I am delighted to have the opportunity to contribute to The Plymouth Student Scientist. When Karen Gresty and Mick Uttley first proposed this initiative some years ago I was working at the University of Plymouth and was delighted to support the idea. I was also aware that this had been tried in other Universities where, after an initial burst of enthusiasm, the journals did not always thrive. It is very clear that this is a thriving journal and the contents of the first three issues are a testimony to the hard work and commitment of the staff and students involved. I am pleased and delighted to be able to contribute to the fourth edition.

This article reports on a research project which investigated higher education teaching in a partnership of 17 further education colleges across south-west England. One hundred and six respondents answered a web-based questionnaire which gave insights into their views on the role of the lecture in higher education in further education (HE in FE) contexts. The results indicate that these teachers believe that they distance themselves from the lecturing methods that are traditionally associated with HE. Reasons for this include the national and institutional contexts in which they are working and the beliefs and intentions they bring to their work.

This article discusses the threshold concept of ‘time’ in relation to student teaching and learning within the GEES subjects. Preconception and sensory perception of the world is thought to play a key role in how students develop their ideas of ‘time’ in relation to their experiences, be it from non-academic life, classroom based learning or fieldwork. Geological time or ‘deep time’ is a clear example of the problems that students have in conceptualising time in contexts that do not relate to everyday situations. Combining complex terminology with the introduction of new concepts can further hinder the student’s proper understanding, for example, the concepts of radiometric-dating, absolute and relative time can create a mire of confusion. One possible solution is to revisit the expert’s own past learning experiences of such concepts as a means to bridging the barriers of knowledge transfer from teacher to student - the so called ‘aha!’ moments. Such insights could lead to the development of innovative teaching materials that overcome the problems. Applying properly supported analogies, either in fieldwork or the classroom, can result in effective teaching approaches. However, we should always remain vigilant that student preconceived ideas and perceptions may inhibit proper understanding and learning progression.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Correspondence address: Sue Burkill, Head of Educational Development, University of Plymouth, Drakes Circus, Plymouth, Devon PL4 8AA, UK. Email: s.burkill@plymouth.ac.uk

(2002). Recognising and Rewarding Excellent Teachers: Towards a strategy for geography departments. Journal of Geography in Higher Education: Vol. 26, No. 3, pp. 253-262.

We have noticed that students in Geography at the College of St Mark and St John are not easily ‘transferring’ their communication skills developed in year one into year two. Shepherd (2000) claims that skill transfer is the outcome of a complex set of interactions and successful transfer relates to a range of factors from which he produces an informal model. This research adopts this idea and addresses transfer, not from just one context to another but also, from one year to another. It focused on a cohort of year one Geography students taking a module, which emphasised the importance of skills in general, and communication skills in particular. They were then tracked into their second year. Our overall aim was to determine whether the assumption we had made that skills transfer happens between years is substantiated. A questionnaire was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data based on the following research questions:Which communication skills do students ‘perceive’ that they have developed in year one?Have they been able to use communication skills developed in year one in their second year?Have they developed these skills further? The results showed that our students are not finding it easy to transfer their knowledge about communication skills between years but there is some evidence of improvement in skill acquisition; however, we need further research to investigate this. Finally, we return to Shepherd’s (2000) informal model to identify the areas where we could make some improvement in the courses.

This paper argues that the development of the International Network for Learning and Teaching Geography (INLT) provides a timely opportunity to explore the benefits of greater links between the school and higher education sectors. The authors, geographers with professional and personal expertise in learning and teaching geography in both school and higher education contexts, address key aspects of school geography in order to reflect on existing linkages and possible future collaboration with higher education. Firstly, we examine existing school and higher education connections at the national level. We go on to review aspects of learning, teaching, and curriculum reform that have developed in schools in the UK, US and Australia in order to assess how these may be shared with higher education. Then we reflect on the need to strengthen links between geography and teacher education and education research. Finally, we discuss existing international networks and their implications for INLT. We conclude with some proposals for co-operation.

As a pragmatic contribution to discussion about how skills should be integrated into the curriculum in the post-Dearing era, this paper draws on experience of a course which has been running for two years alongside the modular degree at the University College of St Mark and St John. It considers how computer-assisted learning (CAL) can be integrated into a skills curriculum for undergraduates. It argues that CAL can serve the dual purpose of providing a flexible approach to developing a range of skills and supporting the development of competence in information technology. The judicious selection of appropriate CAL materials from a range of sources, carefully programmed into the student experience, is shown to be an appropriate learning strategy for a skills curriculum. Finally, it argues that without the development of supportive IT strategies, skills-oriented courses are threatened by resource constraints.

In this paper the use of group work as one approach to student empowerment is discussed. An attempt is made to differentiate the characteristics of courses which involve token empowerment from those which involve deeper empowerment. An example of a project undertaken by second-year undergraduates is described, and student responses, as evidence of their awareness of learning processes, are explored.

(1996). Getting started on a geography dissertation. Journal of Geography in Higher Education: Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 431-437.