The way of working

During the seminar, we have experimented a specific way of teaching based on learning by doing. The case study wasn’t an illustration of theories but the key to establish connexions between disciplines.

By locating the students in front of a reality, visible on the field and related to people living inside, we wanted to make them active in the learning process.

We proposed them to work in small groups mixing origins and specialities and focused on a part of the work. Our aim was to propose them to divide the valley in 6 parts but the students preferred working at different scale levels (one group studied the driving forces at a region scale, including Kopper, one described the landscape changes an the valley scale, and four groups went deeper  in the analysis on a part of the valley (upper north, upper south, middle and lower part).

Our main goal was to help them to find some answers to the questions that they had themselves formulated. For this reasons, we have been obliged to change the schedule several times during the seminar, sometime to put off a lecture because we considered that it wasn’t the good moment to present it, sometime to add a debriefing meeting or a new lecture. The schedule was written on a white board to permit to everybody to know the changes.

During the seminar and at the end, the professors organised specific meetings to analyse and evaluate the efficiency of this organisation and to adapt it at the moment.

This exercise was very rich but difficult, specially because we had to modify our lectures while the students were working, in order to better link the lecture to the questions that were appearing in their mind.

Two problems haven’t been solved:

-        firstly, it obliged us to propose lectures after the work on the field, just before or just after the dinner and we all were tired at these periods

-        secondly, due to the short delays for the presentations, it was sometime difficult to leave the concrete work to come back to more general or theoretical aspects

During the seminar, we noticed some anxiety or some doubts about the possibility for the students to produce a god result. Many have been lost because they were discovering new ways of thinking, new ways of working with unknown references. This disturbance was a part of the educational process (the nodal points). However, we tried to reduce this feeling of insecurity at a level acceptable by all with small meetings (one professor + several students), debriefing periods with all the participants, and we took profit of the Slovenian and Hungarian students who had participated to the last seminar. As they knew that feelings, they have been able to give them enough confidence, even if the issue wasn’t visible.

By chance, the students were so friendly that they made a lot of efforts to exchange their opinions without any aggressive attitude. Certainly, it is due to the fact that the professors had chosen the students that they considered as well adapted to this seminar, and that they were extremely motivated to participate.

 

We knew that it was difficult to gather 48 students coming from 6  countries, with 5 specialities, for a period of 2 weeks. So, we decided to start the process by asking them to prepare a little work before their arrival. We proposed them to present their country and studies, their feelings about the landscape by photographs and to think about two concepts linked to the case study (the borders in the landscape and the peri-urbanity). During the seminar, we organised a meeting for a cross presentation o the studies and countries and an exhibition of “my landscape exercise”. At least, the Slovenian students have organised 2 half days for a discovery of Slovenia (the cost, the karst region and Ljubljana).