GeoEPIC: Innovating a Solution to Implement Virtual Field Experiences for Education in the Time of COVID-19 and the Post-Pandemic Era

Abstract

The spring of 2020 marked the start of many countries closing their borders to travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These closures disrupted travel and learning opportunities for K-16 education. International field trips and study abroad programs were some of the first canceled opportunities with domestic field trips becoming more complicated to implement safely. With termination of these experiences, students lost cooperative and collaborative opportunities for place-based, field-based education. To address these losses of situated learning opportunities for students, a digital learning platform was developed to increase access to educators and students to free virtual field-based experiences. The platform is enhanced to allow teachers easy adoption of resources with supporting workshops to help educators in creating and delivering this rich education content through authentic, virtual landscapes.

A Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) using Ocean Plastic Microbes as a Framework that Is Impactful for Both In-Person and Online Course Modalities

“…Started in 2018 as a fully in-person experience including a field trip to the research institution, the CURE was adapted to an online alternative due to the COVID-19 pandemic emergency. Pivoting to online courses was a global solution to the need for isolation and social distancing, which was particularly difficult for courses with hands-on components, such as laboratory and field trip courses [34][35][36][37].…”

“…At the end of the third year, the implementation of the CURE in a larger number of online nonmajors sections resulted in an increase of participant and survey responders to 442 and 187, respectively, a more than threefold increase. In fact, the pandemic has produced a number of "virtual field trip" alternatives that can make field studies a more accessible and inclusive discipline [35,36,47]. The 15-question retrospective survey used provided detailed insights about the different aspects that were most impacted as part of the CURE.…”

A less muddy glee? Perspectives from a disabled researcher in the era of virtual global south fieldwork

“…Since 'Muddy glee' was written, a significant shift in the concept of fieldwork has been from one of 'doing' to one of 'imagining', particularly in the last two years of restricted travel during the COVID-19 pandemic. Virtual communication tools such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Google Hangouts have enabled research to continue by providing media for qualitative interviews (Sah et al, 2020) and digital platforms have been created for virtual reality field trips (Gielstra et al, 2021).…”

Exkursionen – digital, offen, politisch!?

“…konnten, geht es bei der Gestaltung und Durchführung von Exkursionen im Kontext der Digitalität nicht nur darum, traditionelle Lehr-bzw. Lernformate lediglich als digitales Pendant abzubilden -wie durch die Corona-Pandemie als ‚disruptives Ereignis' und als ‚Echtzeit-Improvisationstaktik' vielerorts geschehen (vgl Gielstra et al 2021;. Larsen et al 2020).…”