Virtual field trips for school students and the essence of the outdoor learning environment

An essential characteristic of Earth Science education is the ability to conduct teaching in various learning environments: the classroom, the laboratory, the outdoors, and the virtual world of computers. During the last decades of the 20th century, I developed the holistic model connecting outdoor and indoor learning environments. The guiding principle of this model is a gradual progression from the concrete levels of the curriculum towards its more abstract components. In this model, the learning process begins with the "learning instinct stimulation." In this session, students discover what interests them about a particular subject. Depending on the subject and the school's location, this stage occurs in a relevant outdoor environment or a versatile indoor space. The central role of the outdoor learning environment is to offer direct experience with concrete phenomena and materials. Familiarity with properties and possibilities is the principal outcome the raw material for forming concepts and posing questions. The outdoor learning environment should address phenomena and processes that cannot be cultivated indoors or virtually. The educational contribution of 3D to 4D digital outcrop models for virtual "fieldwork" for Earth science school students needs to be explored and reviewed based on the above emotional and cognitive principles.