This joint special issue between Solid Earth and Geoscience Communication aims to present the highlights of recent efforts of a global community of educators and researchers to develop virtual field activities to enhance student learning, research, and broader outreach. These resilient, non-traditional solutions to field-focused investigations ensure that students achieve intended learning outcomes and curricular requirements even when physical contact and travel are restricted. The special issue will ensure that the virtual field experiences initially developed as short-term solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic will become valuable longer-term resources that will increase the accessibility of field experiences for students and society.

We invite contributions that describe, discuss, and evaluate aspects of virtual field experiences, trips, and exercises, including but not limited to

• intended learning outcomes,
• methods employed in exercise design and construction,
• outreach and communication with wider society,
• how the field excursion enhances relevant previous research on the topic or location.

We have made special provisions to publish supplementary datasets that could include

• photographs, videos, and 3D models,
• geographical annotation files, such as Google Earth presentations and/or KML/KMZ files or ESRI shapefiles,
• educational materials, such as exercise descriptions, rubrics, background literature, etc.,
• links to datasets hosted in external repositories, preferably via a DOI, but if necessary as hyperlinks to material hosted on websites, such as the NAGT Teaching with Online Field Experiences site and V3Geo 3D models.

If you have other ideas, please do not hesitate to contact the special issue editors prior to submission to discuss whether they can be included.