Failure to Reflect on Experiences

The Power of Debriefing in Experiential Education

I see this so often in experiential education. A teacher gets so caught up in running an activity that there’s no time to debrief at the end—or worse, a debrief is simply not part of the program. This is a huge mistake and a wasted learning opportunity. 

Experiential education is not just about running fun activities; if it were, it would be called a holiday camp. It's about providing opportunities through real challenges and being able to reflect on how everyone worked through them. The specific activity is often irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if you hike, canoe, or abseil, so long as the activity is suitably challenging. What truly matters is what you do after the activity is over. 

Why "Try Harder" is a Useless Debrief

Reflection is where the real value of the learning comes in. If a group fails at an activity, it’s pointless just to say, “just try harder next time.” That's a cop-out. Take raft building, for example a great test of teamwork and planning. More often than not, the crews go down with their makeshift crafts. Is it because they didn't try hard enough? No. It’s usually because, in their excitement, they rushed, built before they planned, or designed a craft that was great on land but not suited for water. 

It's not until you gather the group and talk through the experience that they start to learn from it. 

A Framework for a Powerful Debrief

An effective debrief, a key skill taught in outdoor education and risk management training for teachers, turns a challenging experience into a profound lesson.

Active Observation: During each challenge, you should be actively monitoring the performance of individuals and the group. Note the stand-out behaviours—positive, negative, and those in the middle who may lack confidence. 

Ask Bigger Questions: Bring in other relevant examples from the students' lives to get them thinking more broadly than just the activity. Ask questions like, “What’s something else you’ve experienced that didn’t work because you rushed into it too quickly?” 

Create a Space for Insight: On a caving exercise I ran, students had to make their way out of total darkness, holding onto the person ahead. In the debrief, one student who was afraid of the dark said, “I could feel my friend holding my hand. He kept talking to me the whole time and I knew I'd be ok.” This led to an amazing discussion about looking after each other. 

Effective school excursion risk management is about managing educational outcomes as well as physical ones. School excursion risk assessment software like Xcursion Planner can be used to formally schedule debriefing sessions into your itinerary for all your sports, camps, and trips. You can even log key learning outcomes or student insights, demonstrating the immense educational value of your programs.

You never know what to expect when reflecting on an activity, but the bottom line is that it’s a must for every single program. It’s through this sort of reflection that students and we ourselves are able to learn the most.