Stepping into the francophone cities

Students explore francophone cities through spherical videos and reflect on the relationship between history, landscapes, culture, language, built environments, traditions and music.

Snapshot

Educator: Dr Antonia Wimbush
Subject: FREN20025 / FREN30036 Global Francophone Cities
Discipline: French Studies
Study Level: Undergraduate, Levels Two and Three
Class Size: 30 students
Delivery Mode: Scaffolded LMS class preparation modules, combination of lectures and tutorials

Design

Why?

Taught in French, the subject takes students on a journey to Montreal, Fort-de-France, Algiers, and Nouméa. This is challenging without the opportunities to physically visit the cities and experience these cultures. This design extended the use of Google Maps and Google Earth in the subject to replicate the known benefits of field trips in bridging the gap between theory and practice (Schott, 2017) and the value of spherical media in exploring localities (Kolås et al., 2020). Additionally, immersion in video-based virtual realities can enhance motivation, self-efficacy and critical thinking (Chiu et al., 2023). Through this design, specifically, video immersion allowed students to experience these four Francophone cities, and gain ‘first-hand’ knowledge to apply to classroom language learning (Romero, 2020).

How?

Preparation and resources

The spherical videos provided an important foundation for the activity design, their production was led by the Subject Coordinator, Dr Antonia Wimbush, and a Master of Journalism student intern, who had specific interest in content creation and added a fresh student perspective to the project. The intern used Google Earth Studio and Google Maps to produce the videos, while Dr Wimbush directed their production through her expert-knowledge of the four cities. To maximise the pedagogical value of these videos, the following considerations were included in their production:

Background music for the videos was selected to reflect the cultural and linguistic specificity of each city;
Interactive features, such as multiple-choice questions, drag and drop to complete a sentence, free text answers, information and links to external websites, were added to the videos using H5P Interactive Video tool.
Videos were integrated into the subject’s LMS site with clear scaffolded questions and opportunities for students to reflect on their learning.

Activity sequence

Watch and reflect at home

Before the seminar, watch the videos and prepare responses to specific elements, such as how the built environment is represented in each city.

Rewatch and discuss in the seminar

Watch selected sections of the videos again in the seminar. Discuss the answers prepared at home.

Investigate the linguistic landscape

Complete further activities, including a linguistic landscape study of Rue St Catherine, Montreal's principal commercial street. Use the video to identify the different languages on street signs and shop windows.

Reflection

Students had ample opportunities for reflection on the cities and their developing, situated understanding of these cities. Specifically, this was facilitated through students’ contributions to weekly LMS discussion boards.

Insights

Pre- and post activity survey data show a strong feeling among students that their understanding of the four cities was transformed through engagement with these videos. In qualitative comments, students expressed that the videos and associated activities made the four cities seem ‘more real’, built capacity to ‘better imagine’ each city, and created greater depth of understanding and interest.

Dr Antonia Wimbush shared the following observations about the activity:

The students really enjoyed engaging with the interactive videos, both in preparation for the seminar and during class discussion. The videos gave them the opportunity to experience the cities visually and reflect on the interactions between the built environment and the natural landscape. They gained a greater understanding of daily life in these cities and learnt more about connections between different languages and cultures in the urban landscape of the four francophone cities. The interactive features were a great way to test their knowledge and understanding while also being fun and engaging.

Resources

This design required some time investment to develop the videos, and the following tech tools were also used: Google Earth Studios, Google Maps, H5P Interactive Video tool. This subject and its LMS site has been showccase

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References

Chiu, M., Huang, G., Hsia, L., (2023). Promoting students' artwork appreciation: An experiential learning-based virtual reality approach. British Journal of Educational Technology, 54, 603-621.

Kolås, L., Eriksen, L.F., Hoem, J.Ø., Nygård, S.A. & Holand, I.S. (2020). Interactive Virtual Field Trips. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 29(4), 323-339.

Romero, W. G., (2020). A developmental study on instructional principles for intercultural experiential learning with the use of 360 videos in the foreign language classroom[Master’s Thesis, Soeul National University]. S-Space.

Schott, C. (2017). Virtual fieldtrips and climate change education for tourism students. Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism Education, 21(A), 13-22.