E2. Teaching and learning landscape ecology and planning in times of growing uncertainties. Challenges ahead during and after the COVID-19 pandemic

Veerle Van Eetvelde (IALE-Europe, Ghent University), veerle.vaneetvelde@ugent.be

Werner Rolf (Technische Universität München)

Camila Gomes Sant Anna (Federal University of Goiás), cgomessantanna@gmail.com

Summary

This symposium aims to address experiences and reflections about teaching landscape ecology during the COVID-19 pandemics. Based in these experiences we want to look forward and discuss how these can help us to further develop teaching contents and methods in future. The symposium is welcoming contributions from colleagues in the different levels of education and degrees. What are the challenges and opportunities ahead? What are the appropriate ways of working together in a blended teaching format? Can the online version replace the real landscape? How to create new blended spaces and places for learning landscape ecology? What multiscale approaches in landscape ecology can be used in landscape planning and design projects in the current era?

We are looking for contributions with practical examples but also with critical and theoretical reflections about teaching landscape ecology and planning during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Description

To be a teacher or a student in a changing society and environment is challenging. This means that the content, learning outcomes and competences of the programs and curricula need to be updated to the new demands from society. Graduate students have to be prepared to tackle future research questions in landscape ecology to formulate solutions for a more sustainable and liveable world for all species. Also the educational system is challenged and encouraged to use new technologies and research methods. Innovating teaching and evaluation methods are encouraged. This leads to a continuous updating of courses to ensure the overall qualities of the different levels in teaching, from the primary schools to the graduate level. Teaching programmes and courses might need to handle these challenges, also taking into account how students can be prepared for a future that is characterised by growing societal and environmental uncertainties.

However, no one could have predicted the situation the whole world was getting into due to the COVID-19 pandemics since March 2020. Schools and university were closed, teaching had to be organised in a different manner, and contacts between students and teachers could only take place virtually. These other ways of interaction with and among students appeared to be both different and difficult. The different and wide variety of our traditional teaching and evaluation methods had to be adapted. Both teachers and students had to be flexible, creative and adaptive.

When teaching about and in the landscape, specific teaching methods are used such as going in the landscape (excursions and fieldwork), the use of imagination (representations and visualisation) and observations (recording and analytical skills), learning together and working interdisciplinary, and the iterative learning process and integration between indirect desktop and direct field observation. Now we were challenged to bring the landscape and its different perspectives into a virtual world.

The aim of this symposia is to discuss how we can progress in teaching and learning landscape ecology in the post-corona period. What are appropriate ways to respond to drastic changes in the future? What insights can be learned and could be integrated into the teaching programs of the future? Are we still using the appropriate concepts and teaching methods? Is blended learning the future of academic education? How can we get students interested in landscape ecology in a hybrid approach combining learning in school/on campus with distance learning (including online learning)? What are the appropriate ways of working together in a blended teaching format? Can the online version replace the real landscape? How to create new blended spaces and places for learning landscape ecology?

A specific focus will go to systemic and strategic methodologies of Landscape Ecology Teaching and learning in planning and design study programmes, including methodological strategies and tools in the field and virtually as well as the interdisciplinary approach that gathers architects, urbanist, biologists and geographers.

The symposium will be built on different experiences from the participants in the different levels of education and degrees and discuss both practical examples as well as theoretical reflections.

Impact

This symposium is organised by the IALE-Europe working group ‘Education in ecology – Sharing knowledge and experience’ and builds on previous symposia organised on IALE Congresses (Manchester 2013, Ghent 2017, Milan 2019). Participants will be invited to publish their contribution in the new Living Special Issue in the journal Landscape Online.