 | Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 16, Issue 1, Article 12 (Jun., 2015)
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| Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 16, Issue 1, Article 12 (Jun., 2015)
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In our modern society with numerous issues related to sustainable development (Levinson, Kent, Pratt, Kapadia, & Yogui, 2011; UN DESD, 2011), ‘Can e-learning help educators to convey risk knowledge?’ is the main motivation for us to conduct this research. From the results of this pilot study, we conclude that the Web-based flood walk did show the same effect on developing pupils’ risk knowledge of flood issues. However, the physical flood walk group presented a better enhancement on their knowledge transfer flood issue, and their interests and motive to explore flood related knowledge in the future. From the results of the pupils’ attitude towards flood issue, it tells us the importance of creating “physical experiences” for learners in both of the arenas of formal and informal education to promote their learning interests. For example, using multi-media (showing a video with a flood problem happened in reality) in teaching and providing different experiences (hands-on activities with physical models developed for flooding issue education or experiencing tsunami in a simulated environment) for students to learn knowledge could be helpful.
In sum, we want to address that a Web-based learning environment did save us time to convey knowledge, but it is necessary to point out that a Web-based environment cannot replace a real physical learning environment. A good teaching and learning context should consider the support from both ICT and physical teaching-learning interaction. The way of organizing students (individual, a pair or a group), educational levels (pre-school to upper secondary levels) and different concepts to be taught are all important to consider while using ICT in school education (Lee, Waxman, Wu, Michko, & Lin, 2013). Concerning the limitation of this pilot study, we were aware of the pre-assessment (Table 2 and 3) and the differences of the students of the both groups that might influence our results. However, based on the knowledge tests after stop 2 and 5 (Table 4), there was no significant differences found in both group of students. In sum, we view this study as a case study and there is a need to conduct research further to provide a holistic view to contribute to flood risk education and learning environment research. In particular, aspects of investigating students’ learning process in depth during the flood walk as well as adding different levels of knowledge concerning flood risk are both important to be studied in the coming future.
Copyright (C) 2015 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 16, Issue 1, Article 12 (Jun., 2015). All Rights Reserved.
