Tiffany Dong

“My final project is meant to capture the value of outdoor and on-sight learning. My goal is not to condemn the Western classroom learning style but to use it to contrast and highlight the value of combining different learning styles in a higher academic setting.

The first part of my video starts off with some of the key differences I noticed with classroom learning and the outdoor learning environment. Namely reading, writing, memorizing and the nature of the environment itself (sight, sound).

Next, I chose to bring attention to the sights, sounds, and textures of our Grasslands classroom (the wind, the visual and tactile textures of the land, water, etc.) While I focus on these things in the second and third sections, I reiterate these things throughout the video.

In the next section, you may notice that I focus more on the human relationship with the land and how we explored that throughout our course. Not only did I notice a connection to the life on the land (plants, animals, bird song) but I also had the opportunity to learn about living off the land. While a classroom setting can be valuable, I would not have been able to see, taste, smell, and touch as I did when learning on the land. To reflect this, I chose photos that focused on our hands and the direct connection with the plants we tasted and smelled.

In the final part of my project, I wanted to close with my classmates and the people we connected with. Not only did having classmates there make the experience fun, it also created a more thoughtful and engaging environment where we learnt not only from educators but also from each other. This is an environment that is difficult to organically recreate in a large-scale classroom. As a result, this trip and what I learnt became more memorable than many lectures I received on campus.”