The nature of experience in the field

Most undergraduate ecology majors experience at least one field ecology course. Each field experience tends to stand out as AN EXPERIENCE that is profoundly separate from the collage of other coursework experiences. What is it that makes field experiences so powerful and positions them to be particularly educative in ecology education? We will take a quick tour of what the Learning Sciences (philosophy, theory, empirical research) have to say about this phenomenon, with an eye toward optimizing field experiences as learning opportunities.