Geo-Focus: Making focal points of Switzerland’s geology a digital experience

The traditional lecture “Geology of Switzerland” provides basic knowledge about the subsurface of Switzerland and the temporal development that has led to the current situation. The Alps are understood as a natural laboratory in which concepts from plate tectonics, petrology, sedimentology, paleoclimatology and others can be tested. Students should learn to apply these concepts to the interpretation of landscapes and their development.
However, the concepts mentioned are often perceived by students as very theoretical and detached from their personal world of experience. This is all the more true as the content of the lecture is very dense and takes place in spatial and temporal dimensions that are unfamiliar to the students. The students› prior knowledge and motivation for the topic are very heterogeneous due to the different degree courses involved.
The aim of this project was to portray exemplary field situations in Switzerland using a series of videos and to use these portraits to apply theoretical concepts to the interpretation of concrete field situations. The aim is to create a better reference for the students and a space for reflection on the theory. Using these examples, they should learn to understand and read landscapes by themselves and understand them as the result of a temporal development.

13 key locations of Swiss geology were portrayed in videos, with one introductory and one concluding video each. A total of 15 videos are now available. The videos were uploaded to YouTube and can therefore be accessed by a wide audience.
The locations were selected on the basis of the most important processes to be discussed and were arranged along a timeline (from the formation of the basement to the history of the Ice Age). A detailed film script was first created for all videos and accompanied by suitable graphics. The scripts were compared with each other, and care was taken to ensure that the scripts were written in simple language; where necessary, they were submitted to external experts to check the content.
Some of the videos were used directly in class for the relevant chapter, while others were asked to be watched by the students themselves after the relevant topic had been discussed in the lecture. They were given time to do this by shortening the classroom lecture. Where possible, clicker questions were asked about the videos in the following lesson to ensure that they were integrated into the course of the lesson. Of course, the students were also able to ask questions about the content of the videos. At the end of the course, the use by and benefits for the students were documented in an online evaluation.

The project can be considered a success for the following reasons:
– Personal feedback from students: The videos were perceived as an extremely valuable addition to the lecture.
– Although the response rate to the survey was quite low, the videos were rated very positively in terms of depth of content, length and speed. They were rated as motivating and promoting understanding. The integration of the videos into lessons was also rated as good, with some students even requesting a more detailed debriefing, which shows that the videos are seen as a central element of the learning process.
– The grades in the final exam were very clearly higher than in previous years and indicate that the students understood basic concepts much better than in previous years thanks to the videos.
– The use of the videos on YouTube shows that the circle of interested parties extends far beyond the narrower target audience of enrolled students and has met with a very positive response (1.3 to 4.4K Views).