Hydrological processes are shown for different conditions (climate, physical catchment structure). Impacts of floods and drought are elaborated. The excursion as such already exists since 2008 and covers a large part of the learning objectives of the course. In 2020, it was not possible to travel with a group of 50-60 students to Iceland, due to the restrictions that were present because of COVID-19. Therefore, the lecturers who were normally involved in the excursion came up with an innovative way to share the contents of the excursion with their students. Note that the solution that is presented in this showcase also applies to smaller-scale excursions and field trips.  

• Evaluate precipitation-runoff relationships at various temporal and spatial scales;
• Assess the use of models to explore catchment management options, incl. prediction of hydrological extremes (floods and droughts) and assessing effects of global change.

These learning outcomes apply not only to the field trip, but to the whole course as well. These learning outcomes are assessed in a final written exam. Also, students gave presentations on papers that they have read, that they would normally give during the excursion.

Here, the lecturers chose to go with a videographer, because it was really important to not only get a clip of what was normally told by the lecturers but to also grasp a bit of the vastness of the surroundings. For that reason, a photographer also joined the excursion.

Normally it is a ten-day excursion with students. For this excursion, the same locations (even more) were visited and the stories that would normally be told to the students on location were now shared with the videographer. The surroundings were recorded by both video and photo’s to give the students the feeling that they were present.

All of the video’s and photos were shared with the students in Google My Maps. This is an application in which you can add content to a map. In this case to the map of Iceland. The content was added at the precise locations that the students would normally visit. For this field trip, the students would also have an excursion guide with relative background information about the locations that were visited each day.

• If you keep the recording process as close to the process that you would normally go through, it doesn’t take a lot of extra time. You don’t have to edit video’s extensively and you don’t need to write scripts for the recordings. For field trips, you can just keep the same story and structure that you normally have.  As long as you are ‘yourself’ and mimicking the normal excursion as much as possible, students will be engaged, also if video’s take longer than 15 minutes.
• All the material will be reusable for the next years. The time and effort that you invest will not be lost. Once you will be able to do the excursion again, students can use the videos and the MyMaps environment as a reference or study for their exam.
• Try to imagine what the students see. Normally they would look around and wander off while you explain things. You have to think of ways to also convey that information to the students.
• Take some time to feel comfortable in front of the camera. Test a few things out. But at a certain point you have to say: Ok, this is how I am going to do it.
• Make sure that there is a clear storyline or thread for the whole excursion. Here, we used Google My Maps and an excursion guide to actually guide the students through the excursion. This is important to keep the students on board and engaged.
• When you are not with a large group on an excursion, you can travel faster and you can come closer to some locations. This opens up opportunities for places to visit, that you normally would not visit.
• A suggestion for the next trip would be to also include 360-degree photos of the environment so that students can actually look around in the environment, as was done in this showcase.
• Another suggestion to even expand the experience for the students is to include information on top of the video; i.e. information on which learning objectives are covered in the video or questions so that students can self-assess their knowledge of what was said and shown in the video.