STAKEHOLDER-PRODUCED VIRTUAL FIELD EXPERIENCES CAN CONTRIBUTE TO GEOHERITAGE

While nothing can supplant the full range of multisensory, exploratory, intellectual, and affective outcomes that accrue from being present in and experiencing any of the great geoheritage places of North America, advances in technology and learning design are making virtual field experiences (VFEs) in these places steadily richer, more instructive, and more rewarding to the user. These technologies are noted for making geoheritage resources accessible to anyone with an internet or cellular connection regardless of individual ability or location on Earth, and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has incited greater production of such assets by educators. Case studies involving place-based VFEs now appear frequently in the geoheritage and geoscience-education literature alike. Our own research has demonstrated that VFEs can in fact complement, and even promote, subsequent on-ground visits, by familiarizing users with localities and assuaging many concerns about access, safety, and physical comfort.

The next advance in VFEs in geoscience education is the production of basic VFEs by learners themselves, using increasingly economical audiovisual-capture tools and open-source platforms on which VFEs can be built. For the past two years our group has both piloted and researched courses and workshops that teach learners (i.e., teachers and their students) how to produce VFEs, and in the process learn about Earth, environmental, and sustainability sciences by doing. One key outcome of this democratization of VFE production by learners has been to deepen their sense of place and change their pro-social and pro-environmental dispositions and behaviors toward the places they explore and document. Teaching basic VFE production to stakeholders in geoheritage places, by means of formal or free-choice programs, can contribute to global interest in and protection of these places. We will offer methods, outcomes, and evaluation data from our work relevant to geoheritage applications.