Laurie Harmon
A page within Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning (CATL)
Dr. Laurie Harmon is a member of our Recreation Management and Therapeutic Recreation department, where she teaches courses such as Environmental Ethics, Outdoor Recreation & Natural Resources and Planning for Recreation Facilities. During the Fall 2020 semester, Laurie’s challenge was to create authentic experiences for her Facilities Planning students, while still remaining online. To do this, she forayed into the world of virtual field trips, taping her own tour of the La Crosse Center Construction project as well as interviews with the project director and foreman. Using these videos, she pieced together several 10-minute “chapters” for her students to watch and experience when they couldn’t be there in person.
The biggest challenge she experienced was learning and using the post-editing software, which was a bit of a learning curve. Laurie encourages those interested in creating virtual tours to remember that the first or even third time around it won’t be perfect, and to be ok with good enough. While her Recreation courses tend to be around 20 students, she thinks it would benefit any number of students by bringing the “outside” world to the classroom during a time when they are not able to be in the world safely.
Favorite Quote
“I am a fugitive and a vagabond, a sojourner seeking signs.” ― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Contact Info
Profile: Laurie Harmon
Email: lharmon@uwlax.edu