Using technology in fieldwork:
practitioner’s perspectives and
transformative experiences
Brian Whalley – Sheffield
Derek France – Chester
Julian Park – Reading
Katharine Welsh – Chester
Alice Mauchline – Reading
Enhancement of Fieldwork Learning Project
Change ........
In the last 40 years, what has changed?
In aviation?
In the way of the world?
In people's behaviour?
Internet, computing, ICT
In an increasingly complicated, complex world
Fieldwork can, and should, reflect this.
Problem solving (PBL, IBL) is one way to integrate
some aspects of this complexity into educaton
In Education
Use of ICT – Web and Web 2.0
– But how good are the ICT skills of
graduates in the real world?
Does the 70 – 30 'principle' still apply?
– 70% of modules have assessment of:
70% exam and 30% CA/non-exam (usually a
term paper or essays)
Learning experiences
NOT: ‘pile ‘em high and lecture ‘em long’
– And then examine them!
Sage on the stage from this; the
lecture?
Traveling scholar and student
The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco (The Sage of Bologna?)
(The Sage on the Page?)
Fieldwork is for:
• Development of observational skills
• Facilitation of experiential learning
• Encouragement of student responsibility for
learning
• Development of analytical skills
• Provision of a taste for real research
• Kindling a respect for the environment
• Developing personal skills
• Lessening barriers between staff and
students
(Gold, et al, 1991, Teaching Geography in Higher Education,
Chapter 3)
Fieldwork .......
is too often
and yet,
• Look and tell
• Look and see (and note)
• Measure a few things and process data
– Often with 19Cequipment
• Give a presentation, write an essay,
report
• And challenged because it is 'costly'
• And may not be as effective as it could be
Towards Fieldwork 3.0
Emergence via Better Alignment Using
• Portable hardware (sensors via USB)
• Web 2 (hardware and 'apps')
• Web 3 – the Semantic Web
• Student needs and expectations
• Delivering Real Learning Experiences
• Appropriate assessment and feedback
• Cognitive psychology and
• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Trial and error - how can we provide good
learning experiences?
Trial and error - how we can provide good
learning experiences.
'You know what a learning experience is? A
learning experience is one of those things
that says, 'You know that thing you just did?
Don't do that.’
(Douglas N Adams, 1992)
How to avoid the panic?
Photo: Chris Ogle
And, inevitably:
Skills (and employability)
What skills? Traditional typology
'Professor Snape's' perspective, 'in today's
competitive job market, the pressure is on
students to obtain a ‘good degree’ '.
(Higgins, Hartley, and Skelton, 2001)
This begs the question:
‘what makes a good degree?’
and thus, how might it be (best) delivered?
What is a graduate in 'topic x' ?
Enhancement of Fieldwork
By setting out better aligned programs
(ie student involved and ‘directed’)
fieldwork
By using technology in various ways,
especially ‘smartphones’ and
tablets/iPads
By incorporating skills within these as
well as academic attributes
We can now do this as
Many/most students have smartphones than
can use ‘apps’
(although not all students can afford them
yet, USA as well as UK; but iPads per
group can be loaned)
Internet/3G connectivity (Web 2) helps
People and groups can be linked
Use of technology in the field hands
learning to students
'Emergence' in fieldwork:
designing better fieldwork
experiences
covering:
• Defending fieldwork & providing Value for Money
• Techniques for problems solving (for students)
• Producing Real Life Experiences (employability)
• Dissertation(capstone) preparation and training
• Assessment, Feedback, Criterion referencing
• Feedback provision on learning experiences
Defending Fieldwork
(Jenkins 1997)
• Rigorously review your department’s
fieldwork programme
• Clearly integrate fieldwork into the whole
degree programme
• Provide statements for peers on the value of
fieldwork
• Get students to articulate what they have
learnt from fieldwork
• Ensure there are demonstrable employability
skills for students
• Demonstrate through research/ evaluation
studies the effectiveness of your programme
Fieldwork
• We take it as read that students
benefit but (cost effective) fieldwork
• Our project is to promote better
student experiences with technology
in fieldwork
• And that they become more digitally
literate in the process
Ethics
• Quality Education (Teaching)
• Use of equipment (mobiles,
smartphones) ethical or green
policies? REEs in manufacture
• Should we require students to use
their own?
• Air Miles and carbon footprints?
• Dealing with people
• (Value for Money)
Howard Gardner
•
•
•
•
•
The Disciplinary Mind
The Synthesizing Mind
The Creating Mind
The Respectful Mind
The Ethical Mind
Gardner, H. 2007, Five Minds for the Future
6 Competencies
students need to gain
Marcia Mentkowski
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
Competence – encouragement by challenge and remarks
to achieve skills levels
Confidence – promoting remarks to show themselves,
and others, their achievements
Critical thinking – which is what we have been wanting
all along in 'Thinking skills’, used in problem solving
Creativity – in what students do and how they do it
Collaboration – bringing in team-working and ethics
Commonality – of purpose, to achieve specified (and
unspecified) objectives
Curtiosity – being curious courteously (Kipling).
Course revision to incorporate these aspects?
In fact, we tend to say ….
• ‘Yes, the students enjoyed it’
• ‘We enjoyed it too’ and, after a few months..
• ‘Same again for next year?’
• ‘It is arguable that in geography, …fieldwork is intrinsic to
the discipline …., yet I know of no controlled study of [its]
effectiveness’ Donald Bligh 1973
• (How) do we look at feedback from the field trip?
• Thinking specifically here of First year – bonding,
basic skills, report writing and communication
• Second year using field trips for dissertation
preparation, project planning, reporting
Theory into practise
• Using Maskall and Stokes (2008)
•
Designing Effective Fieldwork for the Environmental and Natural Sciences
• Using ‘Preflights’
– (stuff done in advance; G. Novak, Whalley & Taylor 2008)
• Using work on Troublesome Knowledge
• Using employability skills and affordances
• Trying to provide better experiences and
feedback
• Providing ‘value for money’
• Being ethical
Fieldwork
•
•
•
•
•
•
Positives:
Students (mostly) tend to enjoy it
Tutors too (if they believe in it!)
Students should learn effectively from it (as well as)
Remembering it and what they did (affective)
Collaboration via teamwork
• Negatives:
• Can be costly (for whom? Institution, students)
• Is it Value for Money? (and Time and Effort?)
•
Cost Utility Analysis : Cost Effectiveness Analysis
Needs, motives, social and interpersonal skills,
Preferred learning styles, disability,
Prior experience of fieldwork
Learners
Influences on
learning, after
Maskall and Stokes,
2008
Learning styles or
Thinking styles
(Sternberg)
Learning
Activity
Intended
Outcomes
Acquisition of knowledge;
Academic and social skills;
Increased motivation
Attitudes; progression
Field
Environment
Physical nature, location and
Features; cultural context;
available resources,
data Information, instrumentation
Learning
(after Beetham 2002)
•
•
•
•
•
Student-centred
Constructivism
Activity based
Experiential
Communities of
practice
acquiring
Using
skills
digital
tools
Using
digital
participating
communications
media
constructing
developing
Using digital
Using
digital
knowledge
and
values
resources
etiquette
understanding
Using Ron Oliver’s schema
Project alignment
Field ------ Lab
GPS data
analysis and section plotting
Several groups
(working
independently)
River
Discharge
Study
Calculate
velocity data
River Velocity measurements
River cross profile measurements
Pre-field
trip
preparation
Comparison of between-group
results and report writing
Combine data
Lab. Analysis and Compilation
Data
analysis
Download
GPS data
[ podcasts - digital reporting - vidcasts ]
Sampling Beach
Sampling Dunes
Photographs
Beach and Dune Study
Micrographs
Size analysis
Report Writing and Submission
Vegetation surveys
(with key and photos on netbook)
Beach-dune profile
surveys
(GPS + Netbook)
Download
GPS data
Combine
data
Combine
with satellite images
+
Other reports etc
Linking technology (smartphones and tablets)
to fieldwork
Is now possible
The limitation is now instructors’ imagination
(Not ease of use, battery life, applications etc)
Educational Spaces
In the field
Team Space
Trip space
Other
Personal
space
PLE
Field space
Knowledge space
Personal
space
Student
information
environment
… lab, home, library ….
Rich Internet
Applications
Student +
Computer
(desktop,
laptop,
‘netbook’)
Helen Beetham 2011
Margueritte Koole's
DLS, framework model
Cloud
Apps
Apps
Netbook/iPad etc
WiFi/3G/Bluetooth