Evaluating an Experiential Education Program for Raising Awareness

Jul 16, 2026

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The study evaluates the effectiveness of a brief experiential education program aimed at increasing local leaders’ awareness of climate risks and solutions and strengthening emotional engagement with climate resilience. Three educational boat tours in Tampa Bay were followed by focus groups and a supplemental online survey. Findings indicate that experiential elements create emotional connection, offer new perspectives, and enhance engagement, with a 90-minute water-based experience effective for busy adults.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages23

Reading Time58 min

Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education [https://doi.org/10.1007/s42322-025-00208-5](https://doi.org/10.1007/s42322-025-00208-5) ORIGINAL PAPER Evaluating an experiential education program for raising awareness and affective engagement with climate resilience in local leaders Rebecca Johns1 · Sierra Raines2 · Amanda Moore3 · Melissa Hill3 · Paige Lansky3 · Arsum Pathak3 Accepted: 12 March 2025 © The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Outdoor Education Australia 2025 Abstract The vulnerabilities of the Tampa Bay region to climate change urgently require an increase in awareness of the challenges and potential resiliency solutions. This project evaluates the effectiveness of a relatively brief experiential education program in creating awareness of local climate risks and solutions, and emotional connection to the environment. Three educational boat tours were held in Tampa Bay, with subsequent focus group sessions and a supplemental online survey to test the participants’engagement with the issues, their emotional responses to the embodied encounter with the bay, and their motivation to create resilience in their community. The results of the project concluded that experiential elements provided an emotional connection to the environment and provided a new perspective for participants, which enhanced engagement with climate challenges. For busy adults, a 90-minute experience on the water while learning about climate risks and solutions was an effective way to increase engagement with the issues and energize participants. Keywords Ecoliteracy · Experiential education · Climate resilience · Outdoor learning · Florida · Environmental communication 􀀍 Rebecca Johns[rjohns@usf.edu](rjohns@usf.edu) 1 USF, Tampa, USA 2 Doctoral Candidate, USF, Tampa, USA 3 National Wildlife Federation, Reston, USA 1 3 Introduction Tampa Bay is one of the most vulnerable areas to climate change impacts, particularly flooding, in the U.S (Hallegatte et al., 2013) . An area with high risk from climate change related impacts, and low readiness, the region has 3.2 million residents (Census Reporter, 2024), including communities with high social and economic vulnerabilities, and extensive development in flood-prone areas. In order to foster broad support for ongoing resilience planning efforts and implementation, increasing awareness about the challenges faced from climate-related flooding and potential solutions is critical. In this project, we engaged with community leaders in Tampa Bay in two phases: this paper presents findings from phase two, the development and deployment of three brief experiential educational boat tours ofthe Tampa Bay. The climate emergency poses multiple risks for St. Petersburg and the surrounding bay region, including sea level rise, storm surge, and other extreme weather events (Runkle et al., 2022; Tampa Bay Climate Science Advisory Panel, 2019) . Between 1947 and 2020, the relative sea level has been risin

Jul 16, 2026

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