Webinars for Teachers of IB Diploma Geography, Biology and Environmental Systems and Societies
This series of webinars from Field Studies Council will develop teachers’ knowledge and confidence in key aspects of fieldwork and the enquiry process, enabling you to better support students completing independent investigations for internal assessment. Be it the Fieldwork Investigation for Geography, the Scientific Investigation for Biology or the Individual Investigation for ESS, specialist Tutors from Field Studies Council, the UK’s leading provider of curriculum based outdoor leaning, will share their expertise in areas of research design, data collection and analysis helping you to support and extend your students and achieve outstanding outcomes for all.
Each webinar is live at 13:00GMT and expected to be from 1.5 – 2 hours duration. You can book onto as many as you wish. There is no charge for attending.
Effective Ecological Research Design (Biology and ESS)
Friday 7th March
In this webinar we will look at what makes a good ecological based research question – how can we support students to identify and justify the choice of dependent, independent and control variables and set their investigation in an appropriate environmental context. We will cover the basics of ecological sampling techniques and ways to measure a range of biotic and abiotic factors. We will also discuss how we can encourage students to think about the reproducibility of their methods and the collection of sufficient data to be able to carry out statistical analysis and effectively address their research questions.
Statistical Analysis of Data (Geography, Biology and ESS)
Friday 14th March
This webinar will focus on statistical analysis of data. Starting by understanding why we use statistical tests in the first place, we will consider the appropriate application of different statistical tests to test for correlation, difference or association. Using worked examples we will show how Spearman’s rank, chi-squared and the student’s t-test can be used by students to test hypotheses and effectively to support their conclusions.
Creative Fieldwork for Human Geography Investigations (Geography)
Friday 21st March
Field Studies Council are at the forefront of promoting innovative and creative approaches to fieldwork. We are passionate about making fieldwork exciting, memorable and meaningful. In this webinar our expert Tutors will share ideas for moving beyond traditional fieldwork methods and developing interesting and engaging human geography-based investigations for internal assessment. We will showcase a variety of quantitative and qualitative techniques that can be used to investigate themes around Option D, Tourism, and Option G, Urban Environments, and scaffold how these can be used as inspiration for designing focussed fieldwork enquiries in your own locations.
Using GIS to support data presentation and analysis (Geography)
Friday 28th March
Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are a rapidly developing real-world technology used to visualise spatial and place-based information. GIS is a great source of secondary data to help contextualise and develop a research question but can also be used by students to present their own data, creating a range of maps that can then aid data analysis, allowing them to easily identify spatial patterns and trends and explain these. This webinar will go through the basics of using ArcGIS software, which is readily available to schools, to access secondary data and simply present students’ own field data.
These free of charge webinars are live and intended for participants who can attend at the specified time. We do not plan to share recordings of them.
To make a booking please complete the form below:
We will email you with details, including the joining link, nearer the time.
For further information please contact Jo Harris, Education Manager on [email protected]