Several universities, such as the University of Gothenburg (Rütting, 2021), the ETH Zürich (Hirschi, 2021) or the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna (Fürst et al., 2021) have designated research catchments for educational and research purposes. When studying hydrological processes or conducting water resources investigations, watersheds form the basic spatial unit (Ehret et al., 2014). Hydrological field laboratories play an important role in hydrological research and education (Schmalz et al., 2015, 2019). The findings of this study show that the application of virtual field trips (VFT) in hydrological engineering can be a valuable supplement to real field trips to improve the interest and learning outcome of students. All students found the tool particularly appealing in cases where external circumstances did not allow for a real excursion. The majority rated the virtual tour as a valuable addition to traditional teaching methods. The analysis and discussion of the results showed that virtual excursions generally met with great interest among users. Sixteen students of the subject engineering hydrology were asked to document their experiences with VR4Hydro using a qualitative approach by answering a series of multiple-choice questions as well as long-answer text questions. The following study seeks to investigate the applicability of performing virtual field trips in the context of hydrological education by evaluating user experience. VR4Hydro is a virtual reality platform built from 360° panoramas that allows users to interactively explore the Gersprenz River basin in Germany. In order to impart this knowledge to students of hydrological engineering subjects in times or situations where on-site exploration is not possible, the VR4Hydro tool was developed. Hydrological field knowledge is an essential part of hydrological education and research.
With the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting contact restrictions, conducting field trips to hydrological research basins became close to impossible.
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