Geological (Engineering) Field Methods is a core course at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, where students learn how to investigate the Earth. Typically, this course involves weekly field trips to visit a variety of rock outcrops to learn navigation, observation, and measurement. Remote delivery of this course in fall 2020 due to COVID-19 required a transformation using new virtual, manual, and blended tools. Although largely successful, a return to in-person teaching is recommended.

Virtual field trips have become a crucial resource during the COVID-19 pandemic within geoscience education. This study presents a critical evaluation of their use, using real-world examples delivered to a masters-level class at the University of Aberdeen. Our work highlights several key findings which can be used to help plan virtual field trips and how associated disadvantages of their use can be mitigated through a blend of physical and virtual field trips.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, we designed a virtual geology field camp based in the video game Minecraft. Students learned how to map geological features on the surface and in the subsurface using this fun and engaging platform. Students' perceptions of the course were positive, and they showed improvement in basic geologic skills between pre-assessment and post-assessment surveys. Students discussed career pathways and skills and fostered interpersonal relationships.

At UNIS, located at 78° N in Longyearbyen in Arctic Norway, we use digital outcrop models (DOMs) actively in a new course (AG222 Integrated Geological Methods: From Outcrop To Geomodel) to solve authentic geoscientific challenges. DOMs are shared through the open-access Svalbox geoscientific portal, along with 360° imagery, subsurface data and published geoscientific data from Svalbard. Here we share experiences from the AG222 course and Svalbox, both before and during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This work presents the use of a digital educational resource, CreativeLab_Sci&Math | Plate Tectonics, which explores the PhET^TM Plate Tectonics simulator in the context of pre-service teacher education. Results show that the digital educational resource contributed to pre-service teachers successfully achieving learning outcomes concerning the dynamics of plate tectonics.