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Field trips can change students’ attitudes and improve their learning performance, but they have rarely been investigated in logistics education research. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings from field trips that were designed to increase students’ knowledge of sustainable transport as well as to change their attitudes and behavioral intentions.

A total of 104 logistics students participated in this longitudinal panel study. Non-parametric statistical tests were used to test for significant effects.

Field trips build students’ knowledge, improve their attitudes and increase their behavioral intentions to use sustainable transport modes in the short and in the long term. Gains in knowledge exceed the results expected from traditional learning theories. Gender and school type are important moderating variables. Gender did not play an important role for knowledge gains, but for attitude and behavioral intentions.

More research is needed to generalize the findings to other populations and longitudinal panel studies are necessary to investigate a long-term effect of field trips.

Field trips are an effective means for successful knowledge transfer and are suitable to trigger attitudinal and behavioral changes. The involvement of practitioners and the hands-on experience ensure that students combine theoretical with practical knowledge.

This is the first longitudinal panel study that investigates the effects of logistics field trips, which were developed collaboratively by industry, educational and research institutions.

The goal of this article is to expand on the use of field trips in social studies education, particularly in the Common Core era. Meshing the goals of the Common Core Standards with those of the corresponding high-stakes testing while providing an experiential learning is a dilemma faced by some teachers. One launched argument suggests field trips are still relevant and pertinent to meeting various educational standards including those found within the Common Core. In an attempt to support this claim, we first discussed the literacy requirements set out by Common Core Standards for History/Social Studies. We then examined the necessary elements for properly planning and conducting field trips, which we referenced as the Field Trip Effectiveness Model. Sample ideas for field trips such as: art and history museums; living history experiences; historical sites, monuments and memorials; cemeteries; geographical sites; banks and businesses; and government buildings are provided.

Given the resurgence of Americans’ interest in the national electoral process and civic issues, social studies educators have a unique opportunity to highlight citizenship education and related activities in K-12 teacher preparation programs. Especially at the elementary level, educators can support pre-service teachers’ mastery of civics content, skills, and critical thinking strategies with experiential, as well as classroom, based learning. This article describes how two educators integrated a field experience component into an elementary social studies methods course to increase students’ civic knowledge and model standards-based curriculum planning. Collaboration with local experts provided opportunities for preservice teachers to start a learning community outside of the classroom, connecting course instruction to real-life civic issues.

This study describes and explains the ways in which three urban cultural institutions/museums provide opportunities to students for learning in the social studies. Through interviews, observations, and a content analysis of museum-produced materials, I examine the opportunities for various audiences (elementary, middle, and high school students) to engage with, and utilize, museum resources to facilitate meaningful social studies learning. This article includes a discussion of state standards, field trips, and use of technology to engage social studies learners. This study has implications for both classroom and museum-based educators.

This article examines ways in which graduates of an online teacher certification program integrate technology into social studies instruction. With dramatic growth in the number of online teacher certification programs, educators are faced with how to ensure their graduates incorporate effective teaching strategies, including technology, into classrooms. Research over the past decade indicates that teachers do not integrate technology within social studies instruction in meaningful ways, beyond traditional approaches to teaching (Ravitz & Wong, 1999; Van Fossen & Shively, 2003, 2009). Results from this study indicate that online teacher education graduates, who have access to technology within their schools, find meaningful ways to integrate such technology into social studies instruction. Teacher educators must conduct more research, and receive more funding, to follow online teacher education graduates. Today’s new generation of tech-savvy students deserve teachers who can competently integrate technology into all content areas.

This chapter describes a partnership model in which a university in the United States facilitated cultural exchanges between elementary students in US schools with students in international schools in Central and South America. Through the partnerships, faculty members at the university were able to facilitate opportunities for elementary students to communicate and share experiences through the use of virtual field trips (VFTs) and gardening projects. These exchanges were achieved through the use of multiple Web 2.0 tools that allowed interaction between students. They led to the engagement of students both locally and globally by providing them with a dynamic environment, in which they could explore, discover, experiment, and learn. Descriptions of the challenges faced, lessons learned, and recommendations for educators are also included.

The case of the Canadian Forest Round Table on Sustainable Development provides evidence of diverse stakeholder representatives managing their conflict through dialogue, informal exchange, and field trips. This case study reveals new insights on factors which facilitate constructive conflict management and collaboration in a multistakeholder context. The findings indicate the value of dialogue, common evidence, and shared experience. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

When implemented effectively and systematically across a curriculum, high impact practices (HIP) have the potential to increase student engagement and result in higher student achievement. The United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) is a four-year military university with a large liberal education core curriculum that provides the foundation for service and officership in the United States Air or Space Forces. Building on the liberal education core, the civil engineering (CE) major’s courses begin with the cornerstone field engineering course, paired with a two-week co-curricular experience for students at an Air or Space Force installation. With its motto “construct first, design later,” the field engineering course is an HIP and quintessential experiential learning course that gives students a practical frame-of-reference for future analysis and design courses. The CE major culminates with another HIP, the capstone design course, which gives students the opportunity to demonstrate their skills, building confidence in their ability to successfully apply those skills to the increasingly complex problems they will face after graduation. This book chapter provides a case study of the CE major at the USAFA, documenting the HIPs across the majors’ program, and highlighting the key elements and benefits of each.

This chapter presents a practice example of inquiry-based learning. A graduate level research methods course was designed to be student-centered and inquiry-based utilizing scaffolding assignments (Skene & Fedko, 2012), small group discussions (Huang, 2005), peer feedback (Skene & Fedko, 2012), and collaborative interactive exercises (Volet & Mansfield, 2006). Having students ask the questions in which they are interested (Jansen, 2011), find the resources to answer those questions, which then leads to new questions (Stripling, 2009), eventually culminates in the creation of a literature review and research proposal. The course concludes with a number of application exercises that connect theory to practice (Kuh, Chen, & Nelson Laird, 2007). Many of the specific in-class practices that support this inquiry-based approach are presented.

As qualitative researchers struggle to come to grips with the technological revolution, they are faced with the necessity of learning and teaching qualitative data analysis software in higher education research courses. This change has significant implications for their practice as researchers and teachers. In this article we provide experienced‐based recommendations for individual practice (research instructors, dissertation advisers, and doctoral students) and for institutional practice (scaling up for deep integration of qualitative data analysis software). Our recommendations are grounded in hard‐earned experience gleaned from many years of working with individuals and institutional contexts to improve the use of qualitative research in higher education.