Field trips: What are they and how can they help you?

[Music] This is the Career Zone podcast. Welcome. Each episode we discuss things that are on students' minds related to careers and employability, labour market information, CVs, recruitment processes, and we chat to employers in alumni to find out what they're thinking about too. I'm joined by you and Woodley who's a Associate Professor of Geography here at the University of Accenture, so welcome you in. Thank you. I'd love to be here. So today we're going to be talking about the types of skills that you develop from field trips and how you can use those in job applications. So the first question I want to ask you in is why are field trips important? What do students gain from field trips that they can't get in a traditional classroom setting? So excellent overarching question to start with. I think field courses are incredibly important because of their value and experiential learning. Here we have an opportunity to get away from classroom learning that can be very didactic in nature and actually allowing people to be in situ to observe and really to immerse themselves in the environment that they're learning about. So it's enabling us to put theory into practice, it's enabling us to apply our knowledge. And it's really important because it gives people an opportunity to learn how to observe and that can be visually. Increasingly there's a lot of work on multi-sensory approaches. So how we come to understand places through what we can hear, what we can smell, you know, haptic methodologies, what we can touch. So whatever discipline you're in there are going to be different skills that you're learning, field-based methods and techniques and actually being in the field is a great way to understand how we generate knowledge and understanding in these different environmental contexts. And I think the other important thing to say here is that we often have this quite predefined idea of what the field might look like and that's a result of our disciplinary training. And so if you're a geographer like me you might typically think that standing with a measuring pole in a river. But what's important is that the field can be conceptualised in lots of different ways. It might be that but it might be working to observe people in an allotment garden, a community garden. It might be understanding objects and artifacts within a museum. So the definition of the field and field work is incredibly broad and I think that's what makes it so exciting. Thank you. That's really useful to kind of understand the broader context of the field. I mean I'm a geographer background as well. So for me it was literally standing in a field, you know, measuring things, talking a quadrat around or whatever and I think the fact that it's a relevant term to such a broad range of subjects is really useful to kind of set the scene with. So what are the employability or transferable skills that you think students strengthen most through field-based learning? Well I think we can break this down into a number of really great things that learners can get out out of field work. The first is I suppose the most obvious one which is it's an opportunity to learn technical skills. So skills that are very specific to particular areas of research or to learning. But I think just as important, they are more importantly are these broader skill sets that relate to the research process. So how do we go about designing research projects? How do we ask the right questions? How do we go out, collect and analyse and present data? So all of these can be research-specific, they can be discipline-specific. If asked what's the real value that students get out of field work? I think the thing that we overlook the most are these professional and personal skills that as learners we often don't reflect on but we gain a huge amount from these field-based experiences. So that could be learning how to communicate, it could be learning how to be empathetic in a particular group-based situation. We're going to come onto some of these I'm sure in a while but these are skills sets that I argue I think we need to be much more attentive to in helping students not only reflect on them but understand the value that they might have in an employability context as well. Yeah I completely agree I think there's I'm not aware of seeing many job applications where students have reflected on those field-based skills in job applications and I think there's a bit of a gap there because it's such an amazing environment excuse the pun where you're developing skills and really learning about yourself and other people and it feels like a bit of a mistrick really that we're not putting more of a spotlight on those skills. Absolutely so I think when you're thinking about what we're doing at Exeter with skills to thrive I think that's really useful because it's getting us to think at a much deeper level about engaging learners with these skills these competencies these capabilities so if we're looking to the future that we're getting out of field work. So when we're thinking about everything that we're learning as part of that field work process whether it's communication, teamwork, collaboration, adaptability, problem solving I think there's a real potential here for students to reflect on those experiences think about how those experiences are preparing them for the every day in different workplace scenarios and linking it to to what employers want so it's very much human focused and it's very much about thinking okay how am I developing as a person through this particular area of learning and how do I articulate the value of that with an employability context. I think by doing that an application could really stand out to an employer because I think it would be quite unusual for an employer to read an application where someone's been asked to reflect on their teamwork skills for example and how field-based experiences used it as the example and it could give you a really rich example around which you frame your answer thinking about the situation the task the action you took and the result of what you did all of that's covered through the field work so I think it's a really rich example for a student to explore and be very different from every other student that's putting in applications. Yeah yeah absolutely so I think the danger here is that students sort of go to interview and that these skills are either not surfaced at all or they're surfaced you know by just dropping words in you know I've developed personally I've you know they helped me engage they helped me gain confidence or resilience and I think what what we really want to be able to do in our teaching is provide students with that encouragement and with that space to think okay yeah as you were saying don't what what experiences have I had and what does that mean for how I'm developing and how I could potentially deal with future scenarios in the in the workplace so I think absolutely this is an area that we need to explore more with students so so we're not just teaching those important technical skills sets or methodological skillsets we're we're getting students to think okay how has being taken out of this classroom or campus based setting helped me as a as a learner yeah I'm always kind of saying that to people that it's it's no good just having the experience if you can't then reflect on it and articulate how that's helped you to develop and use that as evidence when you're either writing an application form or you know having an interview with an employer so absolutely I'm picking that and really thinking about those skills and reflecting on them and thinking very critically about what the field course has given you just really I think enriches the experience actually because you come away with a kind of a much broader understanding of yourself and absolutely done and we know that students are are really capable of of doing this because this crops up in conversations usually on field courses or after field courses so so use that knowledge and understanding to to your benefit yeah absolutely brilliant thank you so looking more specifically then how do you think field trips deepen engagement and motivation and confidence for students so I think in terms of the opportunities that are presented to students through field courses it's clear that in certain disciplines I I'm a geography of the area I have experienced in. From quite an early age, field-based learning is sort of heralded, is this signature pedagogy, this key part of learning within the discipline. We know that that's the case in some other disciplines as well. With that, a series of expectations come up around what field work is like. What I think is important is recognising that to some students, these will be really exciting experiences. And to others, they will be terrifying, they will be anxiety provoking for all sorts of reasons. So one of the things I think that we encourage is students transition into higher education and I'll talk in a minute, I'm sure a bit more about this, is how can you use these experiences to grow both as a learner, but both individually as well. How can we support you in that process? So really, how can you get the most out of that learning environment to the personal development and to build your confidence? I think it's really useful to acknowledge actually that you are possibly taking students outside of their comfort zone, perhaps into the environment they've never been in to before. The exploration of some are completely new, you could be really challenging for some students and does come with a whole set of issues that need to be considered both from the point of view of the student and the field trip leaders as well. So I think that when it comes to the future of field work, there are some really exciting opportunities. So when we're thinking about the problems that can exist with field work, it's kind of a where do you begin? Because for decades now, geographers, people in other disciplines have been writing about some of the ways in which field work can be quite inaccessible, quite exclusionary in nature. For more recent years, the transformative education agenda has fortunately taken hold and we're starting to think now in much more pragmatic ways about how do we, how do we make these learning experiences more sustainable, more accessible and more inclusive in nature? I think I feel particularly passionately about because I want field work and the value that you can get from field work to be open to everyone. There's some great virtual work that goes on but there's really no substitute I would argue for being in the field. So a lot's been written in disciplines like geography about traditional models and inverted commas of field work and that can be anything from perpetuating colonial legacies, this very extractivist approach to field work, masculinity, very ableist and elitist approaches to field work. It can be about the prohibitive costs of field work, right the way through to provision or lack of provision of toilet facilities, how we deal with all different aspects of health and disability. The list is endless and if we throw into that work that I've done on the carbon intensity, particularly of a lot of international field work, there's a huge amount of progress that we need to make, not just across geography but across other disciplines. So there's been some really interesting work, I've led work with the RGS and colleagues across the country in thinking about how we transform field course pedagogy. There's a really nice paper by Dan Swanton and colleagues that manifesto for field work which has just come out, which is posing some of these really important questions about how we actually think of the future of field course. How do we actually make this a much more ethical education for everyone? And so what I think is really important here is actually taking these debates and putting them into practice. And so I think that's something that Exeter has been really supportive of, we're starting to see it at other institutions as well. And I think there's a lot of potential there. That sounds really exciting, it sounds very different from the days when I was doing field courses because you're thinking about the experience of student housing in much more holistic way. So you've mentioned accessibility and inclusivity, is there anything more about sustainability, perhaps as an agenda that needs to be kind of surfaced here? Absolutely. So I think when we're thinking about practical steps for making field courses more inclusive and accessible is worthwhile mentioning before we get onto sustainability, that can include supporting students through that process of thinking through what this field course going to be like. And sort of environments are going to be visiting right the way through to where are the toilet stops, how long is a particular journey going to take? Everything that a student needs to know. So we've pioneered accessibility statements for students, they're provided in advance of the module. So we've got a lot of supportive one-to-one discussions to think about how we can support students, often with really quite complex needs in getting the most out of these learning experiences. So we're bringing in the Equality Act, we're bringing in other scholarship around personal circumstances that we need to consider, whether that's sort of someone being a carer, and making sure that all of our field courses are included within the tuition fee. So there are some really important practical things that we can do here. In terms of sustainability, I really want to challenge this idea that you have to travel to exotic remote destinations to understand a particular area of learning. I think what's really important is that we have a strong pedagogic justification for why we're going to particular destinations, and that we're thinking very carefully about the carbon impact of our travel. There have been debates on this for some years now, I argue that actually universities should be judged on the action that they're taking. So at Exeter in Geography, we now have five no-fly international field courses as of March 2026. This is a huge step in the right direction, sustainable travel, four field courses by rail, one by ferry, and it's actually enabling students to experience the benefits of an inverted commas slow travel, low carbon travel. And I would argue that that's a really important thing to experience and to engage students with because they are going to be the next leaders and actors in future low carbon societies. That's really interesting to hear the complete philosophical change in the way that field trips are running. And you mentioned about having like one to ones with students to think about any adjustments they might need, and that's almost mirroring the conversations that students might have with an employer regarding reasonable adjustments in the workplace. Absolutely. And I think, you know, what you're doing as far as you can actually is thinking about field trips in terms of universal design for learning so that those adjustments requirements are minimized because what you're doing is making the field trip as a whole more accessible to the largest number of students possible. So you're taking out the issues that might impact someone that has mobility issues, for example, actually really thinking about how the field trip is is designed. So the reason we're adjustment is kind of built into the field trip design. Absolutely. So when we're thinking about field courses, we're engaging students as active partners in this process. So as a nice example, as students come into the first year in geography, our field work in geography module talks students through the pedagogic debates on accessibility, on inclusion, on sustainability, so that they understand the challenges and complexties of field based teaching. And they see why we're doing things in particular ways. They can see literally how transformative our practices are, we're taking these debates and we're putting them into practice. So we're engaging students, as you said, Dawn, with the Equality Act, we're engaging students with risk assessments, the role of ethics in research. So they are becoming involved and active partners in that process. And that's incredibly important because what we want is to equip students with this knowledge and understanding. And indeed, these other considerations around empathy, how we have sensitive conversations, how we support members of groups that might have particular learning requirements, and to take those skills into the workplace. a'r i'n gallu hynny. ideas, transformative ideas migrate from higher education into the workplace and wider society. So some superb opportunities to actually reflect on that when you're in an interview, for example. That's really exciting because most students wouldn't have had any involvement with a risk assessment perhaps. And they can be regarded as very dull and in a former particular function. But actually, without them, the consequences can be completely tragic. And very many roles in the workplace involve risk assessments at some level. So being aware of the fact that they could be used for financial situations or thinking about a digital strategy event management, there's so many different ways where risk assessments perform an essential role. So introducing students to that concept and normalising it and kind of expecting students to engage and be aware that that's something that's really crucial to the safe practice of running activities is I think really good to hear. Yeah, it's absolutely essential. And we see the benefits of it because we see students on field courses not only having a better understanding of the importance of assessing risk of understanding health and safety. But as you say, it's training them for what comes next in terms of engaging with these processes in the workplace, outside of the workplace as well. So it's getting students to understand their responsibilities, but also to have confidence that universities are taking these things seriously. And I think that's something that we, personally, I've seen the benefit of and I really want to promote not only across the university, but the wider sector as well. So my final question to you, Yuen, can you share any particular examples where you've seen students develop unexpected or particularly meaningful skills as a result of undertaking field work? Yeah, absolutely. So when we think about, for example, transformative practices, I've seen that they really hay off. So I've seen students who have really significant health issues being supported, being enabled to attend a field course. So these are situations where it requires a really significant investment of staff time over a number of months before a field course. And seeing that process being conducted really professionally, it goes back to the conversations around, around risk, enabling that student's voice to be heard, enabling us to make sure that we're learning as part of that process. Seeing a student actually go on a field course and watching group members being sensitive, being compassionate and helping that person to achieve not only the intended learning outcomes, but have a great time on an international field course is absolutely amazing. So that to me, I think, is the sort of strongest example. Another really nice one that really sticks with me as a real advocate for sustainable travel is watching students engage with slow travel. So being sat on a on a high speed train, going through Europe, on our Fryborg field course, our environmental futures field course, and just watching the phones go down, and students talk to each other, play cards, and just generally socialise. I think in this sort of technocentric, hyper-mobile world in which we live, that to me shows the real value, the socialisation that can come out of these new travel experiences. So it's quite subtly reframing what we lose from not flying, but what we can gain from other more sustainable modes of travel. That's fantastic. I think there's a whole set of skills to unpick. There isn't there any communication skills being the first of them. And I think, yeah, as you said in this kind of tech age where people have got phones in their hands, that's the first thing that probably goes. But also, the opportunity to look out of the window and just appreciate what's happening as you're going through traveling through Europe on a high speed train. Yeah, amazing. Really amazing in a completely brilliant experience for students. There are some really exciting ways in which we are transforming education, and it's no pun intended. It's a journey that I think has only recently begun. So I would be really keen, no dawn, to know from your experience, how you would encourage students to reflect from an employability perspective on the skills that they've developed through fieldwork. I think often it's how an application is asking the question. So often it will be around the skills that students have developed. So students will be asked about communication skills or problem solving skills or teamwork skills. And actually using the field course experience as another point of evidence, I think, is where I would encourage students to really think about their fieldwork skills because there's so much going on. You've explained the complexity of that. You've explained really clearly that there's, it's very layered with the field courses. And actually, a student has so much there to unpick. So if they're aware that they're thinking about ethics and they're thinking about risk assessments, and they are developing this whole array of skills, it just gives them so much that they can use as a story. I mean, interviews, job applications are basically storytelling up there. Yeah. Telling and employer that you have the experience and the capacity to undertake a particular role. And this gives students a kind of richer range of experiences to think about. And I do think they're very underutilised because the skills probably haven't been drawn out in the past. And we haven't been explicit about the fact that it's a good example to use. I think there's there's a richness there that can be exploited. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us here. And it's been really interesting to learn more about field trips and how they've changed and just think more holistically about how students can use these as examples on job applications and the interview. So thank you for your time. No, not at all. Pleasure and thanks. And hopefully there'll be some excellent reflections forthcoming. This was the CareerZone podcast brought to you by the University of Exeter CareerZone. Check out iTunes and Spotify to keep up with all of our regular releases. And if you'd like us to cover something else in another episode, just send us a message #CareZonePodcast at UOE CareerZone or at UOE CUML CareerZone on Instagram. And we'll follow up in one of the next steps.