Teaching in the Field

Field trips often form the social backbone of geoscience departments, bringing students and faculty together to learn. Field trips can be the highlight of an elementary students year. Similarly, field trips are an integral part of the professional geoscientists ongoing professional development providing opportunities to see new and familiar field areas through the eyes of our colleagues and to wrangle over their interpretation. Participation in field trips builds new collegial relationships and brings together people from across states, regions, nations and the world who share common interests.

• enable NAGT sections to learn from one another in order to elevate the quality of their field offerings around the country,
• promote models for effective educational field trips to geoscientists around the world,
• and provide an archive of field guides furthering the ability of K-12 teachers, faculty, community groups, and others to lead scientifically accurate, pedagogically effective field trips.

Field Trip Collection

This collection features information about field trips organized for a variety of purposes across the country. The collection aims to share information about the design of various kinds of field trips as well as to provide easy access to field guides. Populating the collection is underway, and we will continue to highlight new additions to the collection.

You can also browse and search through the entire collection of field trip examples.

If you have a field trip example you would like to share in the collection, check out the Field Trip Submissions page and learn how to upload your activity.

Published NAGT Field Guides

• Pacific Northwest Section Guidebooks
• Far West Section Publications

Other NAGT Resources on Teaching in the Field

• Safety in the Field: Learn about safety and liability issues that educators need to think about before taking students into the field.
• Special Issue of JGE: Teaching in the Field, March 2006
• Strategies for Successful NAGT Field Trips
• 2004 Southwest Section Field Conference

Links to Useful Resources

• Resources for Field Camp
• Teaching in the Field Topical Site from On the Cutting Edge
• Using Field Labs from Starting Point-Teaching Entry Level Geoscience
  Including an activity on Making a Soil Monolith with a video of the process.
• Using Field Observations and Field Experiences to Teach Geoscience:An Illustrated Community Discussion from the NAGT sponsored "On the Cutting Edge" program for faculty professional development in the geosciences.
• Field Notes: these notes provide instructors with helpful tips for a successful field trip, including research-based information on overcoming students' barriers to learning in the field.
• The Montana-Yellowstone Geologic Field Guide Database from Integrating Research and Education: Moving Research Results into Geoscience Courses
• Geologic Guidebooks of North America Database: This database from AGI and the Geoscience Information Society contains bibliographic references and location for published field guides.
• A searchable collection of references and resources on field-based learning from the Synthesis of Research on Learning in the Geosciences
• Field Team Leadership: Strategies for Successful Field Work: This web article was written by Erin Pettit of the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She offers valuable advice and tips for field team leaders as well as participants which she sums up in the statement - "Happy, comfortable, safe people make for great scientific results".