The Concept of In Situ Lecturing

Abstract

Traditional teaching at university level takes place mainly in
lecture rooms without any direct linkage to the real subject. Thus even
during well taught lectures the human, in our case students’, multisense                                                                                                                             receptivity is stimulated only in a limited way. This means that
just a part of the actual subject matter can be transferred. Therefore,
students will not learn to observe the whole range of the circumstances
and environmental parameters involved in a specific subject. This
problem arises especially in natural sciences and, partly, engineering
teaching in which the environmental setting is often a key to
successfully understand complex processes, proportions and scales as
well as human (counter) actions. In our concept “in situ lecturing” we
teach at the place which is being studied, hence “in situ”. In situ
lecturing is a valuable pedagogical concept to develop student’s
understanding of basic concepts, to enable them to transfer concepts and
theory to local conditions, to train practical skills and to promote a
comprehensive understanding of processes. This approach is achieved
by an integrative combination of pre-courses and practicals in the
classroom, followed by in situ lectures, practicals and seminars as well
as a final reporting. Examples are presented from geophysics but these
may be transferred to many other disciplines.