Description:

This session will share with session attendees about the core principles of experiential, outdoor learning with particular attention to how these principles can play out in our current context of virtual teaching and learning in the time of the Covid-19 pandemic. Sustaining and finding new and innovative ways to increase student engagement in the online learning environment is paramount for the work we are doing with our students right now. Tim will share what experiential, outdoor education can look like, taking into consideration Covid-19 precautions as well as how to handle risk management concerns outside the classroom. Together, Tim and Autumn will share how cross-disciplinary, collaborative efforts between faculty and staff to infuse experiential, outdoor learning can enrich course content in meaningful ways and increase student engagement. A specific example will be shared with attendees based on a collaboration between Tim and Autumn that involved the integration and use of an outdoor plant and animal identification app called iNaturalist by students in Autumn’s synchronous online EDUC 351 Content Area Literacy class. The focus of the week and prior weeks’ lessons in Autumn’s EDUC 351 course were on vocabulary and disciplinary literacy. The collaborative lesson between Tim and Autumn illustrated how use of the iNaturalist app could actively engage students in science disciplinary literacy content, biology in particular. The collaborative lesson demonstrated to students how teaching discipline- and topic-specific vocabulary prior to engaging with the iNaturalist app resulted in deeper comprehension when examining the information presented on iNaturalist (identification of plants and animals is completed on the app through crowdsourcing by others using the app). This activity provided further illumination for students about discipline-specific mindsets (ways of thinking, doing, communicating) in biology in particular: Autumn's students had to go outside, identify a plant or animal of interest, take multiple precise pictures to aid identification, interpret and utilize the crowdsourced identifications. Tim and Autumn will provide further reflection on how the combination of experiential, outdoor education can enrich instruction and improve long-term understanding. Tim and Autumn will also reflect on what the collaboration process was like, including navigating challenges related to the virtual context, and the advantages of integrating technology beyond the screen in virtual instruction. Attendees will have the opportunity to brainstorm individually and with the group ideas for how they could integrate experiential, outdoor learning into their virtual classes as well as what possibilities for what cross-disciplinary collaboration could look like. Attendees’ ideas will be shared with the group and further questions regarding possibilities for experiential, outdoor learning in the virtual classroom will be discussed. This workshop will focus on combining faculty members’ current and future lesson plans with experiential education. Time will be set aside for Tim and Autumn to work with faculty to help them adapt experiential education practices into their current curriculum. By the end of this workshop, faculty will be able to walk away with a complete lesson plan ready for implantation. In our current climate of the pandemic, institutions need to leverage their strengths. This workshop will teach the skills and techniques necessary for faculty to safely stand out, by getting outside, in the world of Covid-19.

Objectives:

1. Define the principles of experiential, outdoor learning.

2. Identify key components of risk management, getting outside the classroom safely

3. Discuss an example of how presenters of this conference session integrated experiential, outdoor learning into a virtual class and worked cross-disciplinarily

4. Discuss other examples of experiential, outdoor education in our current virtual context

5. Identify opportunities for experiential, outdoor learning in their classrooms

6. Propose ways that they can collaborate with staff and faculty outside of their school/college/discipline to connect integrate experiential, outdoor education with and into their classes

7. Complete a lesson plan in their curriculum that integrates experiential learning