St. Mary's University of Minnesota professor Dr. Ray Faber is using a GoPro camera and videos to bring his students closer to nature when he can't take them into the field.

“We would normally transport students to sites in the field,” Faber, an ecology professor, said in a release issued on the university's website. “The labs are well thought out and have been successful in the past, and I wanted to do the same thing this year, but it’s impossible under the current guidelines. It involves travel and; in a couple of cases, boats; and we really can’t do either. So the plan is to use videos to visit those sites and create videos of features we want to experience.”

With help from an assistant professor, Tom Rodegen, Faber used the GoPro footage for one lab; and the pair are working on how to do it again. Faber wants to use the technology to do a lab regarding the nearby lock-and-dam system for the Mississippi River.

“People come in with the opinion that the Mississippi River is merely a great natural resource when, in fact, it’s a river of commerce, always has been; and it has been dramatically manipulated over the years to accommodate that commerce and other usages,” Faber said in the release. “Those changes really modify the environment. So I like to have students become aware of what has resulted from the changes that have been made, changes we didn’t always anticipate would happen. There are a lot of ecological lessons.”

Faber wants the labs to make it easier for his students to understand the curriculum.