Contrasting, Complementary Learning Outcomes of in-Person and Virtual Field-Based Geoscience Instruction at Grand Canyon National Park

Interactive Geovisualizations (iGEO): A New Approach To Teaching And Learning Physical Geography

“…One reason for development of this iGEO lab was due to the understanding that many incoming students to universities are technology literate and oriented toward visual learning (Knight, 2009). Over 95% of students in the survey described themselves as visual learners, and research into virtual gamification has generally been favorable in terms of motivation, experience, and student learning (Underwood, 2009;Ruberto, 2018;Mead et al, 2019). While there are many iterations of learning through virtual field trips using applications like Google Earth (Lamb & Johnson, 2010;Haslett et al, 2011;Porter & O'Connell, 2014;Treves et al, 2015), the goal of this lab was to provide the so-called 'digital natives' with something more interactive.…”

“…Even fewer geographic education methods have used immersive virtual reality software (Sasinka, Stachoň, Sedlák, Chmelík, Herman, Kubíček, & Šašinková, et al, 2019). Student learning and experiences using virtual education methods have been shown to meet or even exceed scores for students who visit sites in person (Ruberto, 2018), as well as drastically increase knowledge of the virtual field trip topic (Mead, Buxner, Bruce, Taylor., Semken, & Anbar, 2019).…”

Gamifying Virtual Exploration of the Past 350 Million Years of Vertebrate Evolution

“…In addition to these more general pedagogical concepts, the design of Surviving Extinction was informed by the educational and motivational value of immersive and interactive media. The educational value of sophisticated VFTs is fairly well established at this point (Ruberto, 2018;Klippel et al, 2019;Mead et al, 2019;Zhao et al, 2020). It may be surprising that, in a study comparing an in-person field trip to a very closely parallel VFT, Zhao et al (2020) found that the VFT led to higher student enjoyment and satisfaction in the field trip as compared to students in the inperson field trip.…”

“…Two recent studies of iVFTs compared outcomes against in-person field trips. Klippel et al (2019) found the iVFT condition earned higher lab grades with an effect size of 0.7, while Ruberto (2018) found the iVFT condition showed greater pre-to post-trip learning gains with an effect size of 0.59. Although our design does not compare outcomes against an in-person field trip, these numbers along with Cohen's categories can be used to evaluate our results.…”

“…Having the option to engage in field learning from their own computer substantially addresses the issues of access related to field learning. Comparative research has shown both browser-based and VR-based VFTs lead to equal or better learning as in-person field trips (Ruberto, 2018;Klippel et al, 2019). Moreover, the option of high-quality VFTs encourages instructors to add field learning to courses without any prior field components.…”