Radionuclides as Environmental Tracers

Radionuclides stemming from both natural and artificial sources are powerful tools that allow gaining a better understanding of a large range of environmental processes. The course “Radionuclides as Environmental Tracers” (651-4191-00L) is offered since autumn 2019 in D-ERDW, D-USYS and D-PHYS for master’s and doctoral students. It provides a general overview of radionuclides commonly used as tracers, i.e. C-14, Al-26, Be-10, I-129, U-236, and their importance to different environmental compartments, such as understanding past climatic changes, oceanic currents, erosion rates. Besides teaching about foundations of radionuclides, the overarching learning objectives are of research-oriented nature and specifically aim at enabling students to work with real data, interpret results and deduce implications for the broader research context.
In sessions dedicated to reflections with the students, they repeatedly requested a stronger focus on the application side. We thus decided in 2022 to create a mandatory online-module that complements the in-person lecture with a selection of case studies. Scientists from ETH and beyond present their own research projects in a case study format, which allows the students to study different aspects and inter-dependencies associated with a confined research problem in parallel (e.g., context, methods, and interpretation). They can furthermore experience the international character of collaborative research. The self-paced online-learning environment implemented on the Swiss MOOC platform allows all students to engage, independent of their study background.
With the support of Innovedum, we produced nine videos. Out of these, seven were “Meet Your Instructor” videos, one for each case study. Two of them were produced in collaboration with the ETH Zurich Multimedia Production. Another five were produced in collaboration with the Educational Media Team. These videos serve various didactic and educational purposes. Firstly, they act as an introduction to each section, establishing a connection between participants and lecturers. Secondly, the camera team joined our lecturers on field trips, enhancing students’ learning experience by capturing authentic research activities in locations that may be inaccessible to them, such as the stalagmites cave of Milandre. Additionally, we co-designed animations to illustrate complex concepts and emphasize aspects that cannot be effectively captured on camera. Furthermore, one stand-alone animated explanatory video (“How stalagmites form”) was produced and, lastly, an introduction for the course (“What is this course about?”). Besides the videos, the self-learning part also contains reading sections, embedded existing explanatory videos, graphics and exercises.
By including in-class activities supported by blended learning we shifted the previous focus on subject- and method-specific competencies to promoting social and personal competencies.

We tested the self-learning online part in our lecture “Radionuclides as environmental tracers”. With the new material, we converted our course into a flipped classroom and blended learning approach. Students worked individually on the introduction section and three different case studies at home (self-paced learning approach). We met biweekly in class, where we used at least 50% of the time for discussion and clarification of questions. The discussions were structured through activities. The remaining in-class time was used to introduce the next case study in a more conventional lecture style (frontal, power point slides). This combination ensured a dynamic and engaging learning experience. In between two classes, students had time to work on a case study online in their own pace.
Students were asked to write a learning journal throughout the semester. Here, they reflected what they learned, what helped them to learn it and what did not work well for them. In this first run of the blended learning course, we involved students into creating online resource in form of a “deliverable”, i.e., a learning nugget for the online course. They were free to choose a topic within the realm of “Radionuclides as environmental tracers” and they could select a format of their choice (e.g., reading section, graphic, video, quiz, …). They received peer feedback for this deliverable (based on a form defining the grading criteria) and a grade through the lecturers. In the future, we will replace the “learning nugget” with some other type of project.

ACHIEVEMENT OF PROJECT GOALS:
In general, we achieved our project goals. We produced nine videos as expected. We developed the selflearning part on the Swiss MOOC Service and conducted the course in the new format once. The only change we made was that we reduced the case studies by one and instead produced an explanatory video. There were several reasons for this change in plan. One was that the project team realized that the time planning (how much time it would take to setup such a blended course) had been far too optimistic. We spent significantly more time (and uncounted overtime hours) in setting up the course.
EFFECT ON STUDENT LEARNING
1. Enhanced engagement and active participation: The flipped classroom model allows to increased student engagement. Students are actively involved during presence classes and can navigate their learning process according to their needs in the self-paced learning parts. Furthermore, the videos greatly enhanced student motivation and participation by: i) sparking their interest in the case studies, ii) offering a diversification of teaching materials, and iii) providing effective explanations and introductions to complex topics – thus offering a quickstart into deeper and more complex discussions. ¦ We investigated this through the learning journals, where students reflected on their learning.
2. Deeper understanding through discussions: The structured discussions, guided by activities and tools like learning journals, help students delve deeper into complex topics. The exchange with their peers and the lecturers potentially allows a more thorough grasp of the material. ¦ This finding is based on our observation and our experience with previous “traditionally taught” classes.
3. Application and creativity: Creating a deliverable/learning nugget allowed students to apply their knowledge creatively. This not only reinforced their understanding but also promoted their skills in communicating complex scientific concepts. ¦ We had direct evidence on this based on the deliverables that students created.
EFFECT ON STUDENT LEARNING
All together the conversion of our lecture to a blended course has been a great experience. It required brave decision making and flexibility from the lecturers but was rewarded with a fantastic course and wonderful learnings. We have never seen students so active and received very positive feedback. Given the expenditure related with such a conversion, the scalability is an important question. Even though, we as lecturers enjoyed a lot teaching the course in a comparably small group of students, we could easily scale it up based on our online module. With a location like PBLabs offers, it should be possible to keep the level of interactivity high even with a significantly larger group.

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