iEarth Education Research Publication Series

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Project: "Teaching Manual for Field Assistants"

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Authors: Florina Schalamon, Marius O. Jonassen

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Funding from iEarth: 25 000 NOK in 2021

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Conducting fieldwork in geosciences is often a demanding task, particularly in the Arctic and for many students also a new experience. However, fieldwork also has a high potential to add great value to classical classroom lectures and lab work. Alongside the course responsible and students in the field, typically follow one or several teaching assistants. An important task for these assistants is to contribute towards the best possible learning environment for the students through a range of practical and theoretical tasks. However, they seldomly receive formal training in their tasks, and much is learned simply by doing and or by informal knowledge transfer from for example more senior students and the course responsible. This shortcoming was already addressed by a 3-days course held for the first time at UNIS during spring 2021, which covered three main topics: common theories of teaching and learning, how to give written feedback and field learning.

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This manual is a summary of the last topic of the mentioned UNIS course and expanded by feedback from former field assistants, students, and course responsible. The first and introductory part of this manual outlines and discuss how fieldwork is fundamentally different from other types of learning activities and what is the added value. The second and main part will cover good practices, tips and tricks related to important and often challenging topics connected to fieldwork such as preparation for fieldwork, communication in the field, the inclusion of students in active learning activities in the field dealing with unexpected changes during field work.

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Read the iEarth Education Research Publication on Teaching Manual here