Rekindling a Love of Reading Through Experiential Learning: Teaching Nature Writing and Using First-person Accounts of Biological and Conservation Expeditions

Author Information

Gregory McCann, Chang Gung University, Taiwan

Abstract

Interest in reading and writing at the tertiary and high education levels appears to have fallen off a proverbial cliff. Decades of teaching in the humanities in higher education in the United States and Taiwan, and that of the shared experience of colleagues, in addition to published material reinforces this unfortunate trend. Force-feeding undergraduate students critical theory likely strained many students’ already limited appetite for literary texts, thus accelerating the demise of the Arts. Add to this the advent of Chat GPT and AI technologies that can read, summarize, and write entire essays—many to a high standard—and the perfect storm is brewing for the implosion of the Humanities. A solution to the reading crisis is “experiential learning” through nature writing. Firsthand accounts of adventure in and observations of nature not only arouse attention, but can reinvigorate and restore a love of reading, and curiosity about the natural world. Curiosity—essential to learning—can be aided by social media and new technologies such as AI, but they cannot replace thrilling stories about tiger encounters in Indonesia, or the epic tale of the near-extinction of sea otters. Nature writing operationalizes experiential learning by transforming observation and reflection into structured academic discourse. Contemporary syllabi structured around canonical literary texts and critical theory should be altered for experiential learning through nature writing.