An NUI Galway student documentary project on the evolution of life has won a significant international teaching award.
'The History of Life' film project took home both the 'User-Generated Education Media' and 'Audience Favourite' awards at the 2019 MEDEA Awards in Leuven, Belgium. The judging panel remarked that the project "is a very good attempt to encourage students’ interest and curiosity in science and also to help in building their research, communication and presentation skills".
The project is designed to explore different aspects of evolution. A wide range of topics have been chosen previously, including the origin of life on Earth, the evolution of the first forests and land animals, catastrophic past mass extinction events.
Since 2011, the project was developed and is run by geologist and palaeontologist Dr John Murray from Earth and Ocean Sciences in NUI Galway. Dr Murray remarked that:
the message all of these student-produced films convey is an extremely important one - it principally concerns the story of where ultimately all life on Earth has come from, including humans... The student teams have consistently risen quite admirably to the challenge and the very high levels of enthusiasm, imagination and creativity on display in these films has always been nothing short of inspiring.
You can watch all the films in this year's project in the YouTube playlist below:
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