The European Geosciences Union (EGU), a leading organization in research in the fields of earth, planetary and space sciences, has launched a scholarship program for the first time this year with the aim of financing the development of teaching resources for geosciences teaching in universities. Among the 14 beneficiaries of its first call is a project from the Marine Research Center of the University of Vigo (CIM-UVigo) led by Ephyslab researcher Juan Antonio Añel, which aims to disseminate how ozone measurements are carried out.
As one of the objectives of the EGU and its associated entities worldwide is to promote research in the field of geosciences, the entity called for this program “after detecting in a survey of university teachers a strong demand for teaching resources in geosciences”, as the organization itself explains. In response to this demand, the call made by the European Geosciences Union, called Higher Education Teaching Grant Programme, carried out by the European Geosciences Union is intended to facilitate the development of teaching resources available free of charge for teachers who teach geosciences in the field of higher education. In total, the entity awarded 14 grants to initiatives covering 16 countries on five continents “with the hope that the resources produced will be useful for the university teaching community in its response to the important educational challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic”.
Material on the Schönbein method
Leading the UVigo proposal is the researcher from the Ephyslab (Environmental Physics Laboratory) group, from the CIM-UVigo, Juan Antonio Añel, with the collaboration of the UCIBIO of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal) through the postdoctoral researcher Antonio Cid. Although the economic amount of the prize is small (750 euros, the maximum granted by the EGU), the professor highlights “the honor of being one of the 14 projects selected” in this program. “We are very happy, because although the economic amount is testimonial, it is a recognition of the research work on ozone and the dissemination and transfer of knowledge that we do from Ephyslab and also of the teaching innovation work that we carry out within the framework of the Hipatia teaching innovation group”, comments the person responsible for the initiative. The call from the European Geosciences Union, he adds, “turned out to be a very competitive and very international prize and we share honor with award-winning projects from very prestigious institutions such as the London School of Economics, the National Taiwan University or North Carolina State University in the United States”.
According to Juan Antonio Añel, they decided to apply for this call because “we had a good and attractive idea” and work already done and published that could support the candidacy. The funded project, entitled Practice of ozone measurement in the laboratory using the Schönbein method, details its manager, will allow them to produce “educational video material to improve the understanding of ozone and atmospheric pollution”. Specifically, he points out, they will develop “an activity to generate teaching material to learn how to measure atmospheric ozone using a very simple and cheap technique, which is a method that was historically used in the 19th century, the Schönbein method”. The contents will also cover the comparison between different ozone measurement methods and the audiovisual material that they will produce will be accompanied by the corresponding explanatory documentation and will be disseminated in three languages, in Galician, Spanish and English.
O proxecto desenvolverase ata abril de 2021. Os materiais resultantes de cada proposta financiada poranse posteriormente en liña para a súa descarga de balde “como parte da iniciativa de European Geosciences Union para proporcionar materiais didácticos innovadores ao profesorado universitario de xeociencias de todo o mundo”.
Source: DUVI
