UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Previously Published Works Title Digital nature: Are field trips a thing of the past? Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0827s57q Journal Science (New York, N.Y.), 358(6361) ISSN 0036-8075 Author McCauley, Douglas J Publication Date 2017-10-01 DOI 10.1126/science.aao1919 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0827s57q https://escholarship.org http://www.cdlib.org/ sciencemag.org S C I E N C E IL L U S T R A T IO N : V . A LT O U N IA N / S C IE N C E By Douglas J. McCauley I awoke in my cabin by the pond. Weigh- ing my options for the day, I decided to do some bird watching, winding between white pines and blackberries along the east shore of the pond. By their songs, I was able to identify a Mourning Dove, Blue Jays, an American Crow, and perhaps a Northern Cardinal. A mink, alarmed by my approach, dove into the pond and swam off. Unable to resist on such a sunny day, I waded into the pond and watched the sunlight play around me in the shallows. My mood that morning was appropriately reflected by my status indicators: moderately inspired, tired, and hungry. My hike took place in Walden, a Game, a video game recently launched on the 200th birthday of Henry David Thoreau (1). With a widening niche of such nature- themed video games and simulations and a rapidly growing audience of online/digital learners, the capacity to reach new audiences and carry environmental education beyond the confines of schools and universities may be a game changer, but one that perhaps comes with perils. Gamers no longer need to confine them- selves to stealing cars or building new worlds. Players can SCUBA dive on coral reefs (End- less Ocean for Nintendo Wii), indulge in a weekend of virtual bird watching in Spain (Birding Game by Swarovski Optik), or do ecological research with their PhD father in the Amazonian rainforest (EcoQuest 2: Lost Secret of the Rainforest by Sierra Gamers). Walden isn’t even cyberspace’s first digital pond. Harvard researchers created a virtual rendition of Black’s Nook Pond in Massa- chusetts, in which players can take photos of pond wildlife and catch bugs in the mud (2). From an ecologist’s perspective, this ex- panding class of opportunities for electronic engagement with nature represents an in- teresting and positive shift. Wildlife in video games have historically been typecast as agents hell-bent on consuming the gaming protagonist. Lara Croft, the archaeologist in the original Tomb Raider (1996), had to shoot and kill a diverse array of biodiversity (from bats to gorillas). The video game Afrika (for Sony Playstation 3), released a decade later, requires the gamer to maneuver in to take the perfect photo of a mother elephant lov- ingly nudging her calf. IDENTIFY, OBSERVE, EXPERIMENT But the ambitions of many of these new nature-centric games and simulations are grander than simply breaking down stereo- types about the hostility of wildlife; they’re increasingly about identifying species, ob- serving ecological processes, and even experi- menting in scientifically accurate ecosystems. Walden, a Game includes numerous species recorded by Thoreau at Walden. Interacting with them yields inspiration points needed to sustain play. Interactions with rare species, such as the mink I spotted, provide bonus INSIGHTS SCIENCE EDUCATION Digital nature: Are field trips a thing of the past? Expand the reach of science education, but choose tools Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology and Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106. USA. Email: dmccauley@ucsb.edu P O L I C Y F O R U M 2 20 OCTOBER 2017 • VOL 358 ISSUE 6361 Digital rendering of Rhino to come S C I E N C E sciencemag.org P H O T O : M IN D E N P IC T U R E S /G E T T Y I M A G E S points. Users of the Black’s Nook Pond simu- lation can go even further by measuring the virtual weather, collecting population data, and sampling water chemistry (2). Virtual reality and augmented reality platforms are rapidly adding richness to the genre. This includes offerings marketed as electronic field trips. “Field trips are a great way for teachers to engage students and give them a first-hand understanding of a sub- ject—but they’re not always practical,” says Google Expeditions, an operation that cu- rates its own brand of electronic field trips (3). This logic is hard to argue with. It is likely to be impractical to take a high school sci- ence class from Panama City snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef, or to see the Brazil- ian Amazon, leopard seals in Antarctica, or redwoods in Big Basin State Park, California, all of which are offerings in the Google Ex- pedition electronic field trip portfolio. Private vendors sell virtual reality hardware to access these experiences—at approximately $9500 USD to equip a class of 30 students (4). As a professor of ecology at a university that emphasizes the value of encouraging students to thoughtfully interact with bio- diversity and ecosystems, these new tech- nologies are intriguing. Their penetration makes them even more so. Video game markets serve more than a billion people worldwide, and electronic media are known to profoundly shape civic literacy about sci- ence and the environment (5). Children in the United States are estimated to spend approximately 7 hours a day in front of elec- tronic media—but only 4 to 7 minutes of un- structured play outdoors (6). Stark reports about disconnectedness between young people and nature redouble the imperative to vet new nature learning tools (7). A sur- vey, for example, conducted in the United Kingdom by the National Trust reported that one out of three children could identify a magpie, but 9 out of 10 could recognize a Dalek (cyborg aliens from the television program Dr. Who) (8). EVOLUTION OF INTERPRETATION Evaluating the role of these nature-centric technologies in education requires placing them in historical context. They are perhaps best viewed as the latest stage in the evolu- tion of the quite ancient human toolkit for sharing and teaching about the environment and ecology. Attempts at biodiversity inter- pretation can be traced back to the earliest human artists who incorporated images of ungulates, felids, ursids, and other species into their rock art. Nature continued to be se- quentially reinterpreted by using new media and technologies, from early Roman mosaics, to richly illustrated Middle Age bestiaries, to the dioramas of natural history museums that emerged in the 1800s. Nature interpre- tation then came further to life with wildlife filmmaking. The bards of nature cinema, such as David Attenborough, made lion kills and flamingo migrations regular occurrences in living rooms across the world. What, if anything, is different about these emerging forms of nature simulation in this historical sequence? One key difference is that designers of these new technologies are, arguably for the first time in history, moving away from simply interpreting nature toward actually replicating nature. And in some in- stances they are doing a good job. I involun- tarily ducked when a humpback whale swam over my head during a sample virtual reality SCUBA dive I trialed at Google headquarters. I have vivid memories of standing enraptured in front of wildlife dioramas in the Smithson- ian’s Museum of Natural History as a child— but none of them ever made me duck. PERILS OF SIMULATION Pedagogical research has made it clear that there is special value in field-based experien- tial learning in the sciences (9). A UK study of the widespread cancellation of field trips associated with an outbreak of foot-and- mouth disease found that the grades of stu- dents lacking field experiences were largely unaffected, but both students and instructors consistently reported that the loss of field ex- periences created a diminished learning ex- perience (10). In Slovakia, it was found that after a 1-day field trip, students positively shifted their attitudes toward biology, the en- vironment, and careers in science while also displaying a better understanding of ecologi- cal concepts (11). Can these benefits of field learning be replicated by electronic field trips and simulated laboratories? Research that has explored the general substitutability of na- ture with standard technological mimics suggests that electronic nature can gener- ate some but not all of the benefits of real nature (12). Results from the learning sci- ences suggest that virtual- and augmented- reality nature experiences may improve on these impacts but still reveal limitations. Immersive experiences have been shown, for instance, to foster interconnections and emotional linkages to nature that can be effective in promoting learning and en- gagement. In one such simulation, students undertook a “body transfer” with a coral and watched as one of their arms eroded in a virtual acidified ocean and fell to the floor with an audible and palpable thud (13). Tests of augmented-reality field trips (such as a Grand Canyon field trip designed to be run on campus quads or soccer fields) have illustrated that these tools increase student interest in science. However, virtual–field trip participants performed no better than students who received classroom-based lec- tures, and the experiences were generally less effective than field trips into nature (14, 15). Studies of the impact of the Black’s Nook Pond simulation suggested that the students improved their understanding of ecosystem concepts but did not show improvement in ability to recognize nonobvious causes for ecosystem change (2). One class of distinct educational affor- dances of virtual nature learning is that it can take students to time points in the his- tory and future of the environment that can- not otherwise be experienced. For instance, Accus nost accaes volenia quias voles que laborumende laborecto te aut vel maio. Solore doleni aute sinciis aut quo el eosae volo to voluptur suntorp oriatis mossed quae volorro is comnis doloremquodi 20 OCTOBER 2017 • VOL 358 ISSUE 6361 3 INSIGHTS | P E R S P E C T I V E S sciencemag.org S C I E N C E there is a virtual-reality experience designed to bring the Hell Creek fossil formation alive for students as it was during the Cretaceous (16). The retention of concepts learned and experiences derived in virtual field experi- ences remains an active research area. Per- ceptions of interconnection to nature derived via virtual reality experiences have been re- corded to persist for at least 1 week (13), al- though impacts from real field trips may last at least 1 year (17). Some of the differences measured between real and virtual nature field trips may derive from the fact that learning in live nature typi- cally happens with live humans. Research has very clearly shown that learning with role models and peers can substantially enhance the impact of environmental education (18). Such opportunities can be lacking in virtual nature experiences. Other possible side ef- fects of simulated nature learning are worth considering: Hyperinteractive and stimulus- rich digital nature experiences can make real nature experiences feel dull (for example, real-world whales do not allow themselves to be pet on every dive), player-centric na- ture gaming experiences may propagate the fallacious notion that humans are distinctly different from nature, and synthesized envi- ronments can provide dangerously simplistic views of the complex structure and function of nature. NONBINARY, NON-LUDDITE Is it far-fetched to assume that teaching ecol- ogy and biology in the field could ever be replaced with electronic field trips? Tempta- tions to make these kinds of shifts are real given the high costs, high staffing require- ments, and risk-management complexities associated with field learning. Large-scale replacement of field learning perhaps feels less outlandish when one recalls that other formerly irreplaceable elements of pedagogy, such as classrooms and even entire univer- sities, are being avidly replaced with online learning spaces. Similar parallels for digital replacement can be found in the increasingly widespread substitution of animal dissec- tions with virtual dissections. The future, however, may not be as bi- nary as taking students outside on field trips or running field trips from computer labs. Augmented-reality teaching tools that are more lightly enhanced than the Grand Canyon experience, and as such more simi- lar to the wildly popular Pokémon Go, cre- ate a hybrid species of technology-enhanced field trips. Technology-infused outdoor na- ture learning presents many advantages: It can allow students to see and interact with otherwise invisible features in nature, col- lect and analyze situationally relevant data, and safely undertake hazardous field sam- pling (such as field tests for pollutants) (19). For example, in an augmented-reality fol- low up to the Black’s Nook Pond simulation, students hike around the real pond while a digital park ranger on their smartphones chimes in at trigger stations to offer tips on water sampling and points out virtual car- bon atoms floating through photosynthesiz- ing plants (20). Ecologists and environmental scientists are not and cannot be Luddites. If, in our re- search, we are willing to replace costly and challenging field expeditions by using re- mote sensing technologies such as satellites to count penguins, drones to study the be- havior of Serengeti wildebeest, and acoustic sensors to go wirelessly whale-watching from our offices, we should not thoughtlessly turn our backs on next-generation environmental teaching tools. PRETTY TOYS, SERIOUS THINGS How should the environmental education community move forward? We are the first generation of educators for which digital sub- stitution of field learning is a real choice. This capacity for replacement will only increase as emerging immersive technologies become less expensive and more within reach. Rec- ognizing the exciting place in which we now stand in history empowers us to strategically, rather than haphazardly, select technologies that advance environmental learning. We need to ensure that the pace of tech- facing pedagogical research keeps up with the rapid development of these environ- mental technologies. It will become in- creasingly important that environmental educators have high-quality data from rig- orous research about which new tools and which functions of those tools promote learning and how those gains compare with those of conventional field education. Envi- ronmental researchers and educators must become more actively involved with tech- nology developers and education research- ers to constructively shape the evolution of these new technologies. Last, environmental educators must es- chew temptations to simply choose the sexi- est, newest, or easiest teaching tools. In an era when gains in environmental literacy are needed more than ever, we must commit to prioritizing the use of whatever methods yield the best learning outcomes. It is no se- cret that funds for environmental education are limited. We must continue to search for opportunities to make smart investments in new digital learning technologies. However, we must also be willing to re- sponsibly reject these tools and preserve or extend our investments in increasingly endangered traditional field learning op- portunities when they create superior learning opportunities. Google is mostly right: Field learning is not always practical. However, that cannot become the mantra that prevents us from asking hard questions about the structures of our educational in- stitutions that have contributed to making traditional field learning seem increas- ingly impractical. Possible interventions include reversing declines in the number of field-based natural history courses now required in degree programs, streamlin- ing bureaucratic pathways for permitting and executing field learning, and investing in the human and physical infrastructure required to make field learning tenable. Faculty job advertisements in the environ- mental sciences seem increasingly likely to seek applicants that can teach students to sequence, simulate, or model nature, but perhaps robustness can be added to peda- gogical communities by also actively re- cruiting educators that don’t mind taking students out to stand knee-deep in nature. Thoreau’s own relationship with technol- ogy, as revealed in Walden, was in its own way complex. His musings on the value of “modern improvements” communicate a cau- tionary observation with resonance: “[T]here is an illusion about them…. Our inventions are want to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things.” j R E F E R E N C E S A N D N OT E S 1. T. Fullerton, Walden, a Game; http://waldengame.com. 2. S. Metcalf, A. Kamarainen, M. S. Tutwiler, T. Grotzer, C. Dede, Int. J. Gaming Comput.-Mediat. Simul. 3, 86 (2011). 3. https://edu.google.com/events/iste2016. 4. http://bit.ly/2yIyr42. 5. J. D. Miller, in Science and the Media, D. 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