Virtual fieldtrip for Bangor wetland students

Despite the nation-wide lockdown students at Bangor University still managed to go on a fieldtrip around Anglesey recently.

No rules on social distancing were broken though as the fieldtrip was held virtually as part of the university’s move to online teaching during the Coronavirus situation.

The ‘virtual fieldtrip’ was part of a third year module in the School of Natural Sciences, organised by Senior Lecturer, Dr Christian Dunn.

Before the government advised against travelling and urged people to work from home Dr Dunn walked around the Cors Erdreioog national nature reserve on Anglesey.

The wetland scientist spent time photographing and filming the types of features he would have pointed-out to his students, if they had been with him.

Several days later, after the government’s guidelines got tighter, Dr Dunn posted the content onto an ongoing Instagram story for his students to follow, at the same time and pace as if they had been there.

Dr Dunn, said: “When Bangor University moved to online teaching only because of the Coronavirus situation, the fieldtrips I take my students on obviously got cancelled.

“But I was determined to keep things as ‘normal’ as possible for the students and I didn’t want them to miss out on an important part of the module.

“So along with a load of other additional online teaching materials I decided to try doing a ‘virtual fieldtrip’ to one of the sites we’d have visited.

“I’m not really very good with Instagram but some of my students suggested I give it a go.”

“It was quite tricky condensing information down into just a few words on the images and videos, but hopefully it gave the students a taste of what they would have experienced on the wetland fieldtrip – minus the overflowing wellies,” Dr Dunn added.

Here's a short video made from the virtual fieldtrip, which can be found in the School of Natural Sciences Instagram profile: Instagram.com/Bangor.SNS.

Publication date: 2 April 2020