Sixteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

Field exercises represent a critical experiential learning component that helps learners ground sustainability concepts to their applications with the help of a problem-based, socially-rich pedagogy in which the instructor serves as a learning catalyst. While classrooms with lower enrollments may incorporate field excursions that provide students with opportunities to further engage in the topics, construct meaning through social interactions, and develop applied experiential knowledge, instructors teaching fully-online sustainability courses are traditionally more limited in field-based activities. The high carbon footprint and cost of field exercises, particularly to international destinations, is not only unsustainable, but is reserved for a more privileged subset of students. In this study, we share an immersive mixed-reality (IMR) teaching and learning model that can help to engage higher education students enrolled in fully online or hybrid introductory sustainability courses using interactive, graded 360 Online Reality (360VR) field lessons. First, we filmed a series of 360 field lectures focusing on food systems sustainability in northern Thailand peasant farming communities. Next, these 360 videos were converted into interactive 360VR lessons included in the curriculum of a sustainability course offered in the School of Earth, Society, and Environment (SESE) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We assess students’ learning and interaction with the 360VR field lessons using the Kirkpatrick scale. We explore how 360VR emerging educational technologies and the IMR model may help to foster a constructivist-based learning environment, in which learners can build empathy, meaning, and context for sustainability topics in a more sustainable and scalable construct.