The development and impact of VR fieldtrips on Geoscience Curricula

The project aims to create of virtual reality (VR) fieldtrips with real world scales and geographic co-ordinates that not only gives access to people globally and the excluded demographic mentioned above but can also act as an aid for pre-fieldtrip investigations. The VR field courses can be accessed by anyone with a PC and VR headset (not essential). This project aims to acquire geospatially corrected photogrammetric data using a combination of low cost tools such a UAVs and smart phones. These data will be processed using well-developed photogrammetry workflows (e.g. Lim et al., 2020) and be imported to Unity, an Open Source gaming engine, in which a student can navigate across the environment and record/read real geographic measurements (length and thickness of units, strike and dip, orientation, stratigraphic log and core samples). On a broader scale, this project will act as a pilot for a longer term aim where a catalogue of Irish and internationally recognised virtual fieldtrips will be made to support geoscience teaching in Ireland and abroad.

The project has 2 main aims:

Aim 1: To develop a suite of VR fieldtrips, each tailored specifically to active Irish geoscience curricula;

Aim 2: To assess the impact and effectiveness of these VR fieldtrips in support of student learning and broader Irish geoscience curricula.

Funder: Geological Survey, Ireland (Department of Communication, Climate Action and the Environment)

Project Team

• Ms Irene Loriga (Postgraduate Researcher)
• Dr Aaron Lim (PI)
• Dr Mohit Tunwal (Co-Supervisor)
• Dr Larissa Cruz de Oliveira Macedo (Co-Supervisor)
• Dr Ed Jarvis (Co-Supervisor)
• Dr Therese Kenna (Co-Supervisor)
• Dr Siobhan Power (Advisory board)