Project Overview

With support from the National Science Foundation, this project establishes a community of practice for Outdoor School providers in Washington state focused on collaborative learning, program evaluation, and continuous improvement of Outdoor School programs. The network will be made up of over 20 Outdoor School providers in the state of Washington that have passed their Safety and Management Review and currently offer overnight or multi-day environmental education programming for fifth and sixth grade students. The network will continue to grow over the life of the project as more providers establish their programming.

Each participating organization will receive confidential evaluation reports, professional development, and an opportunity to enhance collective knowledge of effective practices that enhance student outcomes in outdoor programs. 

Phase 1 (2025): Outcomes Development & Collaborative Learning

Outcomes Development

In year one, we will develop a suite of shared outcomes to be used in subsequent program evaluations. We will work collaboratively with Outdoor School providers and other key stakeholders to identify and develop measures of participant outcomes for multi-day Outdoor School programs. This will involve an initial survey to Outdoor Schools providers, principals, school administrators, teachers, and other stakeholders to generate an initial list of outcomes to be further developed and prioritized. Following that effort, we will facilitate an in-person workshop with about 50 providers and stakeholders in Washington state to deliberate, identify, define, and refine participant outcomes of Outdoor School programs. We will then develop measures of those identified outcomes and pilot test a survey instrument to create a statistically validated tool to use in subsequent program evaluations with participating organizations. This survey tool will also be made publicly available for broader use.

Collaborative Learning

Beginning in Summer 2025, we will form a community of practice and host bimonthly (every other month) online meetings in which we will share cutting edge research findings relevant to enhancing outdoor educational programming. We will also invite guest speakers to share their experiences with particular techniques and approaches. These meetings will typically last one hour, with the first half involving the presentation of content and the second half dedicated to discussions and idea-sharing in breakout groups to brainstorm how to put these ideas into practice.

Phase 2 (Fall 2025 – Fall 2028) Evaluation, Collaborative Learning, and Adaptive Management

Evaluation

We will work one-on-one with each participating organization to develop a plan for administering the surveys (typically at the beginning and end of programs with a subset of participating students). Each organization will send us the completed surveys for data entry, analysis, and interpretation. Each organization will receive an annual confidential evaluation report that will compare that organization’s outcomes to the average scores for all organizations in the network. This will help to identify strengths and areas for improvement within each organization.

Collaborative Learning & Adaptive Management

In addition to bi-monthly online meetings, we will convene annually for an in-person meeting in Washington to discuss the overall findings of our collective work. Each organization’s data contributes to a broader understanding of what programmatic approaches tend to yield different outcomes for students. This is an opportunity for organizations to share ideas with peers and commit to innovations in their programs for the following year based on our collaborative learning. In the subsequent year, we will again collect data to measure what difference(s) those innovations have made – providing even more evidence regarding what tends to work well across our diverse settings and students.