Assessing effectiveness of a field-trip based course in professional education: the AMISCONDE Costa Rica case study.

Abstract Field trips are important opportunities for students to learn and exercise integrative, interdisciplinary problem-solving skills for real-world situations. This paper examines the extent to which a field trip-based course in natural resource management contributes to the preparation of practitioners to solve complex environmental problems. It describes a field trip-based course at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, the individuals involved in the course, and a field trip to the La Amistad Biosphere Reserve, Costa Rica to carry out a rapid assessment of AMISCONDE, an integrated conservation and development project in southern Costa Rica. This paper also evaluates the success of the course in terms of how well it prepares students to deal with real-life natural resource management problems and in terms of the opportunity it provides to students to assess a natural resource management issue. The paper concludes that the course is to a large extent successful in the former and les...