Developing Virtual Field Trips for Agriculture

Field trips play an important role in teaching and learning, from stimulating students’ motivations to allowing students to connect in-class concepts and the real world. Including field trips within an agricultural curriculum is essential as concepts are highly interdisciplinary, and knowledge application to a range of production systems and environments is critical. Despite their importance, many factors, such as high enrolments, present challenges to its successful integration. Virtual field trips (VFT) allow universities to leverage the affordances of technology to mitigate some of the associated challenges while maintaining quality course delivery. In this pilot study, an experiential learning activity was designed around a VFT application, and the student experience and outcome were investigated. The student experience measures indicated satisfaction with multimedia elements, although it is noted that improvements to the user interface would enhance the experience. Students had positive reflections on the learning experience, including an increased interest in the field of study but did not see VFTs as replacing actual field trips. Paired t-tests showed students’ attainment of learning outcomes. This pilot implementation provides an activity design for other courses with similar challenges and highlights the value of VFTs to the curriculum for undergraduate agricultural courses.