Abstract:

The teaching innovation project “Learning through emotion: Learning by Communicating in Earth Sciences” of the faculty of Earth Sciences at the University of Barcelona aims at improving the assimilation of contents and the oral communication skills of students. It also aims at facilitating and increasing attention in the field practices and at encouraging self- and teamwork as learning tools. The teaching activities are designed to stimulate students’ emotion and encourage motivation, creativity and intellectual pleasure during learning, by involving oral communication and mainly using Information and communication technologies (ICTs).

In this work, we present the first results of some academic activities as part of this project corresponding to 1) the record of audiovisual notes during field practices and 2) an audiovisual presentation of in-class exercises. Both group of activities have been implemented in the last year of the Geology Degree (4th year) during the first semester of the academic course 2022-2023. The record of field audiovisual notes mainly consists on 2–5 minutes long videos showing and summarizing key geological observations made by the students in a selection of outcrops (stops) that are visited during the field itinerary. Slightly different approaches (e.g. provided or not a content script; type of observations, geological measurements), according to the specificities of the courses, time limitations, students’ background, and learning purposes, have been used in three subjects that have included these activities (i.e. Petroleum Geology, Historical and Regional Geology, and Subsurface Integrated Geology). In all cases, students worked in small teams generally made up of two members. The audiovisual presentation is an individual activity consisting on the record of a PPT presentation exposing the evaluation of a hydrocarbon field as a result of some in-class exercises. The students are provided with guidelines for the content of the slides to prepare the presentation. The maximum length of the video must be 12 minutes and it is delivered in mp4 format. Both the audiovisual notes in the field and the presentation are uploaded in the educational platform for its evaluation. The lecturers visualize the videos and make comments on both the contents and the form (communicating skills, synthesis capability) to evaluate the activity.

In order to know to what extent these activities have helped to enhance learning and communication skills, we conducted an anonymous survey of the students, which was answered by 45% of them. The results undoubtedly show that both types of activities helped the students to learn more and better, and they considered them as positive and key for their formation. The students highlighted the utility of the audiovisual presentation for contributing to their better understanding and assimilation of concepts and their context, to retain the knowledge, and to improve their capabilities to synthesize and organize information and ideas. The students also pointed out that the audiovisual notes in the field clearly helped them to increase attention, concentration and motivation, and working in-group enhanced their understanding. Finally, they considered that more of such of activities should be proposed and implemented earlier in the degree, for an effective improvement of their communication skills.

Keywords:

Emotion, Communication skills, Audiovisual recording, Earth Sciences, Field practices.