Over 30 students and staff completed a mediascapes tour of the College of Agriculture Food and Rural Affaires Greenmount campus’s walled garden on the 17th September.
The Mediascape was created by Ronan Coll of CAFRE with the help of Kevin Coyle and Brian Lamb. Kevin and Brian run the Ulster Mediascapes Network introducing Mediascapes into education and heritage tourism in Northern Ireland.
The walled garden was fully restored for the millennium and is a popular visitor attraction as well an important learning resource for CAFRE horticulture students. It’s a great venue for Mediascapes, the area is large enough for participants to wander freely but confined so that managing devices was not difficult.
The feedback from students was positive with 85% of participants rating the experience as enjoyable and only 2 participants logging any technical issues with the experience.
The design of the mediascapes is simple with interest being created through a quality narrative from Paul Mooney Facility Manager of the college staff. Some innovative use of the group function in Mediascapes is used to allow participants to wander freely around the garden triggering content depending on their own chosen route whilst not experiencing a confusing mash up of sounds.
CAFRE plan to use Mediascapes as a learning tool on their 300 hectare site that includes a working farm, nature reserve, golf course and a large glass house complex. Making best use of all the space is a challenge for staff and students and using some sort pervasive media was one of the ideas Ronan wanted to explore, Mediascapes seemed like a great place to start. The walled garden scape is the first part of a year long experiment. Conservation and Environment students will be using the toolkit to build their own Mediascapes as part of their coursework and faculty staff will be making Mediascapes as learning aids for students.