Outdoor Learning in Higher Education

What does higher education teaching beyond traditional lecture halls look like? What are the benefits and challenges when taking academic disciplines outdoors? How can higher education teaching professionals across Europe share their practices? The Erasmus Plus Project Outdoor Learning in Higher Education (OLHE) answers these questions and pushes the boundaries of conventional teaching. It shows the potentials of outside learning for transformative competence development in higher education as well as for health, well-being, the development of transversal, future, and green skills. OLHE brings together seven EU institutions: the Universities of Augsburg and Hamburg in Germany, the University of Luxembourg, Palacký University Olomouc in the Czech Republic, Oslo Metropolitan University in Norway, the Vienna University for Economics and Business in Austria and the Innovative Education Center in Poland. Together they want to achieve three goals: First, they want to highlight the diversity of outdoor practice across Europe. If you would like to contribute your own experiences and/or are interested in methods and would like to share why you have not yet applied such innovative teaching methods, please visit the OLHE website (data processing by the Vienna University of Economics and Business). Second, based on survey responses and interviews, OLHE develops best practice recommendations for outdoor / out-of-the classroom teaching. These guidelines will be piloted through teaching modules. Please contact Prof. Dr. Fengler if you are interested in participating and learning how to make your academic teaching more engaging with the world outside. Third, your engagement will directly benefit OLHE`s double strategy of building strong networks of higher education teachers, while it seeks to inform these networks with guidelines that are sensitive to the academic disciplines that shaped them. At the University of Luxembourg, OLHE contributes to realizing the University`s Teaching Mission in establishing new forms of learning and preparing students to tackle emerging societal challenges (Strategic Framework UniLux). OLHE presents an approach to learning that is community-based while it builds sustainable partnerships for teaching beyond local or curricular limitations.