Authentic field experiences: the design of complex web-based tasks

For students in todays society the learning environment has been extended to provide a range of educational opportunities from excursion venues such as museums to outdoor settings such as field study centres, often supported with the use of information and communication technologies. Such contexts encourage students to engage and participate in the learning process in developing a range of skills, often associated with problem-based learning, that look at the complex relationship between evidence, ideas and the impacts on society in a range of situations. In this paper we describe the development of a web-based educational program that incorporates current knowledge of situated and authentic learning to engage students through a problem-based challenge that integrates a series of classroom-based student-centred tasks with practical field experiences.