By Noah Moseley.
If a picture tells a thousand words, then you can only imagine what the value of a hands-on learning experience offered by fieldwork is. No one would argue against the benefits of introducing students to the wealth of new experiences that can be found outside of the classroom. And while these benefits are often seen as limitless, we must understand how to maximise them and leave ample opportunity for future learning when students are back in the classroom. For fieldwork to be highly effective and time well spent, it must be based on six key principles: learn by practical application; learn in a highly stimulating environment; introduce a new environment; teamwork and communication; interaction with those outside the school community; and questions left unanswered for further learning back in the classroom.
By developing field trip itineraries with these key principles, you will be able to create a pathway to greater learning and clearly see the benefits of learning in the field.
Learn By Practical Application
Allow your students to use a variety of field equipment and techniques such as sketching, recording observations and map reading. Do not underestimate the importance of smartphone technology and the range of applications that can assist you whilst in the field. The application of these hands-on skills will give students who do not excel at ‘textbook learning’ the opportunity to call upon and identify the more practical skills that they possess. To maximise the benefits, incorporate hands-on tasks into the day as students work their way through their assigned projects.
Learn In A Highly Stimulating Environment
When you give students the opportunity to learn in a highly stimulating environment, outside of the four walls of a classroom, the benefits of this can flow into both the pre- and post-stages of the program to harvest as much energy as possible from the day. When choosing a location for your field trip, remember that the more dimensions a venue can offer, the better. However, you need to be sure that the location offers the right environment to achieve the goals and objectives of the day. For instance, going to the local national park might seem like a logical choice but will it give you a good venue to measure human impact? The choice of a venue with multiple dimensions also gives you the ability to demonstrate how different subjects, such as science, geography, history and agriculture, interact with one another. Whilst this may not be a focal point of the day, it grants an important opportunity to demonstrate to students how this interaction occurs and the important role it plays in sustainability.
Introduce A New Environment
By conducting your field work projects in an unfamiliar environment, you will offer students the greatest benefit because it allows them to use fresh eyes to assess the area, which is a crucial part of achieving accurate field work studies.
Team Work And Communication
Ask your students to work in a team and ensure that communication is required to brainstorm solutions to various problems and objectives. Consider how the day is going to flow and how tasks will be completed. For instance, tasks such as working with equipment and recording field observations might be best conducted in small sub-groups, while tasks that require group discussion might be better conducted in large class-style groups. Alternatively, wait until your group returns to the classroom before you ask the sub-groups to report their findings and offer them up for group discussion.
Interaction With Those Outside The School Community
It is always interesting to organise for a person who is involved in the area in which you are conducting field work to be involved on the day. They will bring along an interesting dimension to your field trip and, if the person works in the area, it can have the added benefit of exposing students to employment opportunities that they may not have previously considered.
Questions Left Unanswered For Further Learning Back In The Classroom
Remember that not all questions need to be answered. Leaving a few unanswered gives you the opportunity to take some of the learning back to the classroom. This may include bringing findings together or perhaps making comparisons with other areas using research that has been published on the internet.
Before heading out into the field it is important to identify the learning outcomes you wish to achieve and the methods that you will use to achieve them. Field work traditionally lends itself well to subjects such as geography, science, history, agriculture, Aboriginal studies, design and technology. When you are designing your program, it is helpful to call upon the benefits outlined above to ensure that the students are achieving maximum value from the experience.
The nature of some subject matter may lend itself better to some methods of research than others, but with a little bit of imagination and creativity, the level of exposure to new methods of learning can be fantastic. The use of source material is also a very helpful tool in getting students’ minds stimulated. Examples of this source material may be report papers, historic photos or maps of the area.
It goes without saying that developing a field work program is a complex and time-consuming undertaking and, for this reason, it warrants a degree of research into the ready-made options that are available to student groups. A lot of venues are highly experienced when it comes to setting the tone of the day and providing a platform for the work that is undertaken and the objectives that have been set.
Travel time to and from the venue also plays an important role and will impact on the time that you have in the field, but you should encourage students to make mental observations on the way to the venue to make the most of all the time that you have out of the classroom. These observations can include things such as the direction from the school, the different regions travelled through, the distance traveled and the change in climate that students experience. These notes can also be discussed in pre-field work studies.
Once a venue has been selected, you must familiarise yourself with the program and perhaps even make a few minor tweaks to better suit your needs. The time available will play a major role in what you can achieve, so use it wisely. To achieve this, a number of steps should be completed prior to the day to ensure that your day runs smoothly:
- Students must come prepared. This means that they should all have their own workbooks and clipboards to write on, as well as pens and pencils. They must also be appropriately dressed for field work (the school’s sports uniform is the logical solution and this will make them easy to identify should you be in an area that is open to the public).
- Ensure that all of the students bring a packed lunch, water and personal items. You do not want students to be distracted from the task at hand when they go to purchase lunch.
- Ensure that students are briefed and grouped prior to arriving on location. It is important that they understand why they are going out into the field, the environment in which they are working and what is required of them throughout the course of the day. For instance, do they have to complete the workbook by the end of the day, or are they able to complete this in class?
- Make sure field equipment is checked and prepared and all group leaders have a clear understanding of how to use the equipment. As part of the pre-trip work, students can be trained in the use of many different pieces of equipment, such as light readers and compasses, which means that readings can be taken quickly and accurately in the field
- You should also ensure that students have completed all of the pre-visit work that they were assigned.
Four hours worth of field work will offer you the opportunity to cover a wide scope of work. If you look at a framework of six tasks that take approximately half an hour each, this will give you ample time to move between tasks and debrief before leaving the location. When setting these tasks, it is best to call upon a range of skills such as field sketches, recording observations, equipment use, source material interpretation and map reading. You may also like to repeat the same task in two different locations so that students can develop an understanding of different environments, which is particularly useful when looking at the human impact in an area.
Most importantly, however, when you are in the field conducting your studies, is to not be afraid of breaking away from the script if an opportunity presents itself. After all, that is what fieldwork is all about – discovering new things.
Noah Moseley is the General Manager of Calmsley Hill City Farm, a working farm in the South West of Sydney that operates extensive educational programs from pre-stage through to stage six. The farm is open to the public seven days a week, and it also has a number of domestic and native animals living on it.
Noah can be contacted on nmoseley@calmsleyhill.com.au.
For more information please go to www.calmsleyhill.com.au
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