Excursions and
field trips
Exploring ways of learning outside the lecture hall
Much of the curriculum is still happening in lecture halls, seminar rooms or well-structured lab environments. Excursions can provide a means to embed students in highly authentic settings.
We will hear from several ETH faculty members how they integrate excursions into their curriculum and what experiences they made with it.
Dr. Adrian Gilli (D-ERDW)
Adrian Gilli is an educational developer and lecturer at the D-ERDW and is involved in various excursions and field courses. He is happy to share his experiences and tips for successful excursions.
Dr. Vera Kaps (D-ARCH)
Dr. Vera Kaps is an architect, lecturer and researcher in the field of architectural mediation who joined ETH in 2021 for the position as Educational Developer at D–ARCH. Her work focuses on educational identities in architecture and spatial dispositions for learning. Vera will give a short input on excursions in architecture on the example of three different types of field trips. She highlights the implications of the intimate student-teacher relation during an excursion, invites to critically reflect on the selection of what is visited and outlines how to include students into the making of an excursion.
Dr. Quinn Wenning (D-ERDW)
Dr. Quinn Wenning (D-ERDW) combines his experience in field excursions from his participation as a student to leading as part of his current position as researcher at the Bedretto Lab. The presentation breaks down differences between expert- and student-driven field trips and provides two excursion implementation strategies: 1) introducing active learning in ‘observe and discuss’ excursions and 2) improving the teaching-learning process with student-led field trips like the D-ERDW Doctoral Excursion.
