This blog specifically concerns the weeklong 2025 field research trip to Japan by Prof. David W. Del Testa and six students to continue development of the Digital Sojourns Project. In builds on the work completed over the course of four years by Bucknell University Presidential Fellows Grace Garvey, Lizzy Harrison, Bryce Merry, and Vienne Warfel; by the project development team of Alec Sanders, Wera Kyam Kyaw, Gideon Daniels and Jack Glassman; sponsored by Bucknell University’s Small Business Development Center by the Senior Design Team of Scott Takacs, Berty Levi, Bryce Babcock, and Hengrui Zhu. All of these students belong to the Class of 2025. The Project has also received valuable support from students Dylan Christie (’26), Mia Fitzmaurice (’27), Mika Plankenhorn (’28), Ella Uriu (’26), Renee Palma (’26), and Brooke Corpuz (’26). It is these students who have helped me so much to bring my vision into focus and to fruition.
What are Digital Sojourns? Digital Sojourns are large-area, accessible, immersive travel experiences that complement traditional university study abroad programs by allowing students who cannot travel for reasons of physical or other challenges to do so in engaging and content-rich virtual recreations of real spaces overseas, with the possibility of earning college course credits as they do so. Our first Digital Sojourn uses The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Oku no Hosomichi (奥の細道)), a travelogue written by Japanese haiku master Matsuo Bashō that recounted his 1689 across northern and western Japan . It is this travelogue that will serve as the basis of a completely immersive virtual travel space and a learning environment in which students may possibly earn college credits by completing self-directed, self-grading assignments in up to four courses grounded in learning opportunities found along Bashō’s route: Humanities, Social Sciences, General Natural Sciences, and General Engineering.
This year, we return to Fukui, Japan, to capture highly detailed immersive images and test our existing proofs-of-concept. But more about that later! For now, welcome to our journey, and thanks for support from: The Bucknell University Humanities Center, the Bucknell University College of Arts and Sciences, the Bucknell University College of Engineering, the Bucknell University Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships, the Bucknell University Department of History, the Bucknell University Department of East Asian Studies, and the Unity Corporation’s Learn Program. Specifically, we thank The Douglas K. Candland Fund for the College of Arts & Sciences, the The Dalal Family Fund for Creativity & Innovation, and the Bertrand Library’s Digital Pedagogy and Scholarship Office. We have many more individuals and offices to thank as we go, but, let’s just get started for now!
