A virtual field trip to Iceland and around NZ structured as two massive open online courses, used standalone as in flipped classroom teaching. The courses are award-winning and have resulted in two peer-reviewed reseach papers. Currently used by about 60 UC students per year, and more external students. See the MOOCs here.
Project members: UC School of Earth and Environment; UC Instructional Design; UC Educational Media Production; Jonathan Davidson (UC Sustainability Hub)
Project summary: Virtual fieldtrips in volcanology have been in development for many years, and we have built upon lessons learnt from previous attempts. First a VFT to Iceland was created, and afterwards we adapted this content along with more material from NZ to create two Massive Open Online Courses. These MOOCs are open to anyone on the edX platform, but it is used in GEOL336 as a flipped classroom tool. The course was targeted to implement the VFT because it has a strong history of educational transformation, a teaching team with interests in geoscience education, and content that is well-aligned with the achievement standards relating to volcanology. This course was also the focus of a course transformation run under the Distributed Leadership in Teaching Programme. Another reason to develop a VFT was that students did not have the opportunity or funding to explore an active volcano, which is highly desired for a volcanology course.
Learning outcomes: The intended learning outcomes were wide ranging, here are example of intended outcomes: (1) Describe the process that creates the cinder cone fed a’a’ lava flows. (2) Sketch what a magma chamber under Krafla looks like. (3) Provide feedback on the interpretive sketch. (3) Re-arrange the following events into the correct order. (4) Evaluate the plausibility of converting all of NZ to this form of energy extraction.
Deliverables: 2 MOOCs with interactive exercises.
Used by: GEOL336 2019-2023, about 60 students per year
Benefits: (1) Cost saving and reduced UC footprint: avoiding a field trip for students each semester. Can be reused in subsequent semesters and other courses. The flipped nature of teaching means that less contact time needs to be scheduled. (2) Improved learning outcomes: No opportunity for visit an active volcano. This resource allows students to explore volcanic rocks and outcrop in a guided environment. Also, the virtual content can be revisited and self-paced. (3) Resilience and flexibility: can be used anywhere/any time/for any number of students, and reduced contact time/travel makes timetabling easier. (4) Innovation: novel method of using a VFT in a classroom setting. (5) Research: Two peer reviewed papers on these classroom interventions. “Design, implementation, and insights from a volcanology Virtual Field Trip to Iceland”, Volcanica (here) and “The implementation of a virtual field trip to aid geological interpretation within an undergraduate volcanology course”, forthcoming in Journal of Geoscience Education).
Evaluation: Teaching staff feedback. (1) Did the project meet the need(s)? Yes and more (2) How would you rate it overall? Excellent. (3) Did you receive feedback from students/users (please summarise)? The course won an international “Innovation in teaching” award (here and here). The feedback from students is summarised in the Volcanica paper. Feedback from an online course aggregator is here. (5) Any improvements identified that could further enhance impact of deliverable? No.