HERODOT Network

The HERODOT Network — formally the Network for Geography in Higher Education — is one of the longest-running subject-centre initiatives in European geography teaching. It grew out of the discipline’s need to share teaching practice, curriculum ideas and technology-enhanced learning resources across national borders, at a time when most geography departments were working in isolation.

The material below is drawn from the network’s own online learning environment, a Moodle-based site that served as its main collaboration hub, and is expanded here into practical guidance for lecturers, department heads and curriculum developers who want to understand what HERODOT offered and how its model still informs geography education today. Lecturers looking to rebuild that kind of shared hub today can start with practical resources for teaching geography.

Key Takeaways

• HERODOT is a subject network for geography in higher education, not a single course or institution — its purpose is to connect academics, share teaching materials and support curriculum development across Europe.
• Its collaboration hub was built on Moodle (the site referenced here runs Moodle 1.6.5+), the open-source virtual learning environment widely used across European universities.
• Membership was free and open to those who qualify from Higher Education Institutions, with access to member spaces granted via an enrolment key after joining.
• The network’s activity spanned higher education, secondary geography, ICT in geography teaching, and cross-disciplinary work-related learning — showing how geography subject centres often reach beyond their core discipline.
• Named facilitators and tutors (Glenda Wall, Karl Donert, Stavroula Philippou, Helen Gadsby and others) coordinated specific spaces, a model of distributed academic ownership rather than centralised administration.
• The network’s structure — forums, shared courses, events and news feeds — anticipated many features now standard in professional learning networks for academics.

What HERODOT Is and Why It Exists

HERODOT stands for the Network for Geography in Higher Education. It is a membership-based community that connects geographers working in universities and teacher-training institutions, with the aim of improving the quality and reach of geography teaching.

The core idea is simple but powerful: geography is taught differently in every country, yet the underlying subject matter — physical, human, environmental and spatial analysis — is shared. A network lets a lecturer in one country borrow a teaching approach, a fieldwork idea or an assessment method from a colleague elsewhere without reinventing it.

The network’s online environment describes itself plainly as “a new Moodle site for the Herodot network.” That single sentence tells you a great deal about its philosophy: it chose an open-source, widely adopted platform rather than a bespoke system, which lowered the barrier for members already familiar with Moodle from their own institutions.

Membership is freely available to those who qualify from Higher Education Institutions. In practice this means the network is aimed at:

• University geography lecturers and teaching-focused academics
• Department heads and curriculum developers
• Geography education researchers and doctoral students
• Teacher trainers preparing the next generation of school geography teachers

To join, prospective members were asked to contact the network’s coordinator, Glenda Wall, after which they received an enrolment key to access the member-only space. This gated approach kept the member area focused on genuine participants while keeping the network itself open.

The Moodle Learning Environment: How the Hub Was Organised

The HERODOT hub was organised as a set of courses and spaces, each with its own facilitators and purpose. This is a familiar Moodle pattern, but HERODOT used it in a distinctive way — not to deliver a single degree, but to host a portfolio of activities. The spaces visible in the environment included:

Space	Facilitators / Tutors	Purpose
HERODOT: Network for Geography in Higher Education	Glenda Wall, Karl Donert, Ashutosh Sharma	The main member space for current HERODOT members
Geography and ICT workshop: Cyprus	Karl Donert, Stavroula Philippou	For participants in Cyprus geography education workshops
Secondary Geography	Karl Donert, Glenda Wall, Helen Gadsby	Sharing geographical materials for secondary (high school) classes
Angina Awareness	Ciaran Cunningham, Karl Donert	Developing awareness and understanding of angina
Jaguar Land Rover: Work Related Learning	Karl Donert, Julie Westray, Natalie Cragg	A virtual learning environment for business, engineering and ICT learning
Liverpool Hope eLearning Group	Karl Donert, Frances Bell	Discussing e-learning at Liverpool Hope

Two things stand out for anyone studying this model. First, the network deliberately bridged sectors — higher education, secondary schooling and even vocational/industry-linked learning. Second, it reused the same platform for non-geography projects (health awareness, automotive work-related learning), which suggests the network functioned as a broader e-learning hub hosted by a geography-led team, rather than a narrowly single-subject service.

For a modern department head, the lesson is that a subject network can be a platform for experimentation — a low-stakes place to pilot online collaboration before committing institutional resources.

Distributed Facilitation: A Model Worth Copying

One of HERODOT’s most transferable features is its distributed facilitation model. Rather than a single administrator running everything, each space had named facilitators and tutors. Karl Donert appears across multiple spaces, but so do Glenda Wall, Stavroula Philippou, Helen Gadsby, Ciaran Cunningham, Julie Westray, Natalie Cragg, Frances Bell and Ashutosh Sharma.

This matters because it solves a real problem in academic networks: sustainability. A network that depends on one enthusiastic coordinator tends to collapse when that person moves on. By distributing ownership across several academics and institutions, HERODOT spread both the workload and the risk.

If you are setting up something similar in your own department or national association, consider these criteria when deciding how to structure it:

• Assign a named facilitator to every space. Anonymous spaces go quiet.
• Pair an experienced coordinator with newer colleagues. This builds capacity rather than concentrating it.
• Let spaces have different lifecycles. A workshop space tied to a specific event can close; a general member forum should persist.
• Keep the joining process simple but gated. An enrolment key after a brief email is a good balance between openness and focus.

Technology Choices and Their Trade-offs

HERODOT’s reliance on Moodle reflects a broader set of decisions that any geography education network faces. The table below summarises the main trade-offs, written as evergreen guidance rather than a snapshot of any one platform.

• Open-source VLE (e.g. Moodle): Low licensing cost, large community, familiar to many academics. Trade-off: requires someone to administer it, and upgrades can disrupt custom setups.
• Institutional VLE: No separate hosting, integrates with student records. Trade-off: access is usually restricted to your own institution, which defeats cross-institutional networking.
• Standalone website or wiki: Simple, public, easy to link to. Trade-off: weak discussion and membership features.
• Mailing list or forum: Extremely low maintenance, good for announcements. Trade-off: poor for hosting materials or structured courses.

HERODOT’s choice — a Moodle site with member spaces, forums, a calendar and news feeds — was a deliberate middle path. It gave members structured collaboration without the overhead of a fully bespoke system. The site also carried a BBC European News feed and an events calendar, small features that nonetheless kept the environment feeling alive and connected to the wider world.

For a modern equivalent, the same logic applies to choosing between a full VLE, a shared drive plus mailing list, or a lightweight platform. The right answer depends on whether your priority is hosting materials, sustaining discussion, or coordinating events — rarely all three equally.

Geography, ICT and the Wider Curriculum

The presence of a Geography and ICT workshop space, tied to workshops in Cyprus and facilitated by Karl Donert and Stavroula Philippou, points to a central theme in geography education: the integration of information and communication technology into teaching. This is a topic that has only grown in importance, encompassing GIS, remote sensing, digital fieldwork, data literacy and online mapping.

The network’s structure suggests several practical applications that remain relevant:

• Workshop-based professional development, where a face-to-face event is extended by an online space for sharing materials afterwards.
• Cross-border collaboration, letting participants from different countries continue working together once the workshop ends.
• Resource sharing for secondary geography, recognising that university geography departments have a stake in what happens in schools — the pipeline of future students and teachers.

The Secondary Geography space, with tutors Karl Donert, Glenda Wall and Helen Gadsby, is a good example of this bridge. Higher education geography and school geography are often treated as separate worlds, but HERODOT treated them as a continuum. For teacher trainers and curriculum developers, that continuity is valuable: it means university geographers can contribute directly to school-level resources and vice versa.

The inclusion of spaces like Angina Awareness and Jaguar Land Rover: Work Related Learning shows the network was also willing to host projects that applied e-learning methods beyond geography. This reflects a real feature of academic life: teaching innovation often develops in one discipline and then transfers to others. A geography-led team experimenting with virtual learning environments was well placed to support colleagues in health, business and engineering.

Joining, Participating and Getting Value

The mechanics of joining HERODOT were deliberately light-touch, and the same principles apply to any academic network you might join or run:

1. Confirm you qualify. Membership was open to those from Higher Education Institutions — the network’s focus was on university-level and teacher-training geography.
2. Make contact. Prospective members emailed the coordinator (Glenda Wall) to express interest.
3. Receive an enrolment key. This unlocked the member-only space.
4. Create an account and log in. The site used standard Moodle account creation, with a lost-password recovery option.
5. Engage in the spaces relevant to you. Members could participate in forums, access shared courses and materials, and follow events.

The value of a network like this comes from participation, not just membership. The site’s “Recent Activity” and “Online Users” blocks were gentle prompts that the environment was a living community. In practice, the academics who gained most were those who contributed materials, asked questions in forums and attended or followed up on events.

For anyone evaluating whether to join a similar network today, ask:

• Does it connect me with people I could not easily reach otherwise?
• Does it host reusable teaching materials, not just discussion?
• Is there a clear way to contribute, not only consume?
• Are the facilitators active and responsive?

HERODOT’s Place in European Geography Education

HERODOT belongs to a tradition of subject centres and networks that support teaching in higher education across Europe. These bodies exist because teaching quality is a shared concern that individual departments cannot address alone. They typically provide professional development, resource sharing, advocacy for the discipline, and a community for teaching-focused academics who may otherwise feel isolated within research-oriented departments.

For geography specifically, networks like HERODOT complement the work of national geographical societies and international bodies such as the International Geographical Union (IGU) and its Commission on Geographical Education, as well as the Association of American Geographers (now the American Association of Geographers) and the Royal Geographical Society in the UK. Where those bodies often focus on research and broad disciplinary advocacy, a network like HERODOT focuses squarely on teaching practice and collaboration.

The network’s use of Moodle also places it within the wider movement toward technology-enhanced learning in European higher education, a movement shaped by frameworks such as the European Higher Education Area and the Bologna Process, which encouraged cross-border cooperation and shared standards. You can read more about the Bologna Process on Wikipedia and about Moodle on Wikipedia. For authoritative guidance on learning technology standards, see the IMS Global Learning Consortium, and for open educational resources, the UNESCO programme on OER is a useful reference.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does HERODOT stand for?

HERODOT is the Network for Geography in Higher Education. It is a membership-based community connecting geographers in universities and teacher-training institutions, focused on sharing teaching practice, materials and curriculum ideas across Europe.

Who could join the HERODOT Network?

Membership was freely available to those who qualify from Higher Education Institutions. In practice this meant university geography lecturers, department heads, geography education researchers, doctoral students and teacher trainers. Prospective members contacted the coordinator to request access.

What platform did HERODOT use?

The network ran on Moodle, specifically a Moodle 1.6.5+ site described as “a new Moodle site for the Herodot network.” Moodle is an open-source virtual learning environment widely used in higher education, which made the hub familiar and accessible to members.

How was the HERODOT site organised?

It was organised as a set of courses and spaces, each with named facilitators and tutors. These included the main member space, a Geography and ICT workshop space tied to Cyprus, a Secondary Geography resource space, and several cross-disciplinary e-learning projects.

What kinds of topics did HERODOT cover?

Its spaces covered higher education geography, secondary geography teaching, ICT in geography education, and work-related learning. It also hosted non-geography e-learning projects, reflecting its role as a broader e-learning hub led by a geography-focused team.

Is HERODOT still relevant to geography educators today?

The network’s model — free membership, distributed facilitation, open-source technology and cross-sector collaboration — remains a useful template for modern geography education networks. The specific platform may date, but the principles of sharing teaching practice across institutions are as relevant as ever.