Creating Regional Futures: A Scenario-Based Inter- and Transdisciplinary Case Study as a Model for Applied Student-centred Learning in Geography

Human geography students face changing qualification requirements due to a shift towards new topics, educational tasks and professional options regarding issues of spatial development. This ‘practical turn’ raises the importance of inter- and transdisciplinary work, management and capability building skills, with case study projects and student-centred learning providing suitable approaches. This paper introduces the example of the teaching and research project ‘Leben 2014’: Students, faculty and local actors have collectively worked out future development scenarios for a rural region in Austria, actually creating impact. The project may thus serve as a model that inspires similar schemes in other countries.     

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.     

Inquiry in the Physical Geology Classroom: Supporting Students' Conceptual Model Development

This study characterizes the impact of an inquiry-based learning (IBL) module versus a traditionally structured laboratory exercise. Laboratory sections were randomized into experimental and control groups. The experimental group was taught using IBL pedagogical techniques and included manipulation of large-scale data-sets, use of multiple representations and a physical model and exposure to ill-constrained problems common to the Texas Gulf Coast. The control groups were taught using traditional laboratory activities. The groups were not significantly different prior to exposure. Pre/post-expressed conceptual models and final written reports indicate that the experimental group had greater increases in their conceptual model development of sand-sediment transport.     

College Science Students' Perception Gaps in Preferred–Actual Learning Environment in a Reformed Introductory Earth Science Course in Taiwan

This study used an instrument to examine undergraduate students' preferred and actual learning environment perceptions in an introductory earth science course. The results show that science students expect to learn in a learning environment combining teacher-centred and student-centred approaches. However, an expectation incongruence was found in that the instruction did not match with the students' preference on student-centred learning environment in this course. The results carry important implications in the interpretation of students' classroom behaviours and their school culture background. It is noted that students and teachers perceive differently whether the classroom environment is constructed as being student-centred.     

“A Riddle,Wrapped in a Mystery,inside an Enigma”: Teaching Post-Socialist Transformation to UK Students in Moscow

In the 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, teaching post-socialist transition to undergraduate students has become increasingly challenging. This paper relates the development, planning and operation of a fieldwork module in Moscow, for Year Three geography undergraduates. It argues that ‘on-street’ teaching and imaginative use of visual sources can partially overcome the linguistic drawbacks of fieldwork in this context. It supports the utility of fieldwork for teaching post-socialist transformation, but stresses the need for local knowledge and contacts, linguistic ability on the part of module staff, and careful planning, to overcome anticipated and unexpected challenges.     

A Research-Led,Inquiry-Based Learning Experiment: Classic Landforms of Deglaciation,Glen Etive,Scottish Highlands

This paper reports an adaptation of a classroom-based, traditionally taught module to both facilitate field-based knowledge acquisition and contribute towards research. The module enabled students, through a combination of new research and co-learning, to achieve the original classroom-based learning outcomes. Students engaged enthusiastically with the research project, developing a deeper learning style as demonstrated by improved student performance and a sense of ownership of the learning experience. The study concludes that field-centred, inquiry-based learning draws heavily upon staff resources but is an effective means of facilitating teaching and research in tandem.     

Content,Community, and Collaboration at ESRI Virtual Campus: A GIS Company's Perspective on Creating an Online Learning Resource

GIS requires training to use it to its potential. In 1996, ESRI began exploring ways to expand its successful educational programmes to a worldwide audience via the Web. The ESRI Virtual Campus (VC) opened in July 1997. The paper discusses a few of the many lessons learned during the operation of VC, related to content, community and collaboration, and considers future prospects. The VC continues to evolve in the areas of component-based design, database publishing, community and collaborations. As new technologies become available and bandwidth increases, features that could not be imagined at its conception can now be developed.     

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.     

Physical Geography and the Geographic Thought Course

The positioning of residential fieldwork early in students' higher education is an established way of attempting to build and engage them in a community of learning. In the study reported here, the benefits of such early residential fieldwork were investigated using Krausse and Coates's seven scales of engagement. These scales consider a number of key indicators – specifically transition, academic, beyond-class, peer, staff–student, online and intellectual engagement. Data on these scales were collected via questionnaires completed by groups of students who did and did not attend such a residential fieldwork event, both before and after the event. A Wilcoxon test of these data showed significant increases in peer and student–staff engagement in the post-fieldwork group only. A Kruskal–Wallis analysis provides evidence that students who had been on residential fieldwork became more involved in a community of learning with both their peers and virtual communities than those who had not. These results support the hypothesis that early residential fieldwork is an effective way of engaging students new to higher education in a community of learning.     

Learning Geography Bilingually

A concern with the role of the ‘Other’ in geography in higher education has led to work on the incorporation of marginalized social groups into learning contexts. Recently some authors have discussed the role of language in teaching, and in particular the dominant role of the English language in marginalizing non‐Anglophonic students and subject matter. In this paper an empirical case study of the experiences of bilingual students at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth is developed. This research provides an account of the role of language in bilingual students' engagements with geography, and addresses the practicalities and the politics of enabling students with a diversity of linguistic skills to become full citizens of their geographical education.