The development and impact of VR fieldtrips on Geoscience Curricula

Ireland is well known for its vast and diverse geological heritage and landscape. However, it is unlikely that the average person will get to visit all of these sites due to remoteness and financial constraints. In addition, fieldwork itself can beconsiderably exclusive and dangerous for a large demographic of Irish Society. Many students with disabilities or financial constraints may never be able to practice field geosciences or gain basic field skills. This can exclude them from completing their degrees or hinder potential career opportunities. The COVID-19 Pandemic is a recent example of how a number of years of Irish geoscience graduates were not able to develop field skills due to social distancing constraints. But, technological and geospatial methods have advanced and digital skills have become as important as field skills. One solution is the creation of virtual reality (VR) fieldtrips with real world scales and geographic co-ordinates that not only give access to people globally and the excluded demographic mentioned above but can also act as an aid for pre-fieldtrip investigations. The VR field course can be accessed by anyone with a PC and VR headset. This project aims to acquire geospatially corrected photogrammetric data using a combination of low cost tools such a UAVs and smartphones. These data will be processed using well-developed photogrammetry workflows and be imported to Unity, an Open Source gaming engine, in which a student can navigate across the environment and record real geographic measurements (length and thickness of units, strike and dip, orientation, stratigraphic log and core samples). On a broader scale, this project will act as a pilot for a longer term aim where a catalogue of Irish and internationally recognised virtual fieldtrips will be made to support geoscience teaching in Ireland and abroad.