Teaching with Online Field Experiences

Online field experiences can broaden access to participation in the geosciences by lowering barriers faced by students such as physical challenges, financial concerns, cultural stigmas, and family obligations. In addition, they can serve as introductions to traditional field experiences by helping to reduce the novelty space that can impede learning. Teaching with online field experiences involves some different practices and strategies than teaching in the field, but the same learning outcomes can be met. This module includes resources to support instructors in designing, implementing, and assessing online field experiences that can reach all students.

Learning Outcomes

A group of experienced field camp educators came together to develop a comprehensive set of learning outcomes that can help guide the development of field experiences whether they are in-person or online.

Technology for Online Field Experiences

There are a wide variety of technological tools that can be used to develop online experiences that provide valuable field learning.

Advice and strategies for teaching with online field experiences

Instructors who taught fully-online field experiences in the summer of 2020 have compiled a body of advice for others wishing to move their field experiences online.

Teaching Activities

Faculty have developed many innovative ways to teach field skills in an online format. This collection of activities includes submissions from many experienced faculty members in order to help the geoscience community respond to circumstances that make in-person field experiences difficult or impossible. Activities in the collection are also being peer reviewed as a part of NAGT's activity review process.

Get Involved

Contribute teaching activities and course descriptions
Participate in a threaded discussion about teaching with online field experiences
Join the Teaching Geoscience Online community
Join the NAGT-Field email list

Designing Remote Field Experiences

This companion website houses the work of more than 300 geoscience educators in response to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic to share expertise and existing resources and to develop new resources to support remote or virtual capstone summer field experiences for undergraduate geoscience majors. The NSF-sponsored project (NSF-EAR 2029920) is a collaborative effort of NAGT and the IAGD, and involves over 300 field camp directors, instructors, and resources developers around the world.

The work presented on this website was funded through a National Science Foundation RAPID grant (NSF-EAR 2029920) awarded to Kurt Burmeister, Laura Rademacher, and Katherine Ryker. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.