Abstract:

The subject of Spatial Planning is conducted on a master course for graduate students of Environmental Engineering. The course is based on assumptions that students’ future work will be connected with spatial planning and spatial issues will have an influence on their everyday life. To familiarize students with environmental issues in planning, the teams of students get an assignment to design the waterfront of a stream in urban space. The whole project consists of four subprojects logically linked with each other. To prepare students for public engagement in planning, collaborative learning elements are implemented.

The set of teaching and learning activities has been elaborated, consisting of blended-learning elements and collaborative learning. The traditional hours are devoted to lectures, face-to-face consultation, project work, presentations and open discussion for all students enrolled for the course. Moodle platform is used for activities such as: building an open dictionary, voting on presentations. It is used also as a database of students reports and presentation in “read-only” mode, assessing the results according to defined criteria, creating database based on links to data sources, encouraging student in public participation by informing them about the open meetings, conferences or seminars. Students also use open systems such as GIS (Geographical Information Systems), WMS (Web Map Systems), institutions websites and software for data visualization.

The expected effects of the course are:
• Knowledge of the spatial planning system and it relations to environmental engineering issues.
• Understanding the urban space complexity, its elements, structure and processes taking into consideration spatial order and sustainable design.
• Data managing: acquiring appropriate data form site visits and virtual trips (Google maps, street view), form GIS and WMS systems, literature and other documents. Their integration, analysis and visualization.
• Collaborative team project work in spatial and urban planning processes.

The outcome of the course is Oliva Stream Waterfront prepared by teams for different areas of Oliva stream and consisting of four subprojects logically linked:
1) Identification of space conditions: elements, hazards, function, protected objects and areas etc. (The output is dxf file and written report).
2) SWOT analysis of analyzed space conditions with conclusions (The output is a written report).
3) Waterfront inspiration (The output is a multimedia presentation presented to the public).
4) Project of Olive Stream waterfront development (The output is the poster, presented to the public and discussion).

The main problems that appeared while running the course were mostly connected to collaborative team work and failure of additional activities which were used by a few students (the exception was the quiz). The course was also evaluated anonymously by students, who gave several clues of course improvement.

This article presents the structure of the course and correlation between subprojects and other activities, collaborative learning and blended-learning. During the first year of the course, several problems appeared which are here discussed. The conclusions drawn from the course will be used as guidelines for future improvements of Spatial Planning teaching process.

Keywords:

Spatial planning, blended-learning, Environmental Engineering.