The Victorian/Tasmanian (Vic/Tas) PESA branch held a workshop on education with the Minerals Education Victoria (MEV) and the Society of Petroleum Engineers in June this year. In attendance were Year-9 students from a local Melbourne secondary school and 20 industry professionals. The workshop was held at ExxonMobil’s Southbank office.

The concept of the workshop was two-fold. First, to have the staff of MEV present a primary school presentation to the students and industry professionals, and second, to have members of the Vic/Tas PESA education sub-committee present earth science (including petroleum-related material) to both fellow industry professionals and the students.

The MEV currently has educational topics relating to earth science that are presented at primary schools. The Vic/Tas PESA branch sponsors the oil and gas module. The workshop enabled the MEV to showcase this presentation to the industry and students. A feedback form was developed and used by both industry professionals and students to capture feedback.

The goal of the Vic/Tas education sub-committee presentation was to seek input to the type of material that would be suitable for use in presentations to secondary students. The presentations are being designed to encourage students to take a more active interest in science and earth science as a career path. Again feedback from both students and industry professionals was welcomed.

The photograph shows Jenny Neales (left) and Leigh Cawood in action during the primary schools presentation.

The two pie charts below summarise the feedback given by the students and the industry professionals for the primary school presentation. The audience was asked to provide interest level for different topics within the primary school presentation. The presentations have been broadly categorised as those in which the audience could participate/interact and those in which the audience remained static, i.e. watched only.

The pie chart clearly shows, that for the student audience, participation/interaction in an activity sparked more interest than just watching. For the industry professionals, the levels of interest is similar for both presentation styles. Although most likely not the only reason, the difference in the graphs has been attributed to the industry professionals’ high level of understanding of the earth science material and visual aids, allowing them to understand and thus have more interest in each presentation. The students had their interest sparked, but were not always able to understand the visual displays without a concise, simplified, verbal explanation.

For the secondary school presentation, the audience participated in a card game of chance as well as watching a series of visualisation movies, a Power Point slide show on oil and gas and a professional documentary video of an oil production platform tour. The audience was asked to rate their interest in each of the four topics on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being not interesting and 5 being very interesting.

The following pie graphs show a summary of only the ‘interested’ responses and highlights a more even spread across the industry professionals than those of the students. An important feedback from the students was that the Power Point slide show, and the visualisation movies, were too complex and to improve the level of understanding, these needed to be better explained.

This was an important lesson for the sub committee members present and highlighted the need for the industry professionals to engage teachers to develop material suitable for use in schools. The card game of chance and the platform video were clear leaders in interest. When asked “What did you enjoy the most?”, all of the feedback comments mentioned the game and the video, whereas only one mentioned one slide of the Power Point show. Comments such as, “The game of chance and the last video”, “The video was interesting”, “The game and the movie” showed that the interactive game and the professionally-produced oil platform video, with simplified explanations and clear visuals communicated best.

Additional feedback was provided by secondary student Jasmine Jenkins, who at the time of the workshop was doing work experience at ExxonMobil. She commented, “there were 3D visuals, hands-on activities and audience involvement in fun little experiments to spark our interest. Oil and gas was made to be interesting and the presentation was a chance for everyone to share ideas and opinions on the style of presentation as well.”

Further analysis of the responses is ongoing and the Vic/Tas PESA branch education sub-committee members were very pleased with the attendance, enthusiastic participation and open responses from both students and industry professionals at the workshop. We thank everyone involved and are using the experience as a guide to the future development of secondary school educational presentations.

Jenny Neales (left) and Leigh Cawood in action during the primary schools presentation