Teacher education programs frequently adopt andragogical approaches that value modeling and direct experience as teaching tools (Loughran and Hamilton, 2016) and so embrace constructivist epistemology (Richardson, 1997). While this is often tempered with classroom or lecture-based instruction, it is perhaps most prevalent in pre-service programs for physical education (PE) (Byra, 2006; Capel and Blair, 2007; Kirk, 2010) and adventure education (AE) (Backman, 2015; Brown, 2006; North, 2020). However, when the global COVID-19 pandemic enforced restrictions on teaching practices at Higher Education institutions in early 2020, these modeling and direct experience sessions were significantly curtailed, and in some cases completely prohibited.

Our university was not alone in facing challenges with overseas students being unable to attend sessions. We had mixed groups of students to teach that comprised of those present and able to attend, and those unable to attend other than online sessions. Working on the PE and AE postgraduate initial teacher education (ITE) programs at Bangor University, we sought alternative ways to provide students with the required experiences.

We viewed this situation as an opportunity to develop our practice with andragogic approaches that would enhance, rather than just replace, what had gone before. This case study details this development, including a description of the technology we used, how this was applied and developed during post-COVID restrictions and a brief evaluation of the impact of this new practice.