Innovative teaching techniques recognised with award
USING Jenga blocks, doing parkour in urban environments, and creating digital virtual tours using 360degree cameras are among the innovative teaching practices used by James Berghan in his lectures.
The University of Otago Te Kura Kairuri School of Surveying urban design lecturer has just won a $NZ11,000 Curriculum Innovation Award from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in the United States, for his teaching practices in his thirdyear urban design paper.
Only four awards are offered annually.
‘‘I was absolutely rapt when I heard the outcome, and as I’m particularly interested in teaching and research methods, having my teaching practices validated in this way is fantastic recognition,’’ Dr Berghan said.
During the 2020 lockdown, Dr Berghan created an assignment which required students to interact with Dunedin’s urban environment.
He set up online ‘‘missions’’ that required students to submit photos, videos or textbased responses gathered while doing neighbourhoodbased walks during lockdown.
‘‘The missions included a range of urbandesign concepts spanning the identification of traffic calming devices, to street art and hauora [health] based ideas such as the role of public and green spaces.
‘‘But it was also important to incorporate some fun elements too as lockdowns were such a challenging time, so I also included missions such as the students submitting a video of themselves doing parkour in an urban space.’’
Much of his work in urban design involves placebased teaching, and when the Covid19 pandemic hit, a handful of his students opted for online teaching.
So he created a digital tool to complement a semesterlong sitespecific project at Andersons Bay inlet.
With a 360degree camera, he created a digital virtual tour of the area for the online students to achieve the experience of being there.
He said the process involved embedding photos and videos at a series of geolocated points around the site, related to specific features and shown in different conditions such as weather and tides.
He has also developed a housing research method using Jenga blocks as a tool for working with groups whose voices were less heard, such as kaumatua, refugees, students and young adults.
He has continued to use and modify this assignments over the past two years, and students said the key lessons from this approach had ‘‘really clicked’’.
Dr Berghan said that was his ‘‘ultimate goal of teaching’’.