Do we have a pedagogy of virtual field trips

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Do we have a pedagogy of (virtual) field trips?
Virtual field guides on PowerPoint staff and
student use

• Brian Whalley
• Queens University Belfast

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Why should we need a theory?

• To justify FTs as good educational experiences
• To see what is good practice (and thus benefit)
  
• To see how good pedagogy can help virtual trips
• To thus make better VFTs, where better
• Students recall (rather than remember) better
• Recall is ah Ive done (something like) this
  before
• Find the experience useful in understanding
• Provide these in a cost-effective framework
• (Cost effective for whom?)

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Is there a theory?

• It should
• Contain valid cognitive models
• Lead to valid learning experiences
• Remember (better) ie recall for future use
• Understand more fully
• Can be constructed upon
• Provide feed-forward
• Adjusting for new conditions by predictive models

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The Cookes Tour model

• Here is a view
• You will see..
• Er, do they know what you are pointing at?
• Take notes so.you will remember ie well
  examine you on this so.. (or even
  make notes)

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The lecture model

• Is rather similar!
• We talk about active learning
• But what actually is it?
• Doing in some manner?
• Problem solving?
• Building consciousness
• Involvement

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Self awareness

• Has a perception of scene (events, place)
• Gets to feel, they are having the sensation
• Gets to perceive the scene
• Gets to experience self
• Has a social experience (shared)

After Humphrey, 2006
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Some other awareness problems

• Disabled students
• International students
• Level of knowledge of students
• Complexity of the subject(s)
• Interest
• Capability of note making
• Revision methods used
• Assessment mode, complexity, etc
• How do we mark field notebooks?

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Reception and discovery learning
Clarification of relationships between concepts
Well-designed audio tutorial
Scientific research, creation of music,
architecture
Meaningful learning
Most routine research
Lectures, textbook presentations
School lab work
Trial and error puzzles
Applying formulas to solve problems
Multiplication tables
Rote learning
Autonomous discovery learning
Guided discovery learning
Reception learning
(After Ausubel)
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Showing and highlighting
What to concentrate on - in the field?
What do (ie should) students notice/sketch?
Any more? And what about explanations for all
these?
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Appreciation of scenes

• This is difficult
• Too many entities
• scales, timescale, mechanisms, rates, magnitude
  frequencies..
• How to remember, understand, prioritise
• Oh and Im expected to take notes too!
• Screen shoot problem (all at once or time and
  complexity distributed)
• Storyboard
• Continuity
• You are the producer, director, scriptwriter
• Grip, Gaffer and Best Boy too!

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The starting pointstudent consciousness

• Consciousness engagement
• Detailed marking of field note books
• Suggests students not always engaged
• Miss the point
• Focus on the wrong things
• Cant take in that much anyway
• Unless they are experienced (like us!)

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The present situation (often)

• The present (experience) is composed of former
  (field) statements
• Perhaps reinforced by repeated cognitive events
  (lab, assessment)
• Events may provide mnemonics, heuristics and even
  learned skills
• One of these provides a (cognitive) learning
  experience

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This self awareness (consciousness) model should
provide

• Sensation, perception, self experience, social
  experience
• It is not just the doing
• Focus on specific entity in each scene
• You can add a similar schema for each active
  event or activity as well as visual overall.
• Opportunities to make students autonomous
  learners
• Setting problems within the field class
• Teamwork on field classes

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Fieldwork and learning

• '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 'The Salmon of Doubt', p274)

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What is (higher) education for?

• Fulfilling the curriculum?
• What should the curriculum be for?
• Knowledge base?
• Understanding of how the world works
• Can these be related to a cognitive experience?

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What can PowerPoint offer?

• Stored information
• Presentation types
• (limited) graphic variation
• Audio, video
• Hyperlinks
• Cheap (and cheerful)
• Flexible and adaptable
• Can provide conscious learning experiences
• Student involvement
• (presentations, posters, organisation in revision)

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Spot the sandstone
Why does this look like a sandstone? Why is it a
sandstone? Properties and characteristics
And why does this not look like a sandstone? We
need experience in the field and in the lab. How
can we take this experience from the dry to the
wet?
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Feature reminderreminder before assessment or
feedback after marking
Make sure you comment on

• Done the basics?
• Put this site in context
• Elsewhere in Mallorca
• In the British Isles
• Hint-links Audio

Additional Video
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Post exam and revision - web based
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Adding information

• You pose the problem, questions
• Note Student responses
• Revealing answers

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Some things to try

• Time sequences
• Before and after - events (Mag/frequ)
• Changes over time
• Glacier advance retreat, coastal erosion
• Flooding, slope failure
• River meandering, sediments
• Data handling
• Vicariously from the field
• experiential

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What do you need?

• PowerPoint
• Image resources, e.g. Google Earth
• Image grabbers
• digital cameras, video cameras, digital audio
  (Mpeg etc)
• Imagination
• A bit of time

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Google Earth Images -Colorado Front Range
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(No Transcript)
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Student engagement(if not presence)

• Have they been there (in field) before?
• Have they used the instrument before? (pluses and
  minuses there)
• Have they had a worked through example?

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summary

• What should you point out to students?
• Progressive, constructionist
• Involvement (field or lab) measuring
• Stick to the one theme
• Use the scene again in different contexts so
  the scene becomes a level of consciousness that
  can be used and re-used by the student and tutor

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Here is the scene

Can you finish off the explanation?
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Assessment - everything comes down to assessment

• Brian Whalley
• School of Geography, Archaeology and
  Palaeoecology
• Queens University Belfast

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Fieldwork - maximising the effectiveness

• Clearly integrated with the programme/module
• Deeper learning will be facilitated where it
  enhances student interest
• Students respond to hands on data acquisition
• Be aligned - ie relate subject matter, level,
  instruction mode to student need and assessment

Adapted from Fuller et al. 2006. JGHE
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Additions

• In more detail, you could add things about
• The river flooding, debris transport, direct
  removal of scree at base of slopes
• The screes and gullies, lack of veg
• The bedrock weathering related to past/present
  conditions high and low altitude
• Apparent size of moraine and the glacier
  contribution

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Audio?

• Insert an audio clue here
• These symbols can be made quite small and
  unobtrusive and you can move them around on an
  image.

Text versions 1 2
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Q what do you think this is?
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(Audio Clue)
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In summary

• We need to
• Tune the trip to student needs
• Maximise the learning experience
• Not overload the facility (one does all)
• PowerPoint (plus website) can be a useful, cheap
  and cheerful environment
• Get the students to develop their skills

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Thank you
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LIDAR
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(No Transcript)
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Much easier is the Art Historians job
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I shall cover

• Use of digital affordances in the field
• USB (see poster)
• Geocaching and use of GPS
• Virtorial and Virtual Field Guide
• Supporting Fieldwork - audio and video
• Webfolios
• Student mailer (spreadsheet data)
• Some bits of code
• Spreak sheet targeting
• Mark generator and criterion referencing
• Reusable Educational objects

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E-learning

• Using e-things to help E-ducation
• Student side
• Staff side
• Affordances - something new from old ideas and
  devices
• Devices for helping accessibility (or
  encouraging inclusivity)
• Should we use it to develop a 21C HE syllabus?

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THE USB(Universal Serial Bus)
Widely used on all sorts of devices, hosts
laptops, PDAs, games consoles Clients cameras,
videos, scanners and a whole lot more
Treed or daisy chained via hubs, hot-swappable,
Reasonably robust
Coming soon
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Where (and when) do students have field trip
problems?
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How can these mis-connections be rectified?
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What can the VFG Do to help?
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How might we use ppt to help?