USING STUDENT PHOTOGRAPHS ON GEOLOGICAL FIELD TRIPS AS A BEHAVIORAL PROXY FOR NOVELTY SPACE

The purpose of the study is to determine if picture-taking is a behavioral proxy to the concept of ‘novelty space' (Orion and Hofstein, 1994) while on field trips. “Novelty space” consisting of mental distractions related to cognitive, geographical, psychological, and social factors must be reduced in order for the field trip to be a useful learning opportunity and not just a fun/social event (Orion and Hofstein, 1994). Studies in tourism have indicated that there may be a connection to novel factors and the number and type of photographs students take on trips to outdoor environments (Markwell, 1994 and Xie, 2004). No published studies in science education have been conducted to investigate the reasons students take photographs on science field trips and formative assessment of student novelty space on field trips has only recently been investigated (Elkins and Elkins, 2007). If picture-taking can be determined as a behavioral proxy to novelty space, then field trip instructors might be able to adjust their instructional practices to accommodate student novelty space throughout a field trip. This study used students participating on GeoJourney. GeoJourney is a program that takes undergraduate students on a 9-week long, 14,500 mile field trip to 30 national parks and 24 states to give students the opportunity to study introductory geology, environmental studies and Native American studies in the field (Elkins and Lyle-Elkins, 2004). Fifty-two students participating in GeoJourney from 2004-2007 tallied the number of photographs they took each day on the GeoJourney as well as categorized their motivation for taking photographs into groups that correspond to the novelty domains first identified by Orion (1993). Temporal changes in the total number of and motivation for taking photographs while on GeoJourney indicate that connections exists between photograph taking and results of the Novelty Space Survey: the number of pictures taken by students at the beginning of the field trip is greater than the number taken by the end of the field trip. Photo data from 2004-2006 indicates that the number of photographs taken over the course of GeoJourney decreases, but that geographic novelty remains the key reason why students take pictures on introductory-level field trips.