Abstract

• The threat of recurrent disease-related disruptions to overseas field trips challenges various disciplines adopting field trip as a crucial pedagogical tool to design alternative learning activities to make up for students’ lost opportunities to learn in the field.
• Virtual field trips (VFTs) developed based on digital maps, satellite images and other forms of digital representations of the environment allow students to recover some form of immersive experience of their study sites without entailing the high costs and health risks of overseas visits.
• This project will develop three VFTs on the UK using Google Earth as the primary platform. The VFTs will be used in two geography undergraduate courses to improve students’ understanding of the local environmental details of their UK case studies.
• Internationalisation at home is achieved by engaging a UK scholar to contribute to the design of the VFTs, and by promoting learning outcomes related to the understanding of global variations in local development and planning.
• The proposed form of VFT development and application is sustainable and replicable for other sites, courses and disciplines due to its low technical threshold for VFT set-up, low budgetary requirement for development and maintenance, and ease of use by students even at home.

Brief write-up

Project objectives

To promote internationalisation at home in geography teaching and learning by exploring the use of Google Earth as a low-tech, low-cost platform for developing virtual field trips (VFTs)

Activities, process and outcomes

Three Google Earth-based VFTs, covering different development issues in three UK sites – London, Manchester and Bowness-on-Windermere (a rural town) – were developed.
The London and Manchester VFTs were trialled separately in two courses (GRMD1302 “People, Space and Place” and GRMD1403 “Resources, Society & Environment”) taught by the co-investigator (Professor Lee Fung Harry of the Department of Geography and Resource Management). Students were asked to take a VFT for pre-class learning. The Co-I used the same VFT in the class to teach selected geographical features. Students completed a questionnaire after class about their VFT experience.

Deliverables and evaluation

Three VFTs were delivered and trialled.
In GRMD1302, 78% and 64% of the survey respondents agreed that the VFT helped them learn better and enhance their learning interests, respectively. In GRMD1403, the corresponding percentages were 62% and 74%.

Dissemination, diffusion, impact and sharing of good practices

Lessons learned were shared in a course review meeting of the Department (2022), a panel session at the American Association of Geographers annual meeting (2021), and a forthcoming paper on The Professional Geographer.

Impact on teaching and learning

The project team understands better students’ expectations of the functionalities of VFTs, and their wish to take VFTs with their peers and teachers to discuss their experience in real-time.
The project demonstrates the potential of a low-tech and low-cost approach to VFT development that could be easily adopted by other teachers.

Video Report

Please click the following link for viewing the report.
https://cuhk.ap.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=dee9238f-5da8-49cc-a2f4-b123009d6c57