The use of C&IT to support fieldwork teaching and assessment at the University of Derby

C & IT is used at Derby in a variety of modes including pre-fieldwork training, post-fieldwork assessment and field-related courseware development as part of student project work. With respect to pre-fieldwork training, all students are required to undertake the UK Earth Science Courseware Consortium (UKESCC) ‘Field Safety Tutorial’ and to register their medical conditions on line using a Field Course Registration package. For field mapping, both the Field Safety Tutorial and the UKESCC ‘Using the Compass-clinometer’ courseware module are integrated into a programme of pre-course preparation sessions, involving the use of ‘in-house’ courseware, that must be completed by all students. Computer-based assessment of recent field experience is used on a number of modules to substitute for, or to supplement data obtained from, field assessments, and students are now able to submit field-related courseware modules as final-year projects. Future developments include integrated computer-based assessment of field, laboratory and theoretical work and the automated linking of records of progression through the UKESCC Field Safety Tutorial with a Field Course Registration program. These developments are planned in the context of rapidly changing course structures and the likely ‘shelf life’ of the software will be fully evaluated before committing resources to their production. This article will be of interest to GEES academics perhaps considering using C & IT to support fieldwork and assessment in their own departments/institutions.