Take Your Students on a Virtual Field Trip Through StoryMaps
Making virtual field trips (VFTs) with ArcGIS StoryMaps is a way teachers can share their expertise, research, and experience with students and their communities. Making VFTs can also be an assignment for students to develop and demonstrate their knowledge and science communication skills to potential employers. That is why I’ve been utilizing ArcGIS StoryMaps in world regional geography courses to create content where we explore a topic in greater detail with images, video, and dynamic map embeds.
My name is Jessica R. Barnes. I’m a teaching professor at Northern Arizona University. In this blog I’ll be discussing why and how to use StoryMaps to create and share virtual field trips for geography education.
Planning the Field Trip
What makes a virtual field trip through StoryMaps? We can use action – through looking, listening, and dynamically interacting.
- Visual
- Auditory
- Interactive content
We keep narratives brief, about 1500 words, comparable to a magazine article. We strive for readability at the college level but include a list of key terms linked within the text to a glossary with definitions. We use a combination of images and videos, as well as the map tour feature with interactive map embeds that allow us to zoom students in to explore the topic in increasing detail.
Our collection of virtual field trips is focused on environmental and social sustainability. A landing page allows users to navigate the globe to choose between VFTs examining informal settlements, water quality, Smart Cities and social entrepreneurship. For example, our VFT “Thirsty for Resources: Yamuna River” opens with a video header putting the user on the banks, then follows with a map tour to situate the river in environmental context, even taking the user into an interactive 3D scene of the Himalayan glaciers where the river gets its start. These benefit students by creating a more engaging and interactive resource to spark their curiosity about the topic. Access our Virtual Field Trips Exploring Sustainability here: https://arcg.is/1P4Kz0
Caption: Map tour with interactive Himalayas 3D Scene.
Caption: Map tour zooming in to location of an informal settlement.
Skills of Science Communication
This fits into a broader strategy of transforming world regional classes from being survey courses and incorporating mapping and web design skills for science communication. We introduce ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS StoryMaps to help students build their web design skills and create interactive content. As instructors, we can also deliver content using this format: illustrating best practices and dynamically updating content. I am not a GIS-focused faculty member, so my skills are basic, however, the StoryMaps interface is at its core a visual website editing software (WYSIWYG) that is fairly intuitive and there are many tutorials available through Esri.
Perhaps one of the most exciting opportunities of StoryMaps is sharing these open education resources with the broader community and inviting teachers, researchers, and students to share the amazing work they’re doing. We want to extend the invitation to users everywhere. Too often the knowledge we and our students work so hard to build sits siloed on our hard drives. Why not share it with the world through repositories for open access resources?
Sharing with the Education Community at Esri Education Summit
We were excited to be able share our project through the 2026 Esri Education Summit as part of the session GIS for Good: Empower Students and Communities to Address Global Challenges. The session was full of inspiring educators utilizing the power of geospatial tools to help students engage more deeply with their subject manner. It really illustrated the idea that people are already using these tools to create thoughtful and important projects, so let’s share them!
Students and their instructors are encouraged to create their own VFTs to explore issues of sustainability in their local communities. Consider using our VFT template and submit your VFT's web link, location, and cover photo to [email protected] to be shared through our crowd-sourced open education resources. If you have any questions please contact us ([email protected]).