending online events. Next time, I will be able to follow my own advice to the podcasting students: speak slowly!

Morss K. and Murray R. (2005). Teaching at University: A Guide for Postgraduates and Researchers. London: SAGE.

Saxena A. and Khamis S. (2021). “I’ll See You on Zoom!” International Educators’ Perceptions of Online Teaching Amid, and Beyond, Covid-19. [Online] Arab Media & Society.

Strickland B.K., Brooke J.M., Zischke M.T. and Lashley M.A. (2021). Podcasting as a tool to take conservation education online. Ecology and Evolution 11: 3597–3606.

Response:

Thank you Saskia for sharing your experience of teaching podcasting online. Podcasting is indeed a fantastic tool for engaging students and providing asynchronous learning opportunities to combat "Zoom fatigue." Your approach of providing pre-recorded materials and encouraging students to download the necessary editing software was a thoughtful way to make the process more accessible and convenient for them. By offering guidance and support during the seminar, you ensured that students could actively engage in editing their podcasts while benefiting from your expertise.

Dealing with nerves and adapting to the online format can be daunting, but your perseverance and experience have helped you grow as an online educator. Your realisation of the importance of speaking slowly is valuable advice that can enhance communication in online teaching environments. (Liling Xu, Geography) 

The impact of Object Based Learning (Frankie Kubicki)

Over the last year I have taught classes to undergraduate students covering Historical Geography, History of Science and Museum Practice. In my classes I found that object based learning (OBL) can be a powerful tool to engage students. A form of active learning – which is also closely linked to experiential learning (see Kolb 1984) – OBL can be useful when approaching complex theoretical subjects, rooting students in the topic by focusing on a ‘thing’. The approach allows students to explore the multifaceted nature of objects, and creates opportunities for simple questions, such as ‘what is it?’ or ‘where was it used?’ to expand on the big themes of a topic. Significantly, using an object as an educational tool can allow for full sensory learning through active handling of objects and permit students to draw their own meanings which leads to richer understanding (Chatterjee 2015). 

Workshops using objects could follow formats such as: 

·      breaking students into pairs with an information-less object and a prompt worksheet to allow students to answer what the object is – responses could be written creatively in the form of a museum label or from the voice of the object;

·      or assigning students objects from museum collections which they should investigate and then present to the rest of the class, they could do this by PowerPoint presentation, short video or podcast. 

The key is to start with a student centred approach, and as Kristen Hardie (2015) stresses, a sense of fun – the conclusions drawn by students have not failed to surprise and impress me.

Bibliography 

Chatterjee, H., Hannan, L. (2015). Object-Based Learning in Higher Education. Ashgate.

Hannan, L., Chatterjee, H., & Duhs, R. (2013). ‘Object Based Learning: A Powerful Pedagogy for Higher Education’. In A. Boddington, J. Boys, & C. Speight (Eds.), Museums and Higher Education Working Together: Challenges and Opportunities (pp. 159-168). Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. 

Hardie, K., (2015). Wow: The power of objects in object-based learning and teaching, Higher Education Academy. [Online at https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/wow-power-objects-object-based-learning-and-teaching]

Kolb, D. (1984). Experiential learning: experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Response (Lilly Markaki):  As someone who, as a student, has always found experiential learning very effective, I was  happy to read this post and to be reminded of the power of 'things' to elicit curiosity and invite creative responses. I found this strategy particularly interesting also as someone who has just taught as part of  a course focused on digital media and practices; as it made me realise how easy it is to forget that there are also 'objects' or material structures hidden underneath digital and online culture  -- objects that I will definitely be bringing to class if I ever get to teach a similar course. Thanks for sharing! 

Response:

Very interesting workshop ideas! Experiential learning is an effective way to immerse students into the broader context and help them in their active learning I totally agree with what you share; exploring the multifaceted nature of objects, could initiate discussions and bring new aspects into the subject. (Lorentsa Gkinko, Management) 

Afternoon at the Museum: Sharing Agency Through Seminars (Emily Hopkins)

During my role as a seminar leader last year, I led a session titled ‘The Cultural Geography Museum’. Following a series of lectures on the topic of visualising culture, and an accompanying set of weekly readings, the seminar was trying to turn the topic into a more practice-based and hands-on activity. The object-led seminar was formed to encourage a cross-communicative task, whereby students could learn from the examples their peers had brought whilst also practicing their presentation skills. The seminar began with a brief starter task: the students were all given a newspaper article on museum repatriation, which was read in silence for the first five minutes of the session. Then, a short five-minute discussion was encouraged, to discuss the material they had just read (which included some controversial content in order to provoke opinions). Following this, the students were all invited to bring out an item they had been asked in advance to bring from home. The item was to represent their individual culture, thus sticking with the theme of museums and displaying cultures. Each student was given two minutes to present their item to the group, before all items were placed on a desk at the front.

We photographed each collection of items, in order to have a reference point for future sessions and to try and encourage interest on social media and to digitalise the seminar (the picture was posted on Twitter). Then, we asked certain questions to encourage thoughts on object classification in displays: how many items were made in the UK, for example. Any that were made in the UK were left, those that were not were removed. This was repeated. 

When discussing the plan for the lesson, I brought in ideas I had learnt from Fransson (1976): how a relaxed learning environment was argued to condition a deeper level of understanding and the usage of more learning processes, in comparison to an anxious environment that was shown to encourage surface learning. Furthermore, the student-centred nature of the lesson allows for a transmission approach to learning, which also has been argued to secure deeper learning (Gibbs, 1981). This session was successful as the activity provoked a deeper sense of engagement with the content, whilst trying to encourage thoughts and questions that could be applied outside of the seminar room and in real world examples. It also allowed for student-to-student interaction and reflection, in comparison to traditional read and discuss seminar plans, which Rose identified as an important element of teaching university-level geography (Rose, 1996). If I was to undertake the technique again, I would incorporate Rose’s ideas of including multimedia visual materials to increase the relatability of the session – perhaps a video. Also, I would maybe introduce an ice breaking activity before the object presentations, to make the student more comfortable before discussing items with personal value. 

Fransson, A. (1977) ‘On qualitative differences in learning: effects on intrinsic motivation and extrinsic test anxiety on process and outcome’, British Journal of Educational Psychology, 47, pp. 244-257. 

Gibbs, G. (1981) Teaching Students to Learn. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. 

Rose, G. (1996) ‘Teaching visualised geographies: towards a methodology for the interpretation of visual materials’, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 20(3), pp.517-522.

Reflection on teaching in the field (Alice Reynolds)

Last term I had my first experience of teaching in the field with first year undergraduate students. The aim of the sessions was for students to work in small groups to implement geographical research methods which they had been taught and later practised in a series of classroom practicals. In doing so, the aim of the work was for students to attain a geographical sense of place, which they were later to reflect on in a coursework project. 

Fieldwork is widely perceived as an integral part of geographical higher education (Haigh and Gold, 2007). It allows students to put into practice the research methods and skills they have learnt in the classroom, bringing “reality to geographical study” (Monkhouse, 1955, p.27). However, as Longergan and Andreson (1988, p.70) state: “effective learning cannot be expected just because we take students into the field”. 

Due to the nature of the ethnographic work being conducted in the field, with key methods including interviews and observations, students can be easily distracted by their surroundings (Kent et al. 1997). Due to the fact I could not be with all students at once, I found it difficult to assess student’s performance in the field and whether they were truly concentrating on the task in hand. Whilst we regrouped at the end of the fieldwork and reflected on the use of the methods and data collected, naturally there were some students who participated in discussion more than others, and some who did not contribute at all. 

On reflection, I think convening with the students directly after the fieldwork to allow them time to analyse their own data whilst in a classroom setting may be a way of ensuring students collect their own individual data whilst in the field. Furthermore, assessing the students in part through the submission of a field notebook and self-reflective essay could also prove beneficial. 

I would be interested to hear if anyone else had experiences teaching in the field, and how best to ensure students stay on the right path and collect their own data whilst working in a group scenario? 

References: 

Haigh, M. and Gold, J. R. (1993) ‘The problems with fieldwork: a group‐based approach towards integrating fieldwork into the undergraduate geography curriculum’, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 17(1), pp.21-32. 

Kent, M., Gilbertson, D. and Hunt, C. (1997) ‘Fieldwork in Geography Teaching: a critical review of the literature and approaches’, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 21 (3), pp. 313-332. 

Lonergan, N. and Andresen, L. W. (1988) ‘Field-based education: some theoretical considerations’, Higher Education Research Development, 7, pp.63-77. 

Monkhouse, F. (1955) The Concept and Content of Modern Geography, An Inaugural Lecture Delivered at the University of Southampton on 24 February 1955. London and Southampton: Camelot Press.

Response:

I really appreciate this article. Whilst I did enjoy many aspects of my earth sciences undergrad, field-work was always the one topic I seemed to struggle with as I always got confused and left out meaning that my marks were often lower affecting my confidence. 

I definitely agree with Alice’s suggestion about convening with students directly after fieldwork in a classroom setting. This would definitely be useful to clarify the knowledge and skills gained, share different viewpoints on data and most importantly help students who may have been struggling in work catch up which was a problem I often encountered in fieldwork. (Robbie Cooke, Earth Sciences)

Fieldwork is such an important part of the learning experience, but I agree it often turns into an undergraduate idea of a day off! I found this website which might be useful as it has a list of case studies on geography field trips as well as technologies which might be used to aid the learning experience: https://enhancingfieldwork.org.uk/resources/ (Camilla Blasi Foglietti, Biological Sciences)

Thanks for your helpful insights Alice – I also found it challenging to keep students engaged in the field when they needed to do their own fieldwork. In my experience, the students were nervous about approaching people to interview and would get stuck with what questions to ask. To try to combat this, I chose to be present for the first interview that each of my group did in the field. I hoped that this way they would get a practical idea of how to do an interview, and hopefully generate some good data for them to reflect on in their coursework. I’ll definitely take away the idea of convening with students after work in the field as a way to solidify learning. (Laura Shipp, Geography)

“Sedimentology is all about cake, trust me!” (Dave Arnold)

For several years in a row now I have demonstrated on the physical geography first year undergraduate trip. The students study both physical and human geography in their first year, so I have to often demonstrate complicated geological and geographical contexts to some fairly unenthused human geographers who are much more at home interviewing tourists in a coffee shop. 

The basics of the sedimentology of cliff sections revolves around “units” and as a relatively experienced scientist who gets this simple idea without hesitation, I was frustrated and frankly annoyed that some students weren’t getting it. The first year on the trip, both days I taught this left me exasperated that students weren’t getting that a unit is just a section of a cliff that is somehow different from the other units above or below it. A cliff section is just made out of units, one on top of the other. I was also helped by a lab technician with no background at all in this area who was also struggling to explain the unit concept and the both of us together just seemed to make the problem worse and our students were left totally confused with the task at hand and at the end the only result was some confused faces and my migraine. 

The next year on the trip I had to approach this differently. The two groups the previous year had a mix of students, and on both days…nobody got it? Must have been how I was explaining it. It occurred to me over dinner on the night before the sedimentology day whilst I was perusing the hotel buffet dessert selection. Cake! The cliff wasn’t just made out of units, it was made out of layers! There’s dense sponge, there’s runny jam and on the top is fluffy cream. The units in the cliff are different consistencies, textures, colour and that’s how you tell one from another. Just like the layers in the cake. Suffice it to say, the cake explanation worked a treat on the second year I taught on the trip. The lab technician asked me to explain it to her groups as my groups were way ahead on the task. Three months ago I taught on the trip again for the third time and when the sea of confused freshers stood there staring at rocks and sediments, I knew all I had to say was “Sedimentology is all about cake, trust me!” and the concept was clear. 

Sometimes you have some bright students who seem to pick up new concepts and complicated ideas relatively easily but, in my experience, this is rare, especially with group activities. I didn’t get it when I first learned this, so I tell them I was just like them. Once you frame an idea or concept through something else more familiar it can get the message across. Analogies work!

Response:

Cake is a nice and classic analogy to teach sedimentology. In my case, I used Tetris game as an anology. The way Tetris tiles always fall from above and stack on top of others is similar to how suspended particles deposit in a sequence. (Seehapol Utitsan, Earth Science)

Those who don’t teach in the Earth Sciences would be surprised how many concepts can be explained with food. I had a lecturer once who taught the molecular structures of sheet silicates by comparing them to ingredients in cheese sandwiches. Cake can also be used in my field of Structural Geology to show how the competence of different units reacts differently to structural change (i.e. hitting to pieces of cake together quite hard). (Samuel Melia, Earth Sciences)

As you mention in your final paragraph, you can get a student group with a diverse range of abilities or existing knowledge about a particular subject. I find this is especially enhanced in first-year undergraduate courses, where they have just finished A-level or equivalent exams, and due to different exam boards, combinations of courses and general personal backgrounds – there can be a real gulf in knowledge. The adaptability you discuss is exemplary! I also read a lot of parallels between your post and one by Frances Madden, April 2017 (https://sites.google.com/view/instiltandlspace/library), who describes the use of LEGO to teach the topic of metadata (Lamb and Higman, 2017). [Lamb, K. and Higman, R., 2017. Making Metadata Matter (with Lego)! Available at: http://www.librarianintraining.com/2017/01/making-metadata-matter-with-lego.html[Accessed 27/05/2019].] (Alex Hughes, Earth Sciences)

Learning through the scenario (Laura Shipp)

As both a student and a teacher, I have had the experience of learning through the scenario. They are simulations in which you take on a role and respond to a given brief. You might be embodying a different persona for a few hours, interacting with others in their personas and to the events that unfold in the fictional situation. This post will outline experiences this method of teaching and will consider the benefits to drawbacks in designing a scenario for teaching purposes. 

As a learner, my experience of a scenario was as part of my masters. It was a 6-hour long process where our masters course became members of the military and the media, our interactions with each other simulating those that might go on within and between these different groups. It allowed for a complex and visceral understanding of what these relationships might feel, how tensions could build and potentially lead to a relationship breakdown. As a teacher, I have been involved with a longer less intense one. This week-long collaborative exercise with students from RHUL and another university, had to design a security briefing for a megaevent as if they were security professionals briefing the Cabinet on the issue. This briefing formed the assessment at the end of the week. It required various levels of research and fieldwork and for students to use their skills and knowledge across their backgrounds and expertise from their masters on a practical issue relating to a real-life scenario. 

In both exercises, a high level of learning took place. In terms of Bloom’s taxonomy, it would be towards designing, creating, judging. Moreover, your physical and emotional involvement in exercise produces a high level of situational understanding in the case of the first scenario. The nature of the exercise allows students to demonstrate other kinds of skills too. Often exercises work in groups, requiring teamwork and for some leadership. They may also demonstrate presentation skills, in the case of the second exercise, ensuring that coursework is not entirely weighted in favour of written skills. 

On the other hand, however, the drawbacks of scenarios are worth considering. They require significant setup time, in designing the activities or the direction the simulation will unfold on. They require blocks of time, as with the second exercise, in which different teaching staff took turns to be present. There must be opportunity for those who feel uncomfortable within these situations to step back, for example, those with anxiety in order to make the exercise inclusive. It may be challenging for subjects outside the humanities and social sciences. 

These are aspects I didn’t give much thought to as a learner but do consider more seriously now. As a teacher, though I have also learnt they can be enjoyable for the level of engagement the students input to these events and the skills they bring out of them. Overall, scenarios can be fun experiences for both learners and teachers.

Using multimedia in seminars: recognising different ways of learning (Jess Fisher)

There is a huge variation in the ways people absorb knowledge, through a variation in styles of learning (Pashler et al. 2008). While this has been disputed, given that the same individual may prefer a variety of learning styles (Rohrer and Pashler 2012), groups of students placed together within the same learning environment will differ in what they absorb based on how they best learn new information. Using different forms of media in education, termed multimedia instruction, enhances the learning experience (the multimedia principle) through appealing to different learning styles (Mayer 2008). 

This is useful for teachers from primary through to University education. During the delivery of seminars within the Geography department, I found that students were most engaged when I delivered a seminar using a variety of activities and multimedia. One particular seminar contrasted with the usual format of a discussion based around some academic literature. Although the students were given some prior material to digest, the seminar itself used Powerpoint, discussion, group work, and video activities (Jacques and Salmon 2007). It used material that related to the student’s real lives, including newspaper extracts, content from David Attenborough videos, and group discussion questions that allowed students to relate personally with the topic, therefore maintaining their interest. 

This method appeared particularly effective in communicating the seminar content, compared to other methods, as well as engaging the students more generally with the research topic. There was much positive feedback and a number of enquiries after the seminar was over. 

Jacques, D., & Salmon, G. (2007). Learning in groups: A handbook for face-to-face and online environments. Routledge. 

Mayer, R.E. (2008). Applying the science of learning: evidence-based principles for the design of multimedia instruction. American Psychologist 63(8) 760-769. 

Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles: concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest. 9(3),105-119. 

Rohrer, D., & Pashler, H. (2012). Learning styles: where’s the evidence? Medical Education. 46: 34-35.

A lesson from Archaeology  (Ed Brookes)

As geographers one of our key areas of interest is the idea of ‘place’. Exploring different sites and places is arguably at the heart of much of the teaching that we do. Having taught on a first year fieldwork module that focuses on ethnography and the use of ethnographic recording techniques to gain an understanding of a geographical sense of place, I noted how some of the students struggled with getting their heads round the idea of ‘ethnography’ and writing about the places that they were studying. In particular when writing about their own observations many often remarked that ‘they didn’t know what to look for’, which I was sympathetic towards.  To suddenly go from the classroom and a theoretical understanding of ‘ethnography’ to then abruptly ‘go out’ and ‘do it’ can be quite a leap for many of the students. Where do you possibly begin when writing geographically about ‘place’ when there is everything you can see and hear around you? 

This made me consider whether there was a better way to break down these ideas and explore them in such a way that still retained the idea of what ethnography and sense of place was about. So I turned to a teaching practice that I had both tried and used when working alongside a contemporary archaeologist, who used cue cards with various concepts written on them as a means to structure place-based observations. The words can be as abstract or specific as you like such as ‘sounds’, ‘history’, ‘people’ or something as particular as ‘concrete’ (depending on the research focus). After which the cards are handed out to each group who then go away and explore the surrounding environment and record what they feel best fits the concept/ word they have been given. So, if a pair had been given the card ‘sounds’ they might then record all the sounds they could hear in a given location or as one group chose to do just the sounds that they found annoying. Sometimes this is best done without the students writing any notes at all but to simply allow them to attune to the environment according to the word they have been given. Once finished each group or pair returns for a debrief and group discussion, each sharing the experience and data they collected. Each gradually piecing together a different sense of the place/site based solely from each of the cards they had been given. 

Through the discussion what should emerge is how different understandings and perspectives of the place they were studying begin to coalesce and how a sense of place can be built up from different material, affective and experiential layers which they have come to observe through using the words on their cards. For example, one group may have recorded everything that was made of concrete, whilst another may have listed all the sounds they heard. From this you are then able to build a picture of what the place is like. It also introduces how many of these concepts go overlooked or unobserved in our everyday lives and how actually spending time to think about them in a critical way using this technique and other ethnographic methods allows us to explore places more deeply. What I also like about this technique is that it also exposes its own limitations as hopefully through the discussion what should also become clear is that each person’s individual biases about what to record and how are also evident, as some may choose only things they think are important whilst missing out others. In addition, being given only a single criteria or concept to observe also removes it from the context it was situated in so again only gives a partial picture of a place. 

The real advantage of this technique is that by breaking down the task of ethnographic fieldwork into recording singular observations of a given place, it makes it easier to understand how to begin writing and recording in an ethnographic way. That the cards help to get around that daunting moment that the students described of ‘what to look for’ or ‘write about’ by acting as a prompt that can structure their observation. Not only that but it exposes them to some of the techniques, the biases and the practice of carrying out ethnographic research as a whole. It can then be scaled back up to consider a whole site and that through utilising different ethnographic methods you can come to explore the concept of place in many different ways. As a group task based around practice and discussion it also offers the benefits of being interactive and student led, so students can play around and discuss their own findings. I also found it to be very quick and easy to setup with just a handful of cards and pens which can be rotated if needed to carry out the session again and again. I would be interested to hear what people think of this technique? Have they tried something similar? And whether they feel that their students would benefit from a practical approach that breaks such ideas down? 

Some thoughts on online teaching (Yunting Qi)

Due to the outbreak of coronavirus in February 2020, all Chinese universities have to postpone the start date of new semester and encourage students to stay at home and avoid going out. Some universities, in order to reduce the impact of epidemic on predetermined teaching tasks, require teachers to teach online instead of in actual classroom. Online teaching under the context of coronavirus has invoked much discussion in China. Given these discussion and my previous teaching experience, I am thinking the possibility of using online approach in my future teaching.

There are two advantages of online courses. First, online courses can provide more freedom to students and teachers (Kanuka, 2002). When I taught last semester, I found that not all students attended every class. If it had been an online course, these students who missed class would have made up their missed class through watching saved teaching videos. Also, teachers have more freedom in class design. For example, I could invite a distance guest speaker to join my class. Second, online courses provide a wide range of choices about contents and lecturers (think of massive online open courses!). Students can develop a more comprehend understanding of specific concepts/knowledge through attending online courses taught by different lecturers (Keengwe & Kidd, 2010).

There are also some challenges to do online teaching. First, online teaching requires a different pedagogic approach (Baran, Correia & Thomposon, 2013). Teachers have to change their class designs, teaching behaviours and teaching materials (slides and handouts) according to the online teaching environment. Second, as students need to face their computers for hours, there are so many issues to distract their attention from class, such as emails, online chats, games and various notifications. In online environment, in which teachers usually cannot see the actual persons of students but profile photos, it is hard for teacher to recognise whether they are focusing on teaching content. Third, an efficient online communication with students requires strong support of internet technology (Kim & Bonk, 2006). I guess that everyone has terrible experience that poor internet connection spoils the great chat with friends. What if it is one-to-many teaching with poor Internet? Online teaching will become online disaster. Forth, online teaching may not suits all geographical courses. Geography teachers not only verbally explain geographical knowledge, but also lead students to experience specific spaces/places in person. In other words, there are many on-site teaching and fieldwork courses in geography, which are impossible to be conducted online.

Overall, in the foreseeable future, I primarily employ traditional teaching in class/field and may adopt online teaching as a kind of supplement to traditional teaching. Above thoughts are based on my own experience and related literature. I would be interested to hear if anyone else had taught online, and how online teaching works in their experience?

Baran, E., Correia, A. P., & Thompson, A. (2013). Tracing successful online teaching in higher education: Voices of exemplary online teachers. Teachers College Record, 115(3), 1-41.

Kanuka, H. (2002). A principled approach to facilitating distance education: The Internet, higher education and higher levels of learning. Journal of Distance Education, 17(2), 70-86.

Keengwe, J., & Kidd, T. T. (2010). Towards best practices in online learning and teaching in higher education. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 6(2), 533-541.

Kim, K. J., & Bonk, C. J. (2006). The future of online teaching and learning in higher education. Educause quarterly, 29(4), 22-30.

Response:

A good piece of work regarding online teaching. I want to comment one thing about how to attract students’ attention. One thing I noticed in the past two weeks is students would be engaging more often when they have an online tutorial or seminar, but definitely not a lecture. So I think even adjusting the delivery method is not ideal but it might be a way to interact with students in online teaching.  (Shuang Zhang, Departments of Earth Sciences/Geography)

Designing and delivering a new field-trip project (Edward Armston-Sheret)

This year, I have been teaching on the Geography Department’s Cyprus field Trip. This field trip is part of a second-year geography course on geopolitics. There are about 40 students on the trip, but they are divided up into five smaller groups, with each group working on a different project. I have taught on the field trip once before, delivering a project designed by a member of staff. This year, I was given the chance to develop my own project. In this post, I want to talk about some of the challenges and opportunities that designing a new module has presented. 

The project I designed was titled “travel and tourism in a divided island.” Students are tasked with investigating how the division of Cyprus — between an unrecognised state in the North and the internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus in the south — has shaped practices of travel of tourism on the island. I begin developing the project by thinking about what I wanted the students to learn, developing a set of clear learning outcomes (Caspersen, Smemby, and Olaf Aamodt, 2017).  In particular, I wanted the students to think about tourism as a political activity—with power relations shaping where people travel and what they see and do when they get there. I then developed a reading list and a set of tutorial activities around these aims. 

So far (we are only part-way through the preparation for the field trip) these activities have gone well. In the first tutorial, I got the students to examine promotional materials and maps issued by the governments both in the north and the south. I initially got the students to work together on this in pairs before bringing the discussion together as a whole group (drawing on the ideas in Timo Uotinen’s blog post). These activities proved effective at getting the students to think critically about both practices of tourism and the materials they were presented with. I felt that this was a particularly useful activity as it got the students to engage with primary source materials and to develop their critical thinking skills. 

One of the challenges I have found with developing a new project is giving the students an appropriate level of guidance and support while also allowing space for them to develop their own projects and research questions. Indeed, in the first seminar, discussing the course with the students has led me to reflect on the subject and what’s interesting and important about it. For instance, students were particularly interested in why the different governments were so interested in explaining the division of the island to tourists. This is something I hadn’t thought about a lot beforehand and that I would like to address more in future seminars. On reflection, the process of designing a project and beginning to deliver it has made me see the importance of feedback and flexibility in the learning process and the importance of using students’ ideas to develop and improve the course. If I run the same project next year, I will incorporate some of these ideas and allow more space for the students to give feedback on the project itself.

References

Caspersen, J, Smeby, J‐C, and Olaf Aamodt, P (2017). “Measuring learning outcomes.” European Journal of Education, pp. 1– 11.  

Is there ever a way to replace geography fieldwork by online teaching? (Shuang Zhang)

My original plan to post on this blog was to discuss the fieldwork practice in the subject of geography and how it is related to the undergraduate teaching. However, in response to the situation of coronavirus and online teaching activities in the past two weeks, I changed my mind and got more into the idea of relationship between online teaching and geography. 

As many geography and Earth Science peers already discussed here, field work is essential in geography teaching (Kent et al., 1997). It is the only way to understand, apply and practice the geographic concepts and skills. If students do not go to the field, they cannot simply imagine a cultural environment of a different society or illustrate those massive scale geomorphological changes in their head. But one thing worth noting is the significant natural divide in the subject of geography, i.e. physical and human geography. Both sides apply the general geographic idea in studies. But human geographers are paying more attention to social, cultural and political aspects of societies, whilst physical geographers either study the pure natural process on the earth or the human-environment interactions. Therefore, the cancellation of undergraduate field trip is more complex than it sounds. Teachers have to adapt different teaching approaches to help student acquire the knowledge they should’ve learnt in a completely different environment.

I have looked into some replacement measures of field trip across different universities. Most geography departments are now requiring a literature review of the topic instead of the original field report. It sounds sensible, but for students, it would be really hard for them to adopt the sense of data collection methods in the field. For human geography students, teachers might be able to arrange some online interviews for students to practice. But for physical geography students, there is no way to deliver how to collect muds or catchment data by not going to the field. In this case, I think the best way is to change the contents we aim to deliver. 

Technology has revolutionised the geography as well as geography teaching (Lemberg & Stoltman, 1999). In particular, GIS is now used as a common classroom technology. Teaching is not simply considered as one element, it is consisted of delivering knowledge by teachers, acquiring skills by students and also assessment of both teaching and learning elements. In other words, when we apply online teaching and/or modern technology as the replacement of fieldwork, we need to consider three elements together. In practice, we could change the geographic scale of teaching and learning. Usually when students go on a fieldwork, they are expecting to carry out some local scale geographic studies, more like a case study. But for online teaching, we could change it to a regional scale or continental scale by using the online database and pc softwares. And it would be more interesting for student to practice the real data than collecting data from the old literature. 

Also, with the evolvement of pandemic, both physical and human geographers could consider paying more attention to health geography. Health geography is the application of geographical information, perspectives, and methods to the study of health, disease, and health care, it might require some knowledge of medical systems and public health. But as the spread of disease also needs to be assessed in transnational scale under different social, cultural and natural contexts (Scholten et al., 1991). Mapping the disease correctly and timely is also critical. So if teachers are running out of the options of producing a complete replacement curriculum for fieldwork, putting students in practice with pandemic and geographic data, making some statistics and drawing some suggestions based on their observations would be an idea of practice geography skills in real life. The aim of geography teaching is generally to allow students to make sense of the real world, locally and globally (Martin, 2006). But geography teaching often fails the substantiality of itself, as many aspects (social, political) could be taught in a descriptive manner with a lack of deep understanding (Morgan, 2000), even at undergraduate level. This idea of getting students into real health and geographic data is not hard to practice with the aid of internet, students can also have effective group discussions and supervisory meeting, and reach online resources easily. 

All these above are my thoughts related to online teaching in relations to geography fieldwork at undergraduate level. 

Lemberg, D. and Stoltman, J.P., 1999. Geography teaching and the new technologies: Opportunities and challenges. Journal of Education, 181(3), pp.63-76.

Martin, F., 2006. Everyday geography. Primary Geographer, 61(3), pp.4-7.

Morgan, J., 2000. Geography teaching for a sustainable society. Reflective practice in geography teaching, pp.168-178.

Kent, M., Gilbertson, D.D. and Hunt, C.O., 1997. Fieldwork in geography teaching: A critical review of the literature and approaches. Journal of geography in higher education, 21(3), pp.313-332.

Scholten, H.J. and De Lepper, M.J., 1991. The benefits of the application of geographical information systems in public and environmental health. World Health Statistics quarterly. Rapport Trimestriel de Statistiques Sanitaires Mondiales, 44(3), pp.160-170.

Handing over control to our students 

(Cathy Smith)

We all know how difficult it is to keep students engaged for several hours, and how much work goes into preparing lectures and workshops of this length. Could giving students a more active role in the classroom help on both fronts?

As a PhD student I was course assistant for a master’s course in political ecology at the University of Edinburgh. The students had a weekly 2-hour class with a novel format. The first hour was a ‘standard’ interactive lecture delivered by the course leader, the second hour was designed and delivered by a small group of students. At the start of term, each student was assigned to a team, and each team given some reading material and a theme as prompts. The team then collaborated to create a 50-minute class on the material. The format was open, but students usually chose to include a short presentation of ideas, then some activities. My role was checking in with each group, discussing their plans with them and giving advice.

This structure was great. To teach a topic, the students had to develop deep, critical thinking in that area. It also encouraged self-reflection on their learning; to come up with exciting ways to teach the material to others they had to think about the learning strategies that they themselves found most useful. There were different roles to suit different students’ abilities, from preparing resources, to presenting to the class. Putting many heads together to design each class made for really varied formats and activities. This, and the novelty of being taught by their peers, helped to keep the students engaged for two hours. My role involved a lot of work, but it was more interesting than preparing PowerPoint slides for a teacher-led class. I got to know the students and had a sense of how they were coping with the course.

Of course, this format might not work in all contexts. It was great at master’s level, because learning is more self-directed than at undergraduate, the students are more confident taking control, and have more experience of what works in the classroom. It also suited this course, which involved lots of open questions and debate. It would be interesting to think about how it could work in other disciplines.

Following the thing: opening up economic geography
(William Jamieson)

Part of the trickiness of teaching 1st year undergraduate students is to apprise them of the core concepts and key methods that they need to build their knowledge-base in the subject, but not be too prescriptive or limit the terms of their engagement, otherwise they may lose interest or, worse still, quash any burgeoning independent thinking they might have. As a Tutorial Fellow, I was there to help 1st year students understand and implement the foundational concepts and building blocks of human geography as a discipline. One of the key concepts in economic geography is the commodity chain, and how under globalization production and consumption have grown increasingly transnational.  Especially at the beginning, economic geography can seem especially dry and not as compelling for students as other foundational concepts such as place or landscape, and so what I did to make the topic seem more alive for students was to ask them to pick a consumeable or an item of clothing out of their lives and prepare a quick presentation on how it has made its way into their hands. This exercise was inspired by an exercise David Harvey often set for his students in an essay he wrote on the geographic imagination (Harvey, 1990).  The exercise begins with asking 

'beginning geography students to consider where their last meal came from. Tracing back all the items used in the production of that meal reveals a relation of dependence upon a whole world of social labour conducted in many different places under very different social relations and conditions of production. … Yet we can in practice consume our meal without the slightest knowledge of the intricate geography of production and the myriad social relationships embedded in the system that puts it upon our table.' (ibid: 422-3) 

This approach was also inspired by Cook's 'follow the thing' methodology that he has since developed into a full-on platform for tracing the production and consumption networks of various household objects. This strategy was also informed by own research, where I am examining dynamics of sand extraction in Southeast Asia and land reclamation in Singapore. I began the class with a quick overview of how my research informs my understanding of commodity chains, and the sudden scarcity of sand as a resource undermines our cultural understanding of sand. This was then followed by short presentations from the students, and then ended with a discussion that I facilitated.

What I found when I asked students to prepare something that stemmed from their own lives and experiences was that they were a lot more invested in understanding why certain objects and items came from as far away as they did, and what were the shipping lanes and logistical practices which brought everyday household goods thousands of miles to their local shop (or more often their Amazon account). What I found was that by anchoring this complex and somewhat dry concept inside of their own lives, students were more willing to engage not only with how globalization has changed production and consumption, but began to integrate how landscape and place shape these dynamics. The  commodity chain, through this exercise, ended up being a  threshold concept for some students, able to reflect more fully on the 'geographic imagination'. While not all students engaged in this way, I was able to see how the less engaged students were still building off of their base of knowledge, reminiscent of Bloom's taxonomy as they began with some recognition and recollection and moved towards a more analytic mode (Armstrong, 2010), with the exercise prompting them to connect the core concept to their examples.

Giving students a platform to engage with these core ideas on their own terms worked well to get them invested in how these foundational concepts function in the real world. 

References

Armstrong, P. (2010). Bloom’s Taxonomy. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching
Cook, I. (2004), Follow the Thing: Papaya. Antipode, 36: 642-664. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2004.00441.x 

Harvey, D. (1990) Between space and time: reflections on the geographical imagination. Annals, Association of American Geographers 80(3), 418-434 

Meyer, E, and Land, R. (2003). Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge. Durham: ETL Project

Techniques to Engage Students Online (Rebekah Thompson)

Online teaching has required me to rethink the techniques and methods I use in order to engage students. From my own experience of teaching online, I have found the following techniques valuable:

Online tools: In my teaching I, like other researchers (Mayhew 2019), have found mentimeter particularly useful. Mentimeter is an inclusive and accessible online teaching tool that allows all individuals within a group to collectively contribute to a discussion. Mentimeter allows students to engage anonymously and this removes many barriers to students’ participation. The use of mentimeter has allowed me to clarify students’ understanding and allowed me to develop answers if I feel more information is necessary. I have mainly been using mentimeter for recapping the topic at the beginning of a session or for wrapping up a topic at the end of a session. I have typically used the word cloud or open-ended question slides. Even though I have only used mentimeter during my online sessions, because of all the benefits listed above I will now also incorporate mentimeter into my in-person teaching sessions.

Smaller group activities: An approach that I have found to be successful when teaching online is to design activities that students can discuss in smaller groups. Research findings have indicated that students prefer working interactively in groups online rather than passively listening to a lecture (McCleery 2015). I have, therefore, used online breakout groups to encourage students to apply the knowledge they have been learning to real-life issues. I plan these breakout sessions to be between 10 and 15 minutes and during the breakout session, I circulate between the groups listening into discussions and answering any questions. I then ask the groups to come back and feedback to the wider group. I have observed that it takes students a longer time to establish relationships with each other online, therefore, breakout groups are more productive if students know what the activity is going to be before the session.

I would be interested to hear other techniques that people have used in order to encourage students to connect, communicate, and collaborate online.

Mayhew, E. (2019). ‘No longer a silent partner: How Mentimeter can enhance teaching and learning within political science’. Journal of Political Science Education 15(4): 546-551.

McCleery, R. (2015). ‘Teaching wildlife techniques to millennials with a flipped classroom’. Wildlife Society Bulletin 39(4): 822–826.

Even in an online teaching environment, practical sessions are key. (Daniel Gallagher)

In Geography, fieldwork and practical sessions are vital to increase student's understanding beyond theory and previous background knowledge (Kent et al.,1997). Within the field of Palaeoecology (past vegetation), the ability to work in the field allows students and academics to see a particular environment in detail. Creating virtual fieldtrips via Google Earth is just one example of how field locations can still be seen and discussed.

The typical palaeoecological fieldwork looks at pollen to study past vegetation types with the use of statistical software to analyse this data growing in use but also importance. Allowing students to use a pre-written piece of code to analyse data in a novel way leads to a greater immersive experience. Unfortunately, there is no simple guide to the methods that were used in the practical session I taught. The only information about in-context use of the method can be found within the literature, but this may be using a method in a slightly different way to what you propose for your own research. Therefore, allowing the students first-hand experience with use of this code, I think, is the best way of teaching and exploring what can be done. Further to this, asking the students to lead the discussion on their results increases the development of deep critical thinking.

Despite the switch to online teaching and the restrictions around fieldtrips, the ability to screenshare allowed this practical learning session to still go ahead. It created a more in-depth learning experience which was student-led. I think that this is a positive example of how students can still receive practical experience in both an online but also face-to-face setting which is at the advancing end of a new approach within the field.

Reference

Kent, M., Gilbertson, D.D. and Hunt, C.O., 1997. Fieldwork in geography teaching: A critical review of the literature and approaches. Journal of geography in higher education, 21(3), pp.313-332.

Response

Thank you for this very interesting insight into your adaptation of fieldwork analyses during the pandemic. Limitation on students being able to access the field during the pandemic has definitely had an impact on their quality of learning. Being able to analyse the specimens/soil in-situ within its natural environment is a key skill of any geographer. It is interesting to see from an Earth Science point of view, how other disciplines have also chosen to adapt their field trips to a virtual delivery over the last couple of years. 

Being forced to miss out on such a key aspect of learning as a natural scientist has definitely impacted the quality of learning for Geography and Geology students, who rely heavily on these experiences to become experienced scientists/geographers. This, somewhat negative, effect has definitely been reflected within the exams of the last few cohorts of students. 

Nonetheless, I agree with you Daniel that a digitalized approach, using pre-exisitng code and pre-gathered data sets, is the best way to bridge this gap in the absence of fieldtrips. Google Earth has proven to be an invaluable resource to the natural sciences when delivering lectures that require visuals of the taught environment from abroad. 

(Peter A.B. Krizan -Department of Earth Sciences) 

The value of a fieldtrip (Will Barnes)

Psychogeography, which is the use of playful, inventive and creative tools to experience the city reflexively and foment a new awareness of the urban landscape, was the focus of a fieldtrip that I assisted on.

The purpose of the fieldtrip was to support undergraduate students in the Geography department whose assessment it was to practice and critique psychogeography methods, and use it to engage with the various themes that had been covered in the course on post-capitalist cities. As an allusive and ambiguous concept, the guiding of students through various practices of psychogeography demonstrated the value of fieldtrips in offering the opportunity to take ideas and approaches discussed in the classroom and apply them in a real-world context. As a form of place-based education and experiential learning, carrying out the exercises in London not only allowed students to have a go at psychogeography ahead of their assessment, but helped them to grasp the essence of psychogeography by applying it to a specific context and experiencing the discoveries that it can facilitate for themselves (Israel, 2012; Krakowka, 2012).

Importantly, the collaborative and intensive dynamics of the fieldtrip meant that they were able to practise psychogeography in a learning environment that provided regular feedback and explanation and the chance to ask questions, helping to solidify understandings and address uncertainties (Wheeler et. al., 2011). Starting with more simple practices and progressing to those that were more complex also assisted this development of a clear understanding of psychogeography and the variety of creative ways in which it can be used.

References:

Israel, A. L. (2012) ‘Putting geography education into place: What geography educators can learn from place-based education, and vice versa’, Journal of Geography, 111(2), pp. 76-81.

Krakowka, A. R. (2012) ‘Field trips as valuable learning experiences in geography courses’, Journal of Geography, 111(6), pp. 236–244.

Wheeler, A., Young, C., Oliver, K., and Smith, J. (2011) ‘Study skills enhancement through geography and environmental fieldwork’, Planet, 24(1), pp. 14–20.

Using interactive roleplay to teach about how ocean circulation impacts our climate (Daniel Parkes)

Firstly - I apologise if this is a double post. This was (I thought) published previously but I cannot find it on the digital space.

When teaching others it can be difficult to ascertain (1) what level to pitch it at and (2) how to ensure key take away points are understood. This is the same whether you're teaching undergraduates who you assume have relatively little knowledge of the subject area or engaging with the public who you have no information about their knowledge of the subject area. For this post, I want to describe and evaluate an interactive teaching scenario I conducted last year.

Session structure

I attended a conference in 2022 targeted at PhD students "Life beyond the PhD".  We were each tasked with educating the cohort about our PhD in an interesting and accessible manner. My PhD focusses on the role of ocean circulation in abrupt climate change (think "The Day After Tomorrow").  The structure of my session was split into (1) mini lecture on my PhD (5 minutes) and interactive session on ocean circulation (10 minutes).

Mini lecture

The mini lecture consisted of a few summary slides I had given at some conference talks previously. In hindsight, this wasn't the most accessible as it contained lots of jargon in the figures, but there was relatively little notice to prepare this. In future, I would remove various jargon and switch this for accessible words (e.g. remove isotope notation and simply have arrows indicating 'warmer/colder' 'stronger/weaker').  

Practical session

I personally find practical sessions far more memorable (and I understand that the topic of ocean circulation is not itself an incredibly exciting area of study on the face of it). I had prepared 3 'role play' cards: Britain, Greenland meltwater, Ocean circulation.  These had instructions on for when I 'tapped' specific time periods. I also prepared 3 timeline cards for the warm period I am looking at: 424 - 415,000 years ago, 415-414,000 years ago, 414-400,000 years ago. Roleplay has shown to increase motivation and knowledge retention in students (Stevens, 2015) (Rao and Stupans, 2012).

With all this in mind, the group was divided to a chain of people were ocean circulation, one person was greenland melt water, one person britain, and 3 people divided between the timelines. I was the 'narrator' who would explain what was happening as they carried out the instructions on the card. It went as follows: 

1. 'Tapped' 424,000: Britain is sweating, ocean circulation is running fast around the room, Greenland is doing nothing

2. 'Tapped' 415,000: Britain is shivering, Greenland meltwater has pushed over ocean circulation, which has stopped moving

3. 'Tapped' 414,000: Britain is sweating, Greenland meltwater is gone, ocean circulation is running around the room again

Session summary

The goal of the session was to illustrate how changes in ocean circulation can make Britain warmer/colder, which can result in short-lived abrupt climate change events. 

Session Evaluation

Those taking part said they were confused by the mini-lecture but were amazed at the knowledge that ocean circulation was so involved in British climate. This was the key take home message I wanted to get across more than the actual PhD content itself. Reflecting on this myself, I feel that it would have worked better with a larger room of people (this consisted of ~ 6 people). Some props would also have helped (a large blue sheet for meltwater, a big flag or something silly to represent Britain). I think having time for a summary mini lecture on the PhD topic might also have hammered home some points about my PhD as well (though time did not permit this). 

Take home points:

I felt the session worked well - though admittedly this may only work well for more interactive learners. I am conscious that more introverted people or those with specific needs may not wish to take part in this so there is a possible accessibility issue here. To overcome this, I would first ask if anyone has any preferences for which role (2 of them are far more mobile) and should no one give any, I would allocate roles so people do not struggle with making a decision if they're nervous about taking part. What I think works really well in this is it is fairly applicable to any age group/subject knowledge level. 

Thanks for reading - any feedback particularly on how to make this a more accessible session would be appreciated.

Daniel Parkes

References: 

Rao, D. and Stupans, I., 2012. Exploring the potential of role play in higher education: development of a typology and teacher guidelines. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 49(4), pp.427-436. 

Stevens, R., 2015. Role-play and student engagement: reflections from the classroom. Teaching in Higher Education, 20(5), pp.481-492. 

Enhancing Climate Change Adaptation Literacy through Role-Play: A Case Study on Greenland's Resource Extraction (Liling Xu)

Science-based role-play simulations have gained recognition as effective pedagogical tools for cultivating climate change adaptation literacy and promoting collaborative learning in higher education (Rumore, Schenk, & Susskind, 2016). While interactive role-play exercises have been extensively employed in diverse contexts on a regional (Cost, 2015; Pettenger, West, & Young, 2014; Sterman et al., 2014) or local scale (Green et al., 2022), there remains a dearth of attention to the intersection between climate change and resource extraction.

This short article introduces a creation of the practice of the role-play in enhancing climate change adaptation literacy I could teach my online lecture on Arctic geopolitics again. The 50-minute session revolves around the policy decision of whether the Greenland government should ban oil drilling. Students assume different roles, such as scientists, tour guides, technicians, residents, government representatives, and indigenous community members, enabling comprehensive exploration of perspectives involved in resource extraction decision-making.

This innovative teaching method holds several key implications. First. the role-play session offers students an opportunity to actively engage with complex environmental issues and understand the trade-offs involved in climate change adaptation strategies (Sterman et al., 2014). Second, the role-play exercise encourages collaborative problem-solving and negotiation skills among students (Rumore et al., 2016; Shaw, 2004). Through constructive dialogue and interaction, participants learn to appreciate diverse perspectives, develop empathy, and work towards finding mutually beneficial solutions. However, implementing role-play comes with challenges, including ensuring equal participation, managing conflicting viewpoints, and maintaining an inclusive environment. Clear guidelines, debriefing discussions, and critical reflection on ethical dimensions are essential.

Reference

Cost, D. S. (2015). The role of public education in governance for resilience in a rapidly changing Arctic. Ecology and Society, 20(3).

Green, C., Blake, M., Boersma, S., Farris, K., Heslop, E., Kealy, K., & Williams, H. (2022). Alaskan children’s perspectives of environmental stewardship in a changing Arctic environment. Polar Geography, 45(4), 293–310. https://doi.org/10.1080/1088937X.2022.2152124

Pettenger, M., West, D., & Young, N. (2014). Assessing the Impact of Role Play Simulations on Learning in Canadian and US Classrooms. International Studies Perspectives, 15(4), 491–508. https://doi.org/10.1111/insp.12063

Rumore, D., Schenk, T., & Susskind, L. (2016). Role-play simulations for climate change adaptation education and engagement. Nature Climate Change, 6(8), 745–750. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3084

Shaw, C. M. (2004). Using role-play scenarios in the IR classroom: An examination of exercises on peacekeeping operations and foreign policy decision making. International Studies Perspectives, 5(1), 1-22.

Sterman, J. ., Franck, T. ., Fiddaman, T. ., Jones, A. ., McCauley, S. ., Rice, P. ., … Rooney-Varga, J. N. (2014). WORLD CLIMATE: A Role-Play Simulation of Climate Negotiations. Simulation & Gaming, 46(3–4), 348–382.

Teaching science through storytelling (Mollie Mills)

During the first year of my PhD, I was asked to write and deliver a second-year lecture on my research topic, conservation palaeobiology. Specifically, I needed to teach the students the concept of species-environment truncation. This is essentially the idea that humans have continually reduced species ranges, and we now perceive that reduced range to be normal. I was apprehensive about teaching this theory as it is a new concept to the students and quite abstract. I became aware that I needed a way to relate the theory to the real world, so that the students could place it in the context of everyday life. Then it occurred to me, I need to tell the students a story.

A story consists of a series of characters and relationships that convey a sequence of events, helping learners to process key concepts (Banister and Ryan, 2001). Humans have used storytelling for thousands of years, as an effective tool for communication (Davidhizar, 2003). Stories inspire the imagination and enable learners to relate complex information to real-world situations. Existing research suggests that storytelling could enhance the learning of science in higher education by strengthening memory, imagination and promoting learning (Negrete and Lartigue, 2004; Walan, 2019).

I needed to construct a story that cultivated the interest of the students and made the theory relatable (Klassen and Klassen, 2014). As the course is centred around biodiversity and the environment, I decided to use a charismatic animal, the kangaroo.  The story is centred around kangaroos living in multiple environments, with humans gradually reducing them to one, deserts. Years later, when kangaroo numbers began to decline and conservationists needed to create management strategies, no one remembered that kangaroos could live in environments outside of the desert. The kangaroo’s conservation strategies were therefore restricted to desert environments, and the scope of their recovery was limited. This scenario is known as species-environment truncation.

The story resonated with the students well, and at the end of the session many mentioned species-environment truncation in the final word cloud. Going forward, stories will be a crucial part of my teaching. Indeed, Zabel (1991) argues that stories are the foundation of the teaching profession and should be used to illustrate and guide students.

References

Banister, F. & Ryan, C., 2001. Developing science concepts through story-telling. School Science Review, 83(302), pp. 75-84.

Davidhizar, R., 2003. Storytelling as a Teaching Technique. Nurse Educator, 28(5), pp. 217-221.

Klassen, S. & Klassen , C., 2014. The Role of Interest in Learning Science through Stories. Interchange, Volume 45, pp. 133-151.

Negrete, A. & Lartigue , C., 2004. Learning from Education to Communicate Science as a Good Story. Endeavour, 28(3), pp. 120-124.

Walan, S., 2019. Teaching children science through storytelling combined withhands-on activities–a successful instructional strategy?. Education, 47(1), pp. 34-46.

Zabel , M., 1991. Storytelling, Myths, and Folk Tales: Strategies for Multicultural Inclusion. Preventing School Failure: Alternative Education for Children and Youth, 36(1), pp. 32-34.

A lesson learned by enthusiasm and accident  (Tom Vandyk)

Earlier this year I taught a module, Principles of Sedimentology, 3 hours a week for a term. I made a concerted effort to focus on core principles that were expected knowledge of all physical geographers. I regularly reinforced and tested this knowledge using discussion and exercises. The relationship between the vertical and horizontal arrangement of sediments, and how they are recorded, is especially important. I had also considered this amongst the most intuitive and easily grasped of the principles. This transpired a naïve misconception on my part as, several lectures in,  the students were not grasping these concepts.

Addressing this, I gave the students an exercise where they had to record the vertical arrangement of sediments, from a series of photographs of a cliff face, using a standard format known as a “graphic log”. My idea had been that they would all work on this individually in class and we would discuss findings together afterwards. However, walking around the class I was not entirely happy that they were getting past the starting block. So, rather than reinforcing a failure, I turned it into a fun group activity. This activity, perhaps partly through my own unbridled enthusiasm, spiralled into something of a much broader scope than intended. Afterwards, I was absolutely delighted with the enthusiasm and feedback from the students. Not only were they telling me, with great relief, that they now “got it” but it was evident from their responses as we worked through the activity.

Turning to the activity itself, we started by looking at the photographs together whilst I sketched the graphic log on the whiteboard. Importantly, I made no decisions. Instead I only asked questions of the students and drew what they told me to draw, right or wrong. I was their resident artist. Debate surrounding what we should and should not draw in our log resulted in disagreement, representing an unexpected and valuable learning opportunity. Not only did the students get first hand experience of the recording process itself, but also a better understanding of the underlying principles. Importantly, their disagreements really illustrated to them the inherent uncertainties in the technique. Following their experience of this debate, when they now see this format in published research they will understand some of the unquantified uncertainties involved. This is a subtle but important learning point that goes well beyond the underlying principle.

Additionally, the activity of me sketching on the board in itself provided an extra angle to the learning. The students were very engaged with the process and the time it took me to sketch following their instructions provided them with a little mental break before moving on to the next stage. In the considerable imperfections of my sketching abilities, sometimes involving me rubbing out and starting from scratch, they also saw my thought process. Specifically as I attempted to capture the sedimentologically essential elements of the photographic features they had homed in on. This in turn reinforced their understanding of the sedimentary features we had been learning about in the past weeks. It also kept the mood light as they saw my light-hearted frustration at messing up another drawing!

A further and unexpected benefit of this approach was that, through the process of imperfect sketching and the fact that the class were very engaged, I was able to naturally expand those sketches and link them up with a sketch map. This way, I could demonstrate the horizontal and vertical relationship between the settlement arrangements. This seemed to be a Eureka moment for a number of the students. What I had been describing in previous lectures in a slightly dry theoretical manner had suddenly come to life and was, most likely, much simpler than they had imagined.

I estimate that, by the time we finished our log, we have been working on it for up to an hour. Yet I felt that the class were very much still engaged, simply because we were having fun. It is true, lectures cannot always be “fun” and there will be times when difficult and complex ideas need to be presented. Perhaps it was only after laying the groundwork of these ideas in previous lectures that this more informal and enthusiastic approach paid dividends? In this instance, I only switched to this mode of teaching as it felt appropriate at that time. Although I had planned the exercise in advance I had no intention of presenting it in this manner. Would this be the appropriate time to present it if I find myself teaching this module next year? I do not know, although I will very much have it as an option ready to go!

In terms of pedagogy, it seems likely that all four elements of the experiential learning cycle of Kolb (2014) were touched upon. Unpacking exactly how would be a time-consuming matter though!

Tom Vandyk

References

Kolb, D.A. (2014) Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. 2nd edn. Available at: https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/experiential-learning-experience/9780133892512/ (Accessed: 31 May 2023).