Shelagh B. Waddington

Working with the Community: improving the learning experience for large classes

The need for students to develop skills that are of use in the wider labour market, as well as those specifically related to their degree subjects, has been widely accepted for a considerable period of time. It has also been noted that unless these skills are practised and are contextualised they tend neither to be learned, except at the most superficial level, nor transferred to other situations where their use would be appropriate. This paper reports the use of projects extending over a number of sessions, involving working with local community groups, carried out within a discrete module specifically designed to facilitate the learning and practice of both geographical and transferable skills. The problems of providing an integrated approach to the learning of skills for a large group of students, with limited resources and in the context of timetable restrictions imposed by a two-subject degree structure, are addressed. The degree of learning perceived by the students is evaluated and suggestions are made for further development of this approach.

Re-framing the Geography Dissertation: A Consideration of Alternative, Innovative and Creative Approaches

This paper reviews the opportunities and challenges for re-framing the purpose, process, product and assessment of final-year geography dissertations. It argues that the academic centralities of critical thinking, analysis, evaluation, effective communication and independence must be retained, but that the traditional format limits creativity and innovation. Re-imagining capstone projects has implications for students, faculty, departments and institutions, but greater diversity could enhance its relevance to students and employers, better aligning the student experience with the academic interests and future career demands of the 21st century graduate.

An online image analysis tool for science education

This paper describes an online image analysis tool developed as part of an iterative, user-centered development of an online Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) called the Education through Virtual Experience (EVE) Portal. The VLE provides a Web portal through which schoolchildren and their teachers create scientific proposals, retrieve images and other resources, and produce collaborative scientific papers summarizing their learning experiences. The VLE underwent substantive formative testing involving over 200 schoolchildren producing over 50 collaboratively written research papers. Detailed analysis of these research papers identified some shortfalls toward the goal of producing authentic scientific engagement. The absence of data collection and data analysis within these research papers was disappointing despite having scheduled time for this activity and having several professional imaging tools available. The post-evaluation analyses have enabled the development team to identify specific design flaws in the previous VLE and have shaped the design of the new custom-built tool. The success of the tool will be born out through content analysis of future collaboratively written student papers.

The VTIE Collaborative Writing Environment

This paper discusses the design of the VTIE Collaborative Writing Environment (CWE) and the functionality of the various components that make up this environment. The advantages of supporting collaborative writing are also discussed as well as different organizational schemes that can be used when structuring collaborative writing exercises. The paper also contains technical details on the implementation of the VTIE CWE.

Changing life in the towns of north Kildare

This paper examines the growth and changes in population characteristics and lifestyle in three towns in north Kildare which have come increasingly within the influence of the Dublin Metropolitan area. The data used are primarily obtained from three surveys carried out in the towns during recent years and contrasts are made with previous work in the area. It is suggested that community life still exists in these towns but that the effects of proximity to Dublin are having ever greater impact on that life.

Student Reflection: An ‘ideal world’?

There is a growing body of research that supports what many tutors have felt is an important way of learning, namely learning by doing. In geography, and other environmentally focused subjects, the role of practical and field work is often cited as a key factor in the undergraduate learning experience, and something that facilitates understanding. However, the link between this ‘doing’ and ‘understanding’, is reflection (Kolb, �984; Hinett, 2004). This paper documents an action research project that attempted to introduce formal reflection into the curriculum of a cohort of geography students at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NIUM). Tutors at NUIM had identified two major questions about the learning experience that they wished to investigate. The first was to evaluate one method of enhancing the transfer of learning between year two (level two modules) and those in year three (level three modules). At the start of the study, this transfer was deemed to be poor, and was creating issues when students reached higher levels of study, and attempted to construct curriculum vitae for life after university. The second question was the desire to investigate the effectiveness of encouraging student reflection, and to assess the degree to which IT would facilitate this process. The present report provides an overview of the process of reflection and its likely part in the learning process, followed by a description of the project process and an evaluation of its outcomes. Finally, consideration is given to future developments in relation both to encouraging reflection and in the use of IT for this purpose. The modules which form the focus for the project were co-ordinated by one of the authors, while the other acted primarily to evaluate the experience

Empowering Geography Students in Large Groups

Abstract A common problem encountered in working with large classes is the difficulty of providing sufficient support and assistance to allow the students to develop both the skills and the confidence required for them to carry out original research. This paper reports on the use of group work with limited guidance to facilitate small-scale research. While one area of geography is used in the example, the method is applicable to a wide variety of other subject areas, both within geography and more widely.

A Capabilities Approach to Higher Education: Geocapabilities and Implications for Geography Curricula.

Abstract A geographical education offers more than skills, subject knowledge and generic attributes. It also develops a set of discipline-specific capabilities that contribute to a graduate’s future learning and experience, granting them special ways of thinking for lifelong development and for contributing to the welfare of themselves, their community and their world. This paper considers the broader purposes and values of disciplinary teaching in contributing to individual human development. Set in the context of recent debates concerning the role of the university and the neo-liberalisation of higher education this paper explores approaches to developing the geography curriculum in ways that re-assert the educational value of geographical thinking for students. Using international examples of teaching and learning practice in geography, we recognise five geocapabilities: use of the geographical imagination; ethical subject-hood with respect to the impacts of geographical processes; integrative thinking about society–environment relationships; spatial thinking; and the structured exploration of places. A capabilities approach offers a productive and resilient response to the threats of pedagogic frailty and increasingly generic learning in higher education. Finally, a framework to stimulate dialogue about curriculum development and the role of geocapabilities in the higher education curriculum is suggested.