Elisabete Peixotos’s PhD defense takes place on the 24th January, at 9:30 a.m., in sala de Atos Académicos, with the topic USE OF TRANSMEDIA IN GEOSCIENCES EDUCATION | UTILIZAÇÃO DO TRANSMEDIA NO ENSINO DAS GEOCIÊNCIAS.
Elisabete Peixoto is a student of the PhD programme Multimedia in Education and her supervisors are Luís Pedro (DigiMedia, UA) and Rui Marques Vieira (CIDTFF, UA).
DigiMedia members are invited to participate in this important moment in person.
Abstract:
This investigation aims to develop (conceive, produce, implement and evaluate) a set of transmedia activities to address one of the themes of the subject of Natural Sciences in basic instruction. These activities, in line with the STS (Science-Technology-Society) perspective, aimed to contribute to the diversification of educational resources for the teaching and learning of that subject and the development, in students, of crucial skills, including citizenship.
These activities were divided into three phases, namely “pre-field trip”, “field trip” and “after the field trip”. In addition, these activities were framed in a transmedia narrative related to the use that the Human Being makes of rocks in daily life, whose final goal was to construct an online puzzle on the Campus platform and, in specific cases, the gathering of digital badges.
This study, predominantly qualitative in nature, is based on the educational design research methodology, as it involves the design, implementation and evaluation of a set of activities according to a cyclical and reflective process.
The investigation involved 104 students, 21 in the first cycle of research and 83 in the second cycle of research, who attended, respectively, the 7th and 5th grades.
In the initial phase of the research, the didactic-pedagogical characteristics of the existing educational resources for that subject were analyzed and a questionnaire was applied to the students in order to determine their digital practices.
The “pre-field trip” phase was essentially introductory and aimed to provide information to the students about how the activities in which they were participating would work. The “field trip” phase involved a field trip close to the students’ school, in which they had to complete a set of tasks, specifically making records in photographs and on a record sheet provided for this purpose. This information was shared in the “after the field trip” phase with the other students in a closed group on the Campus platform.
The analysis of the data collected through different instruments suggests that students showed some skills in areas such as “interpersonal relationships”, “scientific, technical and technological knowledge” and “information and communication”, although in this case they can be considered limited.
Thus, the transmedia activities developed provide a contribution to the knowledge about how they can be developed and implemented, namely in basic education.
More information available HERE