Ecopedagogy – Authentic Learning, Teaching, Assessment, and Wellbeing

The ChatGPT breakthrough of 2023 brought on a severe bout of hand-wringing in Higher Education. An assessment crisis soon followed and a wave of scholarship followed this, making hasty suggestions as to how to engage with this new technology before it could be used against us. But what if AI is not the problem with assessment? What if assessment is actually the problem? In my talk I will suggest that artificial learning will generate artificial assignment submissions. I have headed in a different direction, outdoors. I will argue that authentic experience leads to richer learning and assessment while also reconnecting learners with the world. In this talk I will briefly discuss how Large Language Models (LLM) actually work and why they can never live up to our inflated expectations. I will argue that decontextualising knowledge and making it searchable, is de-enriching learning. I will propose an alternative: authentic encounters with the real world supported by reflective observation. I will explain how I use short and easy ‘campus field trips’ and create assessments which cannot be ‘hacked’ with modern technology. This approach was described as ‘teaching and care giving’ by one student, I will show how breaking out of the classroom supports wellbeing. Participants should be able to come away from my talk with some concrete ideas about using ecopedagogy in their practice, if they wish to.