Enhancing Field Trips

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Originally appears in the Spring 2019 issue.

FIELD TRIPS ARE opportunities that can positively impact and motivate students.1 They are considered important learning tools that can help students grow knowledge-wise in their respective disciplines as well as in character;2 however, as stated by Rieger, improperly executed field trips due to lack of proper planning and follow-up reinforcement can result in tremendous loss of valuable time and can lead to misconceptions by students and teachers about the effectiveness of trips.1 Over the past 10 years as an educator, I have overseen both successful and unsuccessful trips, with the unsuccessful ones ending up as leisure outings. In an effort to avoid the pitfalls that generally turn field trips into leisure outings, I have tried different interventions such as changing trip locations and rescheduling trips to different times of the year, but none has been as effective as incorporating citizen science.

Citizen science involves a partnership between volunteers and trained professionals to carry out research.3 It is a process that harnesses collective curiosity and employs common technology, engaging participants in learning about the world around them in a quick and comprehensive manner.4 Having this concept of citizen science in mind made me consider it as a great fit to incorporate into field trips. I have conducted various field trips with citizen science project components, and they have taken a variety of forms, including gathering biodiversity data on a small island over multiple years to assess climate change effects, measuring pine trees in a neotropical savanna to monitor growth rate and tree health, and conducting surveys of bird populations at specific field sites.