Do you ever take your students on field trips to a museum, gallery, or fair? Do your students ever do outdoor field work in the woods, on a farm, or in the city? Do your students ever go to a workplace setting like a hospital, factory, or office? Have you ever wanted to take your students on a field trip but did not have the time, money, or transportation? Were you unable to accommodate a student with a special need on a field trip? Have you ever considered virtual field trips?

Virtual Field Trips

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A field trip is an inquiry-based learning activity where students leave the structure of the classroom to explore and observe something first hand in the real world. For example, students might visit a real world setting like a bank or courtroom. Likewise, they might go out into nature to see flora and fauna or wildlife. Similarly, they might participate in an event or social setting like a city tour or art festival. In a virtual field trip, students use technology to leave the classroom and experience a simulated field trip.

VariationsPreparation for a Field Trip. Use a virtual field trip as preparation for a real field trip (Spicer & Stratford, 2001). For English as a Second Language (ESL) learners, a virtual field trip provides the opportunity to preview vocabulary. Students with learning disabilities can organize their learning plan and students with physical disabilities can plot their navigation route. Likewise, students with visual or hearing impairments can listen or read to prepare for the event (Elleven, Wircenski, Wircenski, & Nimon, 2006). Pre-trip exposure to an exhibit, will help any student maximize their field experience.

Student-Generated Field Trip. Consider having students create a virtual field trip to share with their classmates. While on a real field trip, students can capture their experience with a smartphone, camera, or iPod (Toth, 2011; Weller, Bickar, & McGuinness, 2008). After the trip, the students can use the images, videos, or audio files to create a presentation. They can post their field work in a virtual fair via the learning management system (LMS), YouTube, or SlideShare; alternatively, students could present their field work in a live presentation or poster session. Each student or groups of students can tackle a different aspect of a topic or all together different field sites.

ExamplesUse your imagination. Where could you take your students? What would be an appropriate field experience for your discipline? Only you know what would be authentic to your field of study, your curriculum, and your students. To get started, consider these ideas:

Visual Arts•Art gallery•Art studio•Industrial design factory•Wall of graffiti

Health & Community Studies•Zoo•Farm•Hospital

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•Community outreach centre

Science & Technology•Geographic landscape•Manufacturing factory•Oil rig•Mars

Business Administration•Bank•Court room•Stock exchange•City landmark

Humanities & Social Sciences•Museum•Theatre production•Sporting event•Library

MeritsWhen it is too costly or too impractical to go on a real field trip, a virtual field trip can be an effective alternative. Surely, we would like to take architecture or travel and tourism students to Italy to see the Colosseum or Greece to see the Parthenon. Outside of a study abroad program, this simply is not economical. In the same way, for students with physical disabilities as well as behavioural issues, a real field trip might be difficult to facilitate in terms of transportation, exploration, and safety. Further, some exhibits close at certain times of year for maintenance, some outdoor exhibits depend on seasonal weather, and some locales become unsafe due to wear and tear or environmental conditions.

Economics. Virtual field trips save time and money. They are an economical and sustainable way to get students exploring exhibits or experiencing field work. There are no travel costs, no buses to arrange, no meals or accommodations to organize, and no fees to enter expositions. When we cannot physically transport students overseas, across the country, or even off campus, we can bring the world to the classroom. We can devote time to learning rather than travelling and time to teaching rather than planning a real field trip.

Accessibility. Virtual field trips present a unique accessibility alternative. For students challenged by physical disabilities, they no longer need to worry about how to navigate outdoor or indoor exhibits that lack wheelchair access. Often times at a crowded exhibit, it

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is difficult to hear the tour information or see the artefacts. In particular, for students with learning disabilities, language barriers, hearing impairments, or visual impairments, they can focus on specific aspects of the field trip that they might not be able to experience fully in a real environment (Elleven et al., 2006). Further, with the technology used in a virtual field trip, learners can zoom in, pause, ask questions, complete activities, and pace themselves (Toth, 2011).

ChallengesDespite the rich alternatives that virtual field trips offer, it may still be necessary to supplement the curriculum with a real field trip. At some point in a program, students may need to go into a clinical placement or do field work. Print, digital, and web colours cannot completely replicate the colours found in nature and in raw materials. Still and moving images cannot totally capture the multiple dimensions, terrains, and textures of real life. Still, virtual field trips may be a great alternative when a real field trip is simply impossible.

Sensory. Although a virtual field is an indistinguishable alternative (Stumpf, Douglass, & Dorn, 2008), it cannot totally replace the experience of a real field trip. Virtual field trips lack the full sensory experience. While we can maximize sight and sound with a virtual field trip, we cannot experience smell, touch, or taste. To overcome this challenge, we can supplement a virtual field trip with actual field work at some point in the curriculum (Stumpf et al., 2008).

Instructional DesignUse a backwards design approach. First, start with your learning outcomes. Second, create your assessments. Third, plan your instructional activities. Finally, choose a technology to enhance the lesson.

Design. Consider your curriculum; look carefully at your accreditation standards, graduate attributes, program learning outcomes, course learning outcomes, and lesson learning outcomes. Will a virtual field trip fulfill the learning outcomes? How will you evaluate what the students learn on a virtual field trip? What technologies will you and your students need to learn in order to go on the virtual field trip? Will a virtual field trip enhance the learning experience?

Develop. Browse the Internet or app store for sponsored virtual field trips. The Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) sponsors the Virtual Museum of Canada which has over 600 virtual exhibits hosted by Canadian museums and galleries; you can browse by theme, name, museum, subject, or exhibit type in English or in French, and find lesson plans and projects in the teacher’s centre. Many museums, like the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and the Canadian Museum of

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Civilization have virtual exhibits with educational activities that students can do online. Even NASA has a virtual field trip on Supporting Geological Exploration Throughout the World.

In addition to the Virtual Museum of Canada, there are several Canadian online archives. The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) has thousands of animated shorts, documentaries, and feature films available online. The CBC Digital Archives has TV and radio excerpts from the last century. The Historia Dominion Institute has a repository of all of the Heritage Minutes commercials. Besides these Canadian sites, there are all kinds of international archives to explore.

Alternatively, create your own virtual field trip from websites, videos, photos, and podcasts. To do so, you will need to start planning your virtual field trip early on in your course development. You may want to partner with other colleagues or departments to create something really innovative; you may even want to collaborate with community partners. In order to capture materials, you may need to schedule site visits or plan field days. Finally, you may need time to convert materials to digital formats. Check out The Practical Astronomer by DK Publishing or the Galápagos by the Open University and Dr David Robinson, both free on the Apple iBooks Store.

Deliver. Decide what students will do before, during, and after the virtual field trip. Before the field trip, you may preview and review vocabulary through a crossword puzzle; concepts through a mind mapping activity; or demonstrations through a lab experiment. On the field trip, you may have a list of guided questions like a scavenger hunt or activities like sketching or reflecting for students to complete. After the field experience, you may require that students submit a paper, presentation, or podcast. The virtual field trip should be authentic, active, and applied.

Plan how your students will explore a virtual field trip. You may want to use a sponsored virtual field trip. This may be in lieu of a real field trip or as preparation for a real field trip. You may want to create your own virtual field trip using video conferencing,

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UNESCO

Watch a two-minute video of how the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) partnered with Google Earth , Google Maps, and Google Street View to create a walking tour of world heritage sites

web conferencing, video, images, audio, a podcast, or an interactive ebook. You may want students to create a virtual field trip to share with the class in a virtual fair.

TechnologyTo engage in a virtual field trip, we can use online exhibits on many museum and art gallery websites. We can create our own virtual field trip with images, videos, and audio. Better yet, we can even create a podcast or an interactive ebook to house all of our digital media! Alternatively, we can take a live virtual field trip using web cams, web conferencing, and video conferencing. Finally, we can go virtually anywhere use global positioning software (GPS) like Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Street View.

ReferencesElleven, R., Wircenski, M., Wircenski, J., & Nimon, K. (2006).

Curriculum-based virtual field trips: Career development opportunities for students with disabilities. The Journal for Vocational Special Needs Education, 28(3), p.4-11. Retrieved from Sheridan College Library

Spicer, J.I. & Stratford, J. (2001). Student perceptions of a virtual field trip to replace a real field trip. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 17(4), p.345-54. Retrieved from Sheridan College Library

Stumpf, R.J., Douglass, J.& Dorn, R.I. (2008). Learning desert geomorphology virtually versus in the field. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 32(3), p.387-399. Retrieved from Sheridan College Library

Toth, J. (2011). The virtual teaching artist: An aesthetic approach to designing a museum podcast. Teaching Artist Journal, 9(4), p.213-225. Retrieved from Sheridan College Library

Weller, A.M., Bickar, J.C., & McGuinness, P. (2008). Making field trips podtastic! Use of handheld wireless technology alleviates isolation and encourages collaboration. Learning and Leading

Google Earth

Google Maps

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with Technology, 35(6), p.18-21. Retrieved from Sheridan College Library

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Written by Paula OggPhotography by Jonathan Eger

CreditsBookry Ltd

Common Craft LLC© Centre for Teaching & Learning 2016

Published by Sheridan College All rights reserved

No part of this material may be reproduced without express written permission

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