Bringing the world to the classroom – towards ‘virtual reality’ pedagogies for international education

The ‘field’ is an integral part of international education at the tertiary level. Students are taken to the field in order to experience, first hand, the themes, processes and people that they learn about in the classroom. Despite the critical importance of the fieldtrip mode of teaching and the positive impact it has on learning, budget constraints mean that fieldtrips are becoming less common in tertiary curricula, especially when they involve learning about international topics. One potential way to counteract this is to identify how we might construct a ‘virtual’ field. This article reflects on this process in general and presents two case studies that attempt to bring the field to the classroom.