LEARNING ABOUT VOLCANIC PROCESSES AND LANDFORMS THROUGH A VIRTUAL FIELD TRIP TO TENERIFE, SPAIN

Educators and researchers have long known that students reap significant benefits of learning-by-doing, exploring independently, and interacting with the natural world. Field trips and labs are two instructional approaches which have historically afforded students these types of learning opportunities in the science discipline. Decreasing budgets, heightened concerns about safety, increasing demands for content-specific learning, a rigorous testing environment, and mounting logistical challenges are among many reasons educators have cited for the reduction or elimination of field trips from secondary schools, colleges, and universities across the country. One way educators are attempting to provide interactive and experiential learning, while avoiding the difficulties associated with ‘boots on the ground’ field trips, is through virtual field trips (VFT). Due to its graphically-rich and realistic nature, Google Earth provides perhaps one of the most efficient platforms for delivering VFT-type experiences. Here, we outline a Google Earth-based VFT to Tenerife, Spain with the instructional goal of having students learn about volcanic processes and landforms. On the ground photographs within a KML file tie with specific locations at the Teide volcanic center on Tenerife via Google Earth, which afford the ability to examine volcanic deposits at various scales. Photographs represent specific VFT stops and highlight detailed outcrop scale features including (but not limited to) textures and structures and contain a brief description of important observations within each picture; users are directed to zoom in and out from the photograph to tie together observations made at the outcrop scale to more regional-scale levels. Much as they would in a traditional ‘boots on the ground’ field trip, students can go from photograph to photograph (stop to stop) where they make observations of diverse volcanic features at a variety of scales. After visiting all of the stops, students are then directed to a series of questions where their responses tie together the observations they have made. The structure of this activity is such that students can complete this VFT individually or in groups and the activity can be easily modified for introductory and upper-level geology students.