The development of Virtual Field Trips: March 2026 update
As some of you already know, I joined the University of the Western Cape (UWC) Virtual Geological Field Trips (VFTs) team in early 2024 to develop a series of VFTs, primarily to document and showcase our rich geoheritage, to prepare students for field-based learning, and to support geoscience education.
These interactive tours, which showcase key geological features of the Western Cape, are hosted by the UWC and continue to be refined, with improved video sound quality and expanded content.
Our current VFTs (which, unfortunately are very data-heavy, so best viewed with strong internet connectivity), listed by date, with No. 6 being the-most recent, include:
Southwestern Cape – focused on the Cape Granite and Malmesbury Group exposures, including several sites of academic and geohistorical significance (e.g. Paarl Rock and the VOC "silver mines" on the slopes of Simonsberg Mountain).
Laingsburg – highlighting upper Cape Supergroup and lower Karoo Supergroup exposures which are both of academic-economic significance (e.g. hydrocarbon-rich turbidite deposits of the Ecca Group).
Bloubergstrand – this VFT was primarily used to quantify learning gains before their field trip to exposures of the Malmesbury Group at Kleinbaai. UWC third-year students completed a pre-test, received two weeks of access to the VFT, and were then re-tested via a linked Google Forms quiz. Results showed an average improvement of approximately 42%, a significant result in terms of their understanding (geo-cognition) of geological features.
Cape Town and West Coast – built using 3DVista, offering a cleaner interface, embedded instead of linked quizzes, and eliminating the need for our previously-used Google Earth overview component.
Cape Flats Nature Reserve – a VFT created specifically for undergraduate soil science / hydrology purposes at UWC, again to prepare them for field exercises within this unique reserve located on the UWC's campus grounds.
Honours Field Trip - March 2026 – A VFT created for our current student cohort to prepare them for their upcoming field trip (23 – 27 March) to several key sites around the Cape Peninsula, including Sea Point, Llandudno, Millers Point and Tafelberg Road (the latter with videos narrated by Prof John Rogers himself!). The last page takes them to a Google Forms quiz, which has been set up for their self-learning and assessment.
Project progress in terms of the above has been presented at several conferences, including the European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2025, GeoCongress 2025, Virtual Geoscience Conference 2025, and at the annual CIMERA Research Colloquium. A related research manuscript is in preparation, for probable submission to Earth Science, Systems and Society.
Looking ahead, a key priority for us is to bridge the gap to the mining industry by developing mining-focused VFTs that incorporate mineral exploration, laboratory workflows, machinery, operations, and inductions.
We are also integrating hand samples, thin sections, and large-scale drone-generated 3D models into existing tours. One of our most recent large 3D models is now georeferenced and hosted on V3Geo, which crucially, supports unlimited uploads and has no model size limit.
In parallel, we are exploring the software program "LIME" to enable digital measurements (such as bed thickness and structural orientation) on such models, thereby opening new opportunities for advanced interpretation, both by undergraduate students and postgraduate researchers.
As always, any comments and/or suggestions for improvement are most welcome!
