Field Trips

Overview

Visiting places connected to classroom learning provides opportunities to deepen understanding through firsthand experiences. As an enriching social experience, field trips also engage learners in new topics, generate curiosity, and support Social Awareness & Relationship skills.

Use It in the Classroom

Watch how learners participate to draw real-world connections between field trips and their classroom learning. Through these community engagements, learners develop a meaningful understanding of their own community and the larger world.

Field trips support student exploration by activating students' Background Knowledge and extending their classroom learning. They serve as a way for all students regardless of their Socioeconomic Status to experience and visit places of art, history, science, and culture. Teachers can use the time before and after field trips as valuable instructional time to enhance the skills and knowledge acquired during field trips.

Design It into Your Product

Videos are chosen as examples of strategies in action. These choices are not endorsements of the products or evidence of use of research to develop the feature.

Watch how Google Expeditions allows teachers and students to visit faraway locations through virtual 3D field trips. As an immersive learning experience, students have the opportunity to see and learn about a novel, typically inaccessible location, thereby increasing their Motivation to learn.

Through digital trips, learners experience immersive, virtual reality tours. As a highly engaging, active learning experience, learners are more likely to retain these memorable learning moments in their Short- and Long-term Memory.

View References

Resources

Below are additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.

Benefits of Field Trips

Some of the research behind the learning benefits of field trips

Education & Student Background

Subtopic that explores how student differences can lead to inequalities in education opportunities on Digital Promise's Research Map

Emotion & Cognition

Subtopic that includes information about how the brain recognizes, processes, and regulates emotions on Digital Promise's Research Map

Field Trips: Valuable Learning

The research behind field trips as learning experiences

Google Lit Trips

Virtual field trips linked to commonly taught novels

Motivation & Autonomy

Subtopic that explores how and why students are motivated to learn on Digital Promise's Research Map