Can AI Improve Outdoor Education Programs?

Five participants crossing the Opalescent River at the Flowed Lands in the Adirondack High Peaks.
Photo Credit: Devin Farkas

Before this past Thursday, I had always regarded this question as absurd.

I imagined sending participants out on a trip with a well-trained large language model that they could ask for advice when they didn’t know what to do. Or maybe, I could send them out with prompts that they could use for reflective activities with a chatbot?

While those may be possible uses of AI in outdoor education, I have yet to see a drone that can use AI to monitor changing weather and terrain conditions, evolving group dynamics, and individual skill development. Not to mention, one that can respond in real-time to those factors to mitigate risk. Or one that can create an inclusive space where participants can learn from the challenges they face each day.

At the end of my most recent outdoor leadership course, I saw the potential for AI in a completely different light.

The largest component of the outdoor leadership course I run for the University of Vermont is a 6-day backcountry expedition. Participants have the opportunity to practice the leadership, teamwork, communication, and critical thinking skills we teach in our on-campus weekly class sessions. Each night, we facilitate an opportunity for the group to reflect on how the day went and what the designated leaders did or could have done to help it go smoothly (or not). At the end of the expedition, we wrap up the course with closing reflections on the impact the entire course had on each participant. The facilitated reflections are meant for the benefit of each participant. We aim to help them solidify their learning, affirm what we saw in their performance, and provide constructive feedback for them to apply the next time they have an opportunity to lead.

Before we send our participants off, we ask that they complete a short survey, in hopes of getting a written report of the impact the experience had on each participant. This year, one of my student intern instructors mentioned that writing is hard for her and her peers, and perfectionism routinely gets in the way of submitting complete survey responses. She went on to share that many are more confident expressing themselves in conversation. While I knew my student was right, I couldn’t imagine scheduling follow-up meetings, recording them, transcribing them, and reviewing them for themes.

During our end-of-program reflections on Thursday, one participant shared in their final reflection that they entered the course with zero leadership experience, not to mention outdoor leadership. They continued that it was the perfect program for them because it provided everything they needed to know to lead an outdoor trip, with the supportive environment needed to learn from mistakes while practicing those skills. He said that he knew that even if he never led an outdoor trip, what he learned was transferable to his life beyond the course. I found myself scribbling down notes, trying to capture what he was saying. I asked if he was comfortable with me doing so and if I could share it anonymously on our website.

I realized that, regardless of the burden of recording transcripts, my student instructor was right about the need to capture these reflections. That is when I remembered the AI-generated summary of a Zoom meeting I attended a month or so ago. Maybe this is how AI can help improve my Outdoor Leadership program. If participants consented to having their reflections recorded, could AI produce a written transcript of the conversation? Could it summarize and provide a list of themes? What about reviewing all the transcripts and themes, yielding data we could use to assess our program? I know that the answer to all three questions is yes, it’s just a matter of identifying the right AI for the job.

I have changed my opinion on the potential value of AI in outdoor education.

It still seems far-fetched to me that AI-powered drones will replace experienced outdoor instructors. Leveraging AI in the manner described above, however, has the potential to dramatically increase the data we can collect about our participants’ experiences. We could use this data to responsibly claim the learning goals our program successfully reached. And, we could better identify which learning goals we aren’t reaching, allowing us to pinpoint which areas of our program need developing. I hope to implement the practice I propose in this post this coming Fall semester.

If you’ve thought about doing something like this for your program or have done so already, please reach out! I would love to collaborate to measure and increase the impact of outdoor education programs.