GEOFLIP: Learning via student-empowered video-literacy

Fieldwork focused teaching and learning is of key importance in many areas of the University, whether delivered individually or in small group work within the UK or Overseas. Student feedback in GES consistently recognises field work as the most vivid, memorable and profound learning experience of a University career and beyond. The crux lies in a dynamic interaction of the student/group with real world landscapes, processes and people both at home and abroad that generates a tangible excitement. This enthusiasm is evident even within the more mundane confines of the University teaching spaces when students take ownership of research tasks and present their findings. GEOFLIP extends this educational experience by extending student ownership of experiments and interviews in the field, laboratory or classroom by video-learning using novel USB-enabled flip camcorders as learning and teaching tools. Today’s students are familiar with on-the-fly video and posting to networking sites (Facebook, You Tube etc). To fully utilise GEOFLIP as an exploitable academic tool to record field interviews and lab work, or as a record of student presentations for assessment or network sharing amongst peers, there needs to be instruction in video-literacy (consuming and creating video) so that the required aspects of the target topic are captured, effectively managed and then communicated. Video-literacy needs to be precisely targeted toward a range of end purposes and to facilitate this requires the development and delivery of tutorial and practical support materials as live and online (MOODLE) resources, to allow students to fully benefit from the potential of student-empowered video-literacy. Clearly, this aspect of student learning extends far beyond the confines of any one school or college and is a valuable transferrable skill for the modern workplace