Freeze for future: insights into co-creating a virtual learning environment with young people for climate change education

The consequences of anthropogenic climate change threaten the well-being of natural environments and lead to permanent changes in ecosystems. In high Alpine regions, glaciers serve as critical climate change indicators. Their presence makes them essential to climate change education. However, the rapid retreat of glaciers increases difficulties for school field trips to these areas. The citizen science project Freeze For Future – Young People create Virtual Glacier Worlds for the Future of Climate Change Education thus aimed at developing a virtual glacier field trip in collaboration with 380 high school students and three researchers from the University of Innsbruck (Austria) in order to create an innovative application for future educational purposes. The final version of the VR environment includes a virtual field trip following the young people’s tracks on seven stations through the Gaisberg Valley, including experiences beyond reality, such as time leaps. This study provides insights into the projects’ research design, the implementation as well as cooperation with stakeholders in and outside academia.