JIRP 2014 VFE - BUILDING A VIRTUAL FIELD EXPERIENCE OF THE JUNEAU ICE FIELD

Earlier this year students and staff of the 2014 Juneau Icefield Research Program (JIRP) set out to create a virtual reality chronicle of the program's annual research expedition across the Juneau Icefield. This virtual field environment or VFE was built to present this unique glacial environment and the JIRP experience to the general public via the World Wide Web. Built using Google Tour Builder and collections of interactive panoramas, the JIRP VFE is a simulated journey across the icefield based on the Summer 2014 experience. With the assistance of a small group of JIRP students and a participating high school teacher, portions of the VFE were designed as classroom activities in which students engage in simulated fieldwork. Other portions were designed as a virtual reality data archive allowing future JIRP students to compare their findings to that of former students and researchers in a way that includes the environmental context of the data as seen from a ground level / first hand perspective.

While the principle aim of this project was to create a tool for outreach and education to be used by the program, it was also to investigate strategies for student construction of virtual field environments. The goal of this investigation was to develop techniques that use digital technology to engage students in detailed observation and analysis, without having that technology eclipse what they are seeing in the field. Results of this investigation will be presented.