September 27, 2025Open Access

High school students' opinions on real and virtual field trips after forest fire were formed with 360o videos on environment and ecology

Key Points

Student opinions on environmental education methods reveal a preference for virtual field trips over real trips, particularly in challenging contexts.
The qualitative feedback emphasized increasing motivation and understanding of biodiversity among students who participated in virtual experiences.
Data collected through semi-structured interviews highlighted how immersive 360° videos enhance perceptions of real-world environmental issues.
Insights from 30 tenth-grade students indicate that both real and virtual field trips raise awareness of the impact of forest fires.

Abstract

Environmental pollution, which has reached global dimensions, brings the importance of environmental education to the agenda nowadays. One of the current environmental problems, especially caused by lack of awareness and education, is forest fires. The deficiencies in environmental education lie at the root of fires that cause irreversible damage to biodiversity and nature. In this context, effective and efficient environmental education becomes important. One of the important components of an effective environmental education that includes much more than transferring information is field trips. Field trips that allow observing events and facts in their natural environment and collecting information first hand cannot be carried out due to the burden of procedures such as permission, time and financial inadequacies. This situation encourages the use of virtual field trips, which have become widespread with the effect of developing technology in recent years, in education. Virtual field trips carried out in the comfort of the classroom increase interest, motivation and focus, and positively affect student success, attitudes and behaviors. In this study, it was aimed to determine the student views after a real field trip and a virtual field trip created by the researcher with 360° videos in order to raise awareness by observing the destruction in the area after a forest fire, which is one of the current environmental problems. The study group of the qualitatively designed study consists of 30 students studying in the tenth grade of a state school. The virtual field trip to the area after the forest fire in the Marmaris Icmeler Region was applied to the students who formed the study group with VR glasses. A real field trip was carried out with the same group after the forest fire in the Bolu Göynük district. The students' opinions about the virtual field trip and the real field trip were obtained with semi-structured interview forms and the opinions were explained with a finite analysis.

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