The use of campus based field teaching to provide an authentic experience to all students

Abstract

This is a repository copy of The use of campus based field teaching to provide an authentic experience to all students.

Teaching (super) wicked problems: authentic learning about climate change

“…One approach to these tensions is for the students to undertake work that is genuinely useful to the community during their field trip, and we identified three examples of this: one collecting ecological data on turtle eggs; another collecting household data for hurricane preparedness; and another assisting with physical nature conservation tasks. An alternative approach to travel-intensive fieldwork includes using campus environments (e.g., Peacock et al, 2018), or using technology to avoid travelling. The covid-19 pandemic led several interviewees to reflect on the possibilities (but rarely their actual experiences) of using virtual reality and visualization technologies to explore new environments or use video conferencing technology to do interviews, approaches which also minimize the environmental impact of fieldwork.…”

Promoting inclusion in ecological field experiences: Examining and overcoming barriers to a professional rite of passage

“…Many programs and instructors have made inroads toward inclusivity and some of these efforts have been reported in the literature.While residential and extended forays into the field may result in transformative experiences for students, they cannot be if this format is a barrier to entry. Programs that have experimented with closer‐to‐home and punctuated field experiences have reported significant learning and value to students, particularly those students that are home‐bound or have culturally or physically bound concerns with extended travel (Heard 2016, Peacock et al 2018). Similarly, there is a growing literature base that suggests virtual field experiences can be a close approximation to the real thing, particularly for field‐reluctant students (Stumpf et al 2008, Ketelhut and Nelson 2010, Stokes et al 2012, Stephens et al 2016).…”

Teaching and learning in ecology: a horizon scan of emerging challenges and solutions

“…Field work in a familiar local environment can increase accessibility and inclusivity, and also helps students build confidence, for resilience in the face of uncertainty of unfamiliar sites, by initiating fieldwork in a familiar setting (Leon‐Beck and Dodick 2012). In addition, local sites facilitate fieldwork with a limited or negligible budget (Bacon and Peacock 2016) and still allow the social benefits among peers and staff–student collegiality that develops during fieldwork (Peacock et al 2018). It is notoriously difficult to collect ‘real' data on short, intensive, residential field courses.…”