PI/Co-PI’s: Claudia Luke; Hilary Swain; Kari B O’Connell
The Covid-19 pandemic is causing massive disruption to field education in the U.S. and internationally and is forecasted to continue to cause field course cancellations over the next year. The impacts of this disruption on STEM education is anticipated to be substantial. A 2014 study by the National Research Council found that field experiences boost motivation, retention, critical thinking and academic success for students of all backgrounds and disciplines and are particularly important for recruitment into the environmental sciences. Building on a grassroots effort of 50 Field Stations and Marine Laboratories representing 34 field site networks (e.g., NEON, LTER, LTAR, GLEON), this project will leverage existing collaborations, programs and initiatives to: establish a field learning portal to advertise and distribute virtual materials and live-streaming research-based field events to universities across the U.S.; create novel cross-site virtual field learning experiences that boost critical observation and research skills; evaluate the efficacy of virtual field experiences on student learning outcomes. These experiences will help fulfill graduation requirements and prepare undergraduates and graduates impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic for future careers.
This pandemic offers unique opportunities to generate insights for the development of virtual field experiences as a novel teaching tool. The urgent need for virtual teaching materials across all disciplines encourages adoption by faculty who might otherwise never have used either virtual or field experiences in their courses. The synchronous prioritization of virtual offerings by field stations and marine laboratories opens the window to creating a broad array of multi-site virtual experiences around the world. The resulting dramatic expansion in the availability and use of virtual field experiences can create new opportunities to assess the effects of this teaching tool on student observation and research skills and to enhance preparedness for future disruptions. This RAPID award is made by the Division of Biological Infrastructure using funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
RCN-UBE Incubator: U2-SAFE: Unifying Undergraduate Student Access to Field Experiences using The Virtual Field Platform
This project will create a new network composed of staff at field stations and marine labs combined with faculty and students at community colleges, tribal colleges, professional student organizations, and minority serving institutions, and educators with video content creators. This research coordination network incubator will take the virtual learning products developed for the Virtual Field platform (thevirtualfield.org) in response to COVID-19 travel restrictions and improve and refine them with feedback from students. Only a small proportion of the hundreds of thousands of college students can be hosted at natural areas to conduct research and take classes. This project brings underwater coastal marine and estuarine communities, vast grasslands, alpine forests, and rocky foothills into the classroom with both recorded and live instruction and real scientists and graduate students as role models, enabling a broader range of college students to experience, observe, catalog, and explore the natural world. Place-based learning experiences have a profound effect on undergraduate students, creating deeper connections with the concepts studied, a long-term engagement in sciences, and exposure to developing STEM careers unfamiliar to these audiences.
With a global distribution of 1268 terrestrial, coastal, and marine stations, over 75% affiliated with universities, Field Stations and Marine Labs (FSMLs) are in a unique position to respond to the needs of the next generation of undergraduate biology students. Unfortunately, many students are unable to visit these often-remote locations where hands-on research can be conducted. In addition, it can be extremely difficult to conduct cross-site comparative research in locations that are far apart. This project will take the videos and curriculum created previously, train FSML staff and associated faculty to develop additional material and hone the results with direct feedback from faculty and students to create adaptive modules for a variety of disciplines from geology to hydrology to biology.
This project is funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure, as part of efforts to address the challenges posed in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action (http://visionandchange/finalreport/).
This award reflects NSF’s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation’s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
Undergraduate Virtual Experiences as a Recruitment Tool for Underrepresented Students in STEM
PI/Co-PI’s: Angelica E Patterson; Itchung Cheung; Chris Mead; Sara Kassis
The Virtual Field (thevirtualfield.org) was created to broaden access to transformative field learning experiences at Field Stations and Marine Labs (FSMLs) for undergraduate students in STEM disciplines. Traditional field experiences have been shown to have a profound impact on student knowledge and engagement in the sciences. However, these opportunities are often unavailable to those from Community Colleges (CCs) and minority-serving institutions (MSIs), due to financial, social, and logistical barriers. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated these challenges, limiting in-person field opportunities. To overcome these barriers and increase access to field experiences, this project will leverage virtual technologies to make field biology experiences broadly accessible. By uniting FSMLs, virtual learning experts, videographers, and educators, this project aims to bridge the gap and bring science education to diverse communities, ultimately contributing to the broader goal of increasing diversity in the field sciences.
The project will focus on training in inquiry- and evidence-based teaching, and the development of virtual materials to enhance the effective use and development of virtual inquiry-based learning materials by the Research Coordination Network (RCN) faculty and Field Station and Marine Labs (FSMLs). An online community will be created to encourage the sharing of ideas for creating effective virtual learning experiences for underserved students. The project includes seven annual orientation and training workshops where experts will present on virtual technology skills, classroom use, and educational assessment. These workshops provide opportunities for facilitated discussions, breakout sessions, and feedback collection. The project aims to collect feedback on the needs of network participants, identify barriers to accessing content, explore collaboration opportunities, and develop community of practice documents for faculty and FSMLs. Additional bimonthly office hours will be available for participants and anyone interested in the project to seek support and clarification. Faculty and FSML participants will integrate virtual materials into their existing courses and educational programs and employ rigorous assessments to quantify outcomes to share with other participants. The project also focuses on the collaborative development of new virtual materials and tools, including virtual materials, instructional videos, and an assessment guide. The assessment expert will lead the creation of an assessment guide with protocols for assessing student learning and affective outcomes, which will be updated annually based on participant feedback. Furthermore, the project seeks to establish long-term partnerships to sustain virtual field experiences beyond the duration of the grant. This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure, and the Directorate STEM Education, Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts to address the challenges posed in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action.
Expanding access to high impact practices using Virtual Field Experiences
PI’s: Sara Kassis; Chris Mead
Co-PI’s: Claudia Luke; Sharon J Hall; Sara E Brownell; Mara N Lopez
With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Track 2 project aims to determine if virtual field experiences (VFE) can enhance the ability of students to learn science skills and encourage them to pursue a science career. This work is critical because, although field learning is one of the highest-impact teaching practices, the capacity for instructors to provide field learning is limited due to cost and time. These limitations are particularly strong at community colleges and colleges that lack suitable field sites nearby. Moreover, conventional field learning may exclude students whose family or work obligations do not allow them to join a field trip outside of normal class time. Field locations also may not allow students with disabilities to fully participate. Existing research into VFEs shows that they can be as effective as in-person field experiences at improving content knowledge, but it is not known whether VFEs are similarly effective in training fundamental science skills, such as observation, or in positively impacting students’ attitudes, such as their sense of science identity. This project will compare learning and attitudinal outcomes of introductory biology and ecology students following the use of virtual or in-person field experiences. The diversity of the three HSIs studied and the project’s collaboration with the Virtual Field Research Coordination Network ensure the results will be generalizable. When completed, this project will offer guidance on how VFEs can bring field learning to more students, enhancing instruction in an equitable manner.
Virtual field experiences are an established part of science education, with demonstrated positive impacts on content learning and student satisfaction. They also have practical advantages over in-person field learning, such as lower costs and greater accessibility. Yet important questions remain about whether they are as effective as in-person field learning in building students’ scientific skills and inspiring non-cognitive outcomes like scientific identity. First, by constructing a virtual field experience that closely parallels an in-person one, the project will employ a quasi-experimental design to compare cognitive and non-cognitive changes pre- to post-experience between students in virtual and in-person conditions. The second experiment will use a pre-/post-experience design, without a comparison group, but will study outcomes from a virtual field experience that brings students to multiple sites across different ecosystems. Outcome measures in both experiments will include a combination of previously validated measures and content and science skills assessments that are specific to the project. By expanding field learning access, this project will directly benefit the students at the institutions studied. This project is funded by the HSI Program, which aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education, broaden participation in STEM, and build capacity at HSIs.
Additional Support and Partnerships
Oregon State University Marine and Coastal Opportunities (MACO)
A 2024 OSU Marine and Coastal Opportunities (MACO) Advancement Award supported The Virtual Field: Bridging Gaps and Expanding Accessibility to Field Stations, Marine Labs, and Field Research. The project expanded the use of 360° video and TVF approaches in undergraduate and international field education, including OSU programming in Aruba and the Coasts Compared: Aruba and Oregon Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) course
Funding from Oregon Sea Grant, in partnership with the Oregon Coast STEM Hub, supported the translation and adaptation of The Virtual Field’s undergraduate curriculum for K–12 education and alignment with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). This support expanded TVF’s reach through NGSS-aligned student and teacher resources and professional development for K–12 educators.