1181 | 981 | The Seppo platform allows teachers to create excursions that students can conduct with their smartphone, at a self-selected moment, without the guidance of a teacher in the field. Following an Educational Design Research approach, we tried to identify the characteristics of an effective design. Via two cycles of designing, testing and evaluating, we explored how we could transform four existing teacher-guided excursions to app-supported excursions. The excursions were conducted with a group of 180 Bachelor Geography students in 2022, and again with a group of 165 students in 2023. Various data were collected: observations, surveys and interviews. Answers to questions and videos and drawings created by students were also analyzed. Students preferred to work in small (2-4 students) self-formed groups. We found out that it works best to offer as little textual information in the app as possible, and put additional resources such as explanatory texts, photos, models, graphs in a separate excursion booklet. The app should contain short videos (1-2 minute) in which the teacher raises curiosity and explains the tasks. The videos should not explain what can be seen in the field but let students think and discover themselves. We included drawing tasks (“indicate in the map or cross-section … ”), guided-observation tasks (“take a picture of …”), expert model tasks (“make a video in which you explain…”) and multiple choice tasks with autofeedback. Students were very positive about the final design of the app-supported excursions and highly valued the whole-class debriefings afterwards, in which the teacher gave feedback on their answers, drawings and videos and organized discussions to deepen their fieldwork experience. Also, students said they did not miss the guidance of the teacher in the field. For teachers, the biggest pedagogical advantage was that the app provided easy insight into students’ learning.

The Seppo platform allows teachers to create excursions that students can conduct with their smartphone, at a self-selected moment, without the guidance of a teacher in the field. Following an Educational Design Research approach, we tried to identify the characteristics of an effective design. Via two cycles of designing, testing and evaluating, we explored how we could transform four existing teacher-guided excursions to app-supported excursions. The excursions were conducted with a group of 180 Bachelor Geography students in 2022, and again with a group of 165 students in 2023. Various data were collected: observations, surveys and interviews. Answers to questions and videos and drawings created by students were also analyzed. Students preferred to work in small (2-4 students) self-formed groups. We found out that it works best to offer as little textual information in the app as possible, and put additional resources such as explanatory texts, photos, models, graphs in a separate excursion booklet. The app should contain short videos (1-2 minute) in which the teacher raises curiosity and explains the tasks. The videos should not explain what can be seen in the field but let students think and discover themselves. We included drawing tasks (“indicate in the map or cross-section … ”), guided-observation tasks (“take a picture of …”), expert model tasks (“make a video in which you explain…”) and multiple choice tasks with autofeedback. Students were very positive about the final design of the app-supported excursions and highly valued the whole-class debriefings afterwards, in which the teacher gave feedback on their answers, drawings and videos and organized discussions to deepen their fieldwork experience. Also, students said they did not miss the guidance of the teacher in the field. For teachers, the biggest pedagogical advantage was that the app provided easy insight into students’ learning.

Tim Favier
Utrecht University

ID Abstract: 981