Field-based learning: multidisciplinary mobile mapping methods Erasmus Project

Project Title

Field-based learning: multidisciplinary mobile mapping methods

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Pedagogy and didactics; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Academic disciplines develop their own distinctive ways of researching and teaching about the world. These research methodologies and ways of teaching depend upon technologies which change, and upon a similarly changeable set of cultural norms, which are rarely challenged. We can learn from different ways of doing teaching and research and in particular, we can learn from playful ways of finding out about a place, where the mobile phone and mapping offer new ways of ‘situating knowledge’.

This project investigated field encounters between groups of students and academics, from different nations and academic fields. Its aim was to improve learning in the field, by contrasting methods. A Strategic Partnership was developed between academics from Manchester, Warwick, Utrecht, Olomouc and Malta and formalized during annual Transnational Partnership meetings. For three years students investigated the Mediterranean island of Gozo in a ten-day field course. Coming from fields as diverse as Geography, Development Studies, Game Studies, Sociology, New Media Studies and Geographical Information Science they became players in ‘location-based games’, deployed to structure group-based and student-led investigations of Island Geography. Facilitated by academics and researchers from Manchester, Warwick, Utrecht, Olomouc and Malta the students compared and contrasted different research methods. Mapping games and more conventional research methods were used as part of these learning contexts. Students presented results of their investigations and began to appreciate the significant differences that discipline and nationality brought to learning about Island Studies. Learning in the courses was under the control of students, and staff designed subsequent courses in the light of the successes and failures of early encounters. Field practice changed in these three years and best practice was established.

Students learnt about mobile technologies in the field. They shared in game design through a ‘game jam’. They explored the potential of mobile mapping as a research tool and investigated the different assumptions that they brought to the activity. Academic best practice between disciplines was shared in the field between participants and subsequently with a wider group of stakeholders, in a joint International Seminar held as a Multiplier Event at the conclusion of the project. Conference papers and presentations, peer-reviewed journal articles and books disseminated our conclusions to different academic audiences as well as to other stakeholders.

The Strategic Partnership led to improved field practice, a greater awareness of the differences that stem from how we approach the field, an exploration of the potential of serious gaming as an educational tool, and a greater appreciation of the role of direct field experience, across academic disciplines. It contributed towards modernising academic practice in Europe, enabling learning through technologies that are taken for granted by current (and, more so, future) cohorts of students. It brought fun back into learning in higher education!

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 207235 Eur

Project Coordinator

THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER & Country: UK

Project Partners

• THE UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK
• UNIVERZITA PALACKEHO V OLOMOUCI
• UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT
• UNIVERSITA TA MALTA