Google Expeditions

We're going to be visited by the Google Expeditions team in the 2nd week of the new school year. Professor Shailey Minocha will be bringing all the gear for us to try out some VR Expeditions experiences.

Google Expeditions (GEs)  are guided tours (field trips) of places that students experience on a smartphone through a virtual reality viewer called Google cardboard. 
GEs are comprised of virtual reality panoramas and are led by a guide or teacher. 
Using a Tablet, teachers can guide up to 50 students wearing the virtual reality (VR) viewers and point out highlights while referring to editable notes.

We will be helping with their research.


The focus of this Google-funded project is to investigate the pedagogical effectiveness of GEs, in biology and geography fieldwork – subjects that have a long tradition of physical fieldwork.

The project aims to answer questions such as: whether virtual field trips can be used effectively to support the teaching and demonstration of fieldwork skills such as experimental design, ecological sampling, recording and analysis of data?; can a VR experience enhance physical fieldwork?; can VR-based field trips support self-directed inquiry-based learning and higher-order thinking?; and what are the perceived barriers, if any, for adoption of VR-based field trips?

The key outcomes from this project will be: evidence-based understanding of whether and how VR-based GEs can complement physical field trips and enable learning and teaching of fieldwork skills; how virtual field trips (VFTs) in VR environments should be designed for their effective use in learning and teaching fieldwork and in CPD; and whether and how VR-based GEs can support a variety of pedagogies. The project will come up with recommendations for the content, and user interface and service designs of VR-based VFTs such as GEs.

Just part of the exciting extra opportunities for King's Ely geographers in the new academic year.