Towards inclusive, open access, virtual reality geoscience fieldtrips for teaching and research enhancement

Fieldwork is central to the discipline of geography. However, it is exclusive and dangerous for a large demographic of students. Many students with disabilities, financial constraints or illness may never be able to practice fieldwork and gain basic field skills. This can exclude them from completing degrees or hinder potential career opportunities. The COVID-19 Pandemic is a recent example of how several years of Irish graduates were not able to develop field skills due to social distancing constraints. Here we propose a project that creates a series of virtual reality (VR) field experiences that allow students to gain critical field skills. The VR field courses will not require specialist technology (i.e. headsets), just access to a PC. All VR field courses will be geographically-corrected and therefore will be able to make real measurements for input to research activities. A workflow to allow students to create their own VR experiences will be created to demonstrate and share their field activities with other students. All VR experiences can be uploaded to the ‘Coastal Atlas of Ireland’ web portal stored in UCC Geography.

This project has aims to:

• a) Create a VR fieldtrip workflow using open source/easily accessible equipment and software;
• b) Generate a suite of VR field experiences from areas of scientific and societal interest to UCC curricula and;
• c) Increase the awareness of VR field experiences as a tool for the physically-, financially-, or otherwise constrained demographic.

Funder: National Forum: Strategic Alignment of Teaching and Learning Enhancement (SATLE)

Project Team

• Dr Larissa Cruz de Oliveira Macedo (Post-Doctoral Researcher)
• Dr Mohit Tunwal (co-PI)
• Dr Ed Jarvis (co-PI)
• Dr Aaron Lim (PI)