Helping students to learn without teachers present

Summary, in English

Surveys of students’ and teachers’ experiences at the Department of Geology, Lund University, have shown a need and wish among students to get, for example, more practice in using and understanding geological terminology and to understand the context of different features. Among teachers a common problem is (too) limited time per student to always give meaningful feedback and support. Learning materials that students can use by themselves, without teachers present, can help address these problems. Such materials can be used as a general aid to learning and for formative assessment. It may also take some load off teachers during a course and allow them to focus joint teacher-student time on selected issues or higher levels of knowledge (explain, apply, generalise), while more basic levels (identification, description) can be covered and trained by the student on her/his own.
Three examples of learning materials that students use in two different courses within the bachelor program at the Department of Geology will be presented: a GoogleEarth-based virtual tour of Sweden with self-correcting questions, an image-based self-correcting quiz and a board game (Hiatus; Höglund 2014). Pros and cons from a pedagogical point of view as well as students’ and teachers’ experiences of these materials will be given.

References
Höglund, I. 2014. Hiatus - Sveriges första sällskapsspel i sedimentologi. Bachelor thesis 381. Department of Geology, Lund University, Lund. 13 p. Download at: http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/ download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=4459850&fileOId=4459866

• Author: Helena Alexanderson; Ida Höglund
• Department/s: Quaternary Sciences
• Publishing year: 2016
• Language: English
• Pages: 146-146
• Links: http://www.geologinenseura.fi/bulletin/Special_Volume_1_2016/BGSF-NGWM2016_Abstract_Volume.pdf
• Document type: Conference paper: abstract
• Topic: Geology; Pedagogy
• Conference name: 32nd Nordic Geological Winter Meeting
• Conference date: 2016-01-13
• Conference place: Helsinki, Finland
• Status: Published
• Project: Teaching geology - improving knowledge and practice