Class Introduction: Independent Research Seminar
General Education Courses | Independent Research Seminar: Geography
A Focus on Fieldwork, Not Just Relying on Information from the Internet.
The "Independent Research Seminar" is a valuable opportunity for the kind of interactive communication between students and faculty that is difficult to achieve in lecture-style classes. As a specialist in physical geography, while I teach the lecture course "Geography," I also offer an "Independent Research Seminar" on the theme of "Physical Geography for Disaster Prevention and Environmental Conservation." The distinctive feature of this class is that it allows students, before they advance to their specialized courses, to learn freely through research, presentations, and discussions on topics of their own interest.
The core of my seminar involves students individually choosing a topic within the scope of their current abilities, conducting research over the summer break, and presenting their findings in the fall semester, followed by a discussion with the entire class. When students conduct their research, I place great importance on "going into the field." Although we live in an age where a wealth of information is available online, I believe the experience of verifying things directly with one's own eyes is essential, and this is the policy I follow. In the spring semester, each student selects a book related to a topic of their interest and presents its contents to the class.
The table below shows some of the titles of past student presentations, and as you can see, the themes are quite diverse. By allowing students to choose their own topics rather than having the instructor narrow them down, the resulting presentations, while perhaps unpolished, are filled with each student's individuality. For the students not presenting, listening to their peers' presentations also appears to be a great learning opportunity regarding the content and methods of research and presentation. As a result, the Q&A sessions are lively, and you can see the entire class become more energized. Students are required to submit a report summarizing their presentation, and at the end of the course, I compile all the reports into a booklet for them.
In addition to these two presentations by each student, we also conduct practical exercises in topographic map and aerial photograph interpretation and field observation, focusing on the topography of the Hiyoshi Campus, to help students understand their immediate environment.
I hope that the experiences gained in the "Independent Research Seminar" will be valuable to all students in their future university and professional lives.
?Environmental Protection on Yakushima Island and the World Heritage System
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(Professor Akiko Matsubara)