Setting and Duration
Fundamental to the definition of UFEs is that the learning environment is hands-on, immersive, and kinesthetic, which might be different than the classroom. Therefore, assessment of UFEs may require different approaches as UFEs are often holistic environments, such as a residential, multi-week UFE, whereas classrooms are more discrete events or environments. Not to say that classrooms are not complex learning experiences; however, UFEs can amplify the existing nuances, teaching styles, personalities and identities when learners are in a new, potentially more all-encompassing environment (Morales et al. 2020).
The setting and the duration of a UFE has impacts both on what is achievable for intended student outcomes and the diversity of participants and their subsequent experience. If a practitioner wants to evaluate how a UFE impacts student content knowledge on a particular concept, then a two-week, on-campus UFE focused on urban greenspaces may yield less deep learning about forest ecology than a semester-long field course held in a live-in forest field station. Thus, a summative assessment on forest ecology concepts should be reflective of the amount of time and depth the students have had to amass relevant cognitive gains.
Setting and duration factors may also intersect with student context factors, making interpretation of the results complex. such as a student’s comfort with being away from home in a residential UFE. The residential UFE can present high levels of novelty space, especially for underrepresented students (e.g., Giles et al., 2020; Kingsbury et al., 2020; Morales et al., 2020). Novelty space refers to a students’ level of familiarity with three dimensions: cognitive (expectations for learning outcomes in this setting), psychological (personal comfort and safety concerns), and geographic (where am I?), and can both support and distract from intended learning and engagement (Orion and Hofstein 1994, Cotton 2009, Mogk and Goodwin 2012).
For example, perhaps a student is a primary caregiver for someone at home and is distracted by irregular or absent cellular service, therefore are unable to establish a connection to place due to distraction and worry. Some students may identify that eating as a community helps them to establish a sense of belonging among peers and instructors, whereas, eating in a group setting may cause a student with a complex relationship with food to experience extreme discomfort. In alignment with the previous discussion about Student Context Factors , these examples are provided again to point out that residential or community settings can have contradictory impacts on how a student holistically experiences a given UFE, thus it may not always be appropriate or meaningful to solely look at assessment findings on an average or “whole-class” scale.
Previous work indicates that many faculty and students place high value on UFEs where participants live and work together in the field (Jolley et al. 2019). However, cohabitation and isolation may also present challenges in the way of mental health stressors (John and Khan 2018) and unfamiliar and overstimulating environments (Kingsbury et al. 2020). Considering how these and other factors of UFEs may impact student learning is an essential step in program design, which also influences how one approaches measuring outcomes. The same ethical considerations as described in relation to measuring student context factors are relevant here (students should have the appropriate information to provide free and informed consent). The timing and amount of any assessment should be thoughtfully chosen so as to minimize participant fatigue. In Fig. 2 we identify factors such as residential/non-residential setting, length of time, and accessibility that may inform assessment strategies.