The 'Go Go Gozo' project offers an innovative approach to bridge the 'knowledge-technology' gap in pedagogic practice in higher education. It aims to share best practices across disciplinary and national boundaries, bringing together research and pedagogy, in playful and enjoyable encounters in and with space. Gozo has been serving as the small island gameboard for the project's activities since 2015.
The project's aims involve bringing students from different contexts to the field, through blended mobility, where they develop novel, digital, mobile and map-based research methods and skills; assessing the potential of playful, experiential and participatory learning in this context; devising a course structure that facilitates interdisciplinary and multinational encounters in the real world beyond the academy; and evaluating impacts and benefits of these innovations in the upgrading and quality improvement of higher education.
Over 3 years, the Partnership has delivered an ongoing field-based encounter between students and staff from different disciplines, bringing together students with academic researchers from Geography, Sociology, Development Studies, Geoinformatics, Game Studies, Interdisciplinary Studies and New Media Studies to explore the links between mapping, mobility and play.
Participants are drawn from the Universities of Manchester and Warwick (UK), Utrecht (The Netherlands) Olomouc (Czech Republic) and the University of Malta. They comprise 35 students at undergraduate/Masters level, together with seven academic staff and four postgraduate researchers. The University of Malta's Gozo Campus has served as the site for the project's classroom and courtyard based activities.
The third and final cohort of staff and students participating in this project convened at the University of Malta Xewkija Campus on 3 May. Welcoming remarks were made by University of Malta Pro-Rector Professor Godfrey Baldacchino, as well as the project's principal investigator Professor Chris Perkins, from the University of Manchester.
Further details available online.