Introduction
Basic and applied disciplines rooted in ecology and evolution
traditionally rely on experiential field instruction to teach key
learning outcomes representing natural history, study design, field
methods, and the process of scientific inquiry (Herman 2002, Tewksbury
et al. 2014, Fleischner et al. 2017). Other disciplines, such as the
geosciences, similarly rely upon field activities in instruction
(Whitmeyer and Mogk 2009). Field activities, defined here as educational
activities that occur outside and involve interaction with the natural
or built environment (Fleischner et al. 2017), can provide unique and
engaging instruction that is often vital to learning outcomes of
postsecondary courses, even when they represent a relatively small
portion of instruction (Harland et al. 2006). Potential impacts of
reduction and elimination of field activities and natural history
education from undergraduate curricula have been previously recognized
(Tewksbury et al. 2014) as have potential solutions (Fleischner et al.
2017). Despite its potential importance, biology education research
appears to have paid relatively little attention to postsecondary field
teaching compared to classroom teaching (Singer et al. 2013) or relative
to other disciplines (e.g. geography; Boyle et al. 2007).
The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly posed a unique set of challenges to
higher education, and particularly to face-to-face field activities and
the learning outcomes associated with them. Meeting these challenges may
be hampered by a general lack of research on field pedagogy and the
somewhat idiosyncratic nature of field teaching (Fleischner et al.
2017). The pandemic has highlighted an ongoing need for educational
research on pedagogy in field settings (Singer et al. 2013), and
immediately, for specific research focused on how instructors may be
able to most effectively shift the teaching of important learning
outcomes from face-to-face to remote-teaching (or distance-learning;
hereafter, remote) modalities.
Rapid shifts from face-to-face modalities to remote modalities at US
postsecondary institutions during spring 2020 clearly impacted field
teaching activities on a large scale. I surveyed a sample of instructors
of college-level courses with field components during April and May 2020
to understand these impacts. The survey was designed to answer three
inductive research questions: (1) What types of activities and learning
outcomes were typically taught by instructors teaching in the field? (2)
How did the shift in teaching modality immediately affect instruction of
learning outcomes typically taught in field settings, and what types of
activities did instructors use to substitute for field activities? (3)
What are the major challenges and potential solutions to effectively and
inclusively teaching learning outcomes typically taught in field
settings in a remote modality? Here, I report the results of this
survey, and suggest several alternative approaches to remotely teaching
field activities based on approaches being used by or planned by survey
respondents.