At a time when traditional fieldwork is coming under pressure, be it from shrinking budgets, reducing carbon footprints, increased concerns for personal safety or the desire to make field skills accessible to all, how do we ensure that the key skills of observation, data collection and landscape analysis can still be developed in our students?…

Topographic map-reading skills are critical for certain professions but can be difficult to learn. The purpose of this pilot study is to provide insight on the role augmented reality technology can play in the development of topographic map-reading skills. Using a situated cognition theoretical framework, this study tracks the development of…

Field learning is fundamental in geoscience, but cost, accessibility, and other constraints limit equal access to these experiences. As technological advances afford ever more immersive and student-centered virtual field experiences, they are likely to have a growing role across geoscience education. They also serve as an important tool for…

With the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting contact restrictions, conducting field trips to hydrological research basins became close to impossible. Hydrological field knowledge is an essential part of hydrological education and research. In order to impart this knowledge to students of hydrological engineering subjects in times or…

We report on data collected at 3 time points during a 1-year intervention designed to teach a purposive sample of geoscience faculty members (n = 29) from 27 universities throughout the United States how to identify and address issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion in their departments. For the intervention we used mixed-reality…

Climate change and global warming have huge impacts on the most fragile ecosystems on Earth. With temperatures rising, most of the tropical glaciers on Earth, found near the Equator, will be gone before the end of the century. These far-removed natural areas are obscure and difficult for students to visit or learn from directly. Educating students…

We developed and tested different pedagogical treatments using an Augmented Reality (AR) Sandbox to teach introductory geoscience students about reading topographic maps at five institutions in both pilot and full implementation studies. The AR Sandbox treatments were characterized as 1) unstructured play, 2) a semi-structured lesson, and 3) a…

The value of field trips is undisputed across disciplines. Field-site visits whether in social or physical sciences provide grounding for place- and discovery-based learning. Yet field trips have limitations that can now be overcome by the promise of immersive technologies that can improve quality and accessibility. This promise is twofold: First,…

Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging technology that is gaining traction in K12 education. Whereas well-designed and engaging VR experiences may be considered educational, teacher educators with content-area expertise are uniquely positioned to analyze the actual content provided by those experiences when determining VR's educational value.…

Augmented reality (AR) sandboxes are useful tools in helping students develop a three-dimensional understanding of topographic maps and landforms. Research on the AR sandbox indicates that students enjoy it, but evidence about student learning gains is inconclusive. This study aims to understand how students engage with these tools as a precedent…

This study aimed to describe the development of augmented reality-based interactive multimedia to improve the critical thinking skills of elementary school teacher education students in learning earth structure and fisheries material science. This type of research was research and development by Sukmadinata consisting of preliminary studies, model…

Studies have consistently documented that introductory geoscience students struggle with visualizing features presented on topographic maps. This is a problem that has the potential to increase in a digital age when engagement with maps consists primarily of GPS navigation via smartphones. Since the first augmented reality (AR) sandbox in 2012,…

This paper presents results from a randomized experimental design replicated over four semesters that compared students' performance in understanding landform evolution processes as measured by the pretest to posttest score growth between two treatment methods: an online interactive simulation tool and a paper-based exercise. While both methods…

In the last decade, commercial Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become more accessible for use in civil roles such as scientific research. Despite their increasing use in research, there has been little investigation of their potential use as an educational tool in Geoscience. This small-scale mixed methods research investigated the potential…

Two cases of context-sensitive mobile computing curricula for children are shown to develop analytical understandings of how science-related sense-making talk can be supported through physical and digital environment interaction, which supports play and learning through movement. Our work investigates how proximity-based computing mediates…