The project results (PR) will be four clearly defined products, summarized as
PR1: A review of the challenges and opportunities for a blended learning approach to ESD at the university level.
Blended learning approaches will no doubt become more prevalent in the post-Covid19 situation as face‐to‐face campus‐based teaching will use on‐line activities and online learning environments as important supporting elements. There is an inquiery on how a blended learning approach as a means of training and acquiring new knowledge can support new pedagogical practices in ESD. Digital environments and digital collaboration formats are an essential component of the implementation of ESD in terms of strategic and pedagogic innovation and teacher training as they contribute to modifying the practices of both teachers and students and to supporting and enhancing their digital skills.
We will make a systematic overview in blended learning and digital pedagogical practices/digital and innovative educational actions on ESD in higher education through interviews and curriculum analysis.
The systematic review aims at gaining a deeper understanding of teachers’ views of challenges and opportunities for a blended learning approach to ESD and how teaching in digital environments and digital collaboration formats can be designed to give students opportunities to develop deeper knowledge in ESD. We aim to identify the spaces of possibility and potential foreclosure for a blended learning approach in order to support the practical work of virtual field trips and virtual labs.
PR2: Virtual field trips to educate to global change
Also for fieldwork, transfer to a blended learning approach is needed because of the COVID 19 restriction. Transferring to virtual formats promotes inclusion, as people with low incomes or travel disabilities due to family or health reasons can also participate. However, they can be an effective tool, as intercultural experiences can be made visible and easily shared in this way. This is one element of innovation: Combination of intercultural issues and opportunities for virtual field trips to educate to global change.
Needs analysis: So far, there are hardly any virtual field trips available, if they are, they are often found in the fields of major subject, e.g. in physical geography or human geography. In the field of education they hardly exist. Here lies another innovation of the project: The underlying concept of the project is “blended learning approach”, which is also used for field trips. They can be realised in real and virtual form, so far, this has mainly been the case in real format. The objective of this result project is to design a didactic and pedagogical approach to use virtual field trips in a ESD perspective.
PR3: A V-GLOBAL participatory toolbox for blended-learning
The participatory toolkit will be connected to the project’s website. It will provide step by step instructions, demos, and proposed tools. It will include tools for different digital skills and needs, from simple to use collaborative dashboards to ppWebGIS platforms. The different participatory methods and tools can support the blended methodology and the pilots, for example: Aspirations mapping & Co-design of field trips and excursions
- Sensory mapping (sensations, perspective, sentiments)
- Collaborative SWOT analysis
- Mobile data collection & collective mapping tools through webgis
- Participatory workshops
- Consultation and Voting tools
- Collaborative presentation of results
- Collaborative storytelling (storymaps, timeline, audio, text, other)
All digital participatory methods and tools will be accompanied with examples and templates to perform in person. Students and teachers participate in a context of collaboration and co-design of the pilots in order to test, evaluate and improve the blended learning methodology in real life spatial problem solving, in thematics of Global Change. The participatory toolbox can be used by both target groups, in designing new exercises and implementing collaborative research.
PR4 : Training for university teachers in the use of virtual excursions with an ESD perspective.
This PR will be deep in the learning outcomes the project should achieve on university teachers by creating, recreating and co-creating content for the aims of the project and designing a MOOC.
The MOOC will have 4 modules :
- Module 1 : ESD and Global Change
- Module 2 : Create Virtual field trip
- Module 3 : The participatory tools and process (Participatory Lab)
- Module 4 : Applied module.