A Framework for the Integration of DVD Technology in Geography Teaching and Learning

This article discusses the results when integrating digital versatile disc (DVD) technology in full-time second-year geography for BEd degree students at a university in South Africa, a developing country. It proposes a framework for the integration of the DVD in geography teaching and learning, steered by students’ needs, feedback and observations by the lecturer. The proposed framework recommends clear guidelines on how to integrate the DVD, as well as the interactions between the role players/resources. It also explains how the DVD was compiled, what was included and how it was effectively applied in conjunction with seminars, as an alternative to traditional lectures. An action research design was utilized and both qualitative and quantitative data were collected.     

How to Produce a Digital Story

Modern day students are said to hold a toolbox of technical knowledge, which can assist them with their undergraduate studies. The ‘net generation’ is more technologically capable than ever before and crave interactivity and image-rich environments, which has created a need for higher education institutions to diversify assessment practices. Digital stories (this refers to a collection of still images, audio and video) as a means for assessing Geography undergraduates, lend themselves well to fieldwork activities, and this paper provides practical advice and guidance to students on how to create the best digital stories for assessment.     

Implementing a Problem-Based Learning Approach for Teaching Research Methods in Geography

This paper first describes problem-based learning; second describes how a research methods course in geography is taught using a problem-based learning approach; and finally relates student and staff experiences of this approach. The course is run through regular group meetings, two residential field trips and optional skills-based workshops. Course evaluations improved markedly following the introduction of this approach and students appreciated the benefits of the problem-based learning approach, particularly through working in groups on authentic problems that were relevant to future workplace scenarios. They were also able to further develop a range of transferable skills, particularly in teamwork. However, they may not have increased other transferable skills (such as in oral communication) as much as desired due to the tendency for groups to draw on individual strengths to complete collaborative group tasks. Other concerns were group size, the high workload and coping with group dynamics. Tutors found the teaching to be enjoyable, relaxing and very rewarding but there were some anxieties due to the unpredictable nature of the course as well as frustration at knowing when to intervene. However, despite these difficulties for both students and staff, the authors are sufficiently encouraged by the response to continue teaching using a problem-based learning approach.     

Integrating Podcast Technology Effectively into Student Learning: A Reflexive Examination

This paper examines undergraduate student perceptions of the learning utility of video podcasts. The perceived and actual effectiveness of the technology was assessed by written questionnaire, focus groups and assessment results. The podcasts were perceived as effective in supporting learning, largely by offering a flexible and visual learning experience. They were also viewed as a useful resource for revision and assessment, stimulating factual recall. There were no significant differences, however, between examination grades from cohorts prior to and post-adoption of podcasts. There is a need to unite the technology with reflective discussion and critical application in a social constructivist framework.     

Spaces of Wellbeing for People with Learning Disabilities

Abstract

There is a growing interest in the geography of health in the concept of ‘wellbeing’, as it provides a fuller understanding of health, builds in embodied experiences, and accounts for the socio-spatial relations and contexts that shape health. The paper sets out the case for using ‘wellbeing’ to rethink the poor health outcomes experienced by people with learning disabilities, which conventional tools of healthcare and health promotion have failed to address. Shifting the focus of concern from the individualised objective ill-health of people with learning disabilities to a broader sense of emotional and social wellbeing and happiness, the paper argues that there is potential within learning disability spaces and networks for wellbeing to flourish, through greater self-determination and presence in and attachment to local places. The outcome is people with learning disabilities being able to find stability and build resilience in difficult bodily and social circumstances.     

Learning by doing: enhancing hydrology lectures with individual fieldwork projects

Hydrology teaching deals with processes happening outside the classroom, which calls for active-learning methods to complement lectures. In a geography undergraduate course, new teaching methods and assessment were designed, in which students investigated a river of their choice by completing homework tasks and presenting their results on a poster. During a 3-year implementation process, the changes were evaluated using a combination of formal and informal student and lecturer feedback. Students mentioned that they enjoyed doing the project and that it helped their understanding of theory, their research skills, and their ability to select, organize and present information. Questionnaire results showed that, over the implementation period, students’ perceived value of homework increased strongly, while their perceived value of lectures remained high. In informal feedback, students noted that they enjoyed learning about where they live, preferred doing the projects individually and seeing each other’s projects, and spent more time on the coursework when assessed. When looking back in interviews, students commented that the projects had prepared them well for their dissertation and summer job. The advantage of using homework-based projects complementing lectures is the strong link between theory and practice, which could be further enhanced by discussing the homework in the lectures.     

Teaching and learning global urban geography: an international learning-centred approach

The recent drive for the internationalization of curricula, together with calls for the internationalization of the sub-discipline of urban geography beyond the “west”, and the growing shift towards learning-centred paradigms in higher education, provided impetus for the design and delivery of an upper level undergraduate urban geography module – “Global Urbanism” – that is reported here. Using this module as a case study, the paper demonstrates the ways in which student learning and engagement with internationalized global urban geography can be facilitated by a learning-centred approach that is enhanced through the design of, and engagement with, assessment items, particularly research-led learning journals.     

Experimenting with Active Learning in Geography: Dispelling the Myths that Perpetuate Resistance

While some geographers have embraced active learning as a means to engage students in a course, many others stick to conventional teaching methods. They are often deterred by suggestions that it can be difficult to implement active learning where students have no prior knowledge of a subject, that active learning requires too much work of lecturers and students, and that there are significant institutional constraints to implementing active learning. In this article the authors draw on their experiences of utilizing active learning in five different countries before dispelling myths which continue to constrain the uptake of active learning methods. Finally, they provide simple guidelines for successful integration of active learning in geography courses.     

Reconciling Economic and Cultural Explanations for Participation in Alternative Consumption Spaces

ABSTRACT With the cultural turn in economic geography, the emphasis on economic necessity when explaining participation in alternative consumption spaces (i.e. informal and/or second‐hand retail channels) has been contested by an agency‐orientated cultural reading that views engagement in such spaces as about the search for fun, sociality, distinction, discernment, the spectacular and so forth, and more recently by a geographically sensitive approach that ascribes agency to affluent populations and economic rationales to deprived populations. Drawing upon evidence collected during 120 face‐to‐face interviews in the English city of Leicester, however, this paper finds that people's reasons for engaging in such practices cannot be reduced simply to either economic necessity or agency. Instead, it reveals that such either/or thinking obfuscates how both co‐exist in people's explanations for engagement and combine in contrasting ways in different neighbourhood types, modes of goods acquisition and according to the type of good sought. The outcome of this paper is thus to transcend and reconcile previous reductive explanations using a both/and approach that recognises the varying ways in which economic necessity and choice are entangled in rationales for participation in alternative consumption spaces.     

A Constructivist Approach to Climate Change Teaching and Learning

It is now broadly acknowledged that climate change due to an enhanced Greenhouse Effect is underway and such change will have major implications for our societies and environments. This paper outlines a pedagogical approach devised to encourage learning and critical thinking about climate change. A constructivist approach to teaching and learning is applied to stimulate analysis of potential impacts of climate change on systems familiar to secondary school students in South Australia. The problem‐based method guides students through a conceptualisation of the implications of environmental change. Students at Woodcroft College, when given the opportunity to examine the potential climate change impacts on a local coastal ecosystem, found the method to be both challenging and engaging. The exercise concluded with students discussing possible personal behavioural and broader societal responses to reduce the impacts of future climate change. The paper contends that such teaching to support students to become resilient young adults will be vital in a future world of environmental risk.     

Research-Based Learning: Teaching Development Through Fieldschools

The challenge of bringing research-based learning to undergraduate development studies and anthropology students has led to convening a fieldschool in Indonesia. The fieldschool has been vital in introducing students to fieldwork methodology and in developing a deeper understanding of the relation of research data to development theory. In addition, students who participate in the fieldschool discover a whole new aspect to learning where an emotional and intellectual response to the field situation is required and they are challenged to consider the ethical issues raised in the course of their research.     

Teaching Geographic Information Systems in a Problem-Based Learning Environment

How, where and why GIS is taught has been debated heavily in the geography literature. This article is a contribution to that debate, because it offers a new perspective from which to teach GIS: problem-based learning. In a problem-based learning classroom, theoretical foundations and the real world of problems are understood as constitutive of one another, rather than theory being prioritised over the real world of experience. In this paper, the author describes an introductory-level GIS class in which GIS was taught with a problem-based learning pedagogy. The problem around which the class focused was a proposal to add a new school district in the San Antonio, Texas metropolitan region. This article describes the class, including the nature of the problem and the way GIS skills were sequentially taught and integrated into the analysis of that problem.     

Teaching Across the Divide: Physical and Human Geographies of Hurricane Katrina

This article critically reflects on our effort to ‘teach across the divide’, by integrating physical and human geography in a new first-year course. We achieved this integration by structuring our course around a series of key events, in order to draw out the interaction of ‘natural’ and ‘social’ forces. After setting out the intellectual and institutional reasons for integration, we illustrate our approach with reference to one of the key events covered in our course: Hurricane Katrina. Finally, we draw on our own reflections and student evaluations to consider the positive outcomes of our approach, and the challenges it poses.     

Classroom Active Learning Complemented by an Online Discussion Forum to Teach Sustainability

This paper identifies some of the pedagogical benefits of an active learning course delivery complemented by an online discussion forum to teach sustainability by evaluating the case of a geography master's course. The potential benefits and some challenges of an active learning course delivery to teach sustainability in geography and related disciplines are considered. This case study further supports past research that suggests e-learning as a complement to the classroom (1) increases the opportunities for student participation; and (2) enhances the participation of students who may feel more inhibited to engage in discussions in a traditional classroom setting.     

当下语境下的古汉语学习——兼析文言文教学

文言文在大量集中的语文教学中,老师惮于教,学生惧于学,只有广泛地联系时下的语境,才能引领学生彻底地去体认学习。一是创设情境,培养人文精神。二是从原初性的文言文作品中学习借鉴。三是感知语言的演变。四是启发思考,明辨事理。     

Teaching Research Methods Courses in Human Geography: Critical Reflections

The authors reflect critically on their experiences of teaching research methods/methodology/techniques (MMT) courses in human geography for the first time. Through a highly reflexive process involving journaling, they engage with the broader scholarship of teaching and learning approach. Three themes characterize commonalities in their instructional experiences: (1) prior knowledge, (2) preparation, and (3) confidence. Specifically, they were challenged by needing to teach particular MMTs that they had not previously applied in their own research, by not knowing how best to prepare for teaching such courses, and by a lack of confidence with their approaches that stemmed from numerous issues.     

From Hawaii to Glasgow: The International Network for Learning and Teaching Geography in Higher Education (INLT) Five Years On

This paper examines and reflects on the activities of the International Network for Learning and Teaching Geography in Higher Education (INLT) from its founding at the Association of American Geographers' Annual Conference in Hawaii in 1999 to the post-International Geographical Congress workshop in Glasgow five years later. It provides a context and introduction to the following six papers, which resulted from the Glasgow workshop. It is suggested that, despite some of the proposals in Hawaii proving over-ambitious, several other projects have emerged and the INLT continues largely to meet the goals and purposes set out in 1999. Although the desire of the INLT to move beyond its Anglo-American and Australasian origins largely remains a challenge to be met, the INLT has established itself as a valuable forum for the geography higher education community to identify and reflect on similarities and differences in national practices, to engage in debate virtually and face-to-face on issues concerned with learning and teaching, and to bring geographers from different countries to work together on educational projects.     

Flipping and still learning: experiences of a flipped classroom approach for a third-year undergraduate human geography course

The flipped classroom approach, a form of blended learning, is currently popular in education praxis. Initial reports on the flipped classroom include that it offers opportunities to increase student engagement and build meaningful learning and teaching experiences. In this article, we analyse teacher and student experiences of a trial flipped classroom application in a third year undergraduate human geography course that challenges conventional thinking and practice in resource management, including an explicit focus on the marginalization of Indigenous knowledges in that context. The flipped classroom trial included empirical research with teachers and students to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of this mode of learning. Interviews, focus groups, surveys, reflections and participant-observation activities were conducted before, during and after the course. The research shows that this particular implementation of the flipped classroom approach generated multiple experiences for teachers and students, some constructive, others less so. Overall, space, time and flexibility matters not only to the kinds of pedagogical tools we employed to tailor learning to students’ differing needs, but also to the kinds of learning spaces – online and offline, individually and in groups – in which learning happens.     

Co-learning: Re-linking Research and Teaching in Geography

Focusing on Digital Worlds, a first-year geography blended learning course at the University of Auckland, this paper gives voice to the students, examining how they perceived e-learning versus traditional learning mechanisms; how e-learning mechanisms have affected their learning behaviour; and why certain e-learning mechanisms offered in the course were more appealing than others. It demonstrates that students' views are determined by their individual learning styles and how they perceive the university experience. Information and communication technologies were recognized to provide complementary learning benefits, especially when other factors inhibited learning, but traditional mechanisms such as lectures were still greatly valued.