21 April – 26 June 2026
Written by: Louise van der Stok, WUR
On the 7th of April, Wageningen Campus in the Netherlands officially opened three so-called Outdoor Classrooms and organised an outdoor education marathon to celebrate this milestone. These outdoor classrooms are bookable outdoor spaces available to teachers of all subjects for their lectures. Additionally, ᴇNᴀBʟS’ Dutch Living Lab organised a full day where many different teachers taught workshops in outdoor relational learning, open for anyone to join. The idea behind this is to offer methods for higher education to explore human nature relationships by offering more regular contact with nature. During this event, teachers from institutions all over the Netherlands had a chance to experience outdoor education and be encouraged to teach outside as well. Teaching outside fosters a care for the environment in the students, which in turn creates engagement for sustainability efforts.
The image below shows various outdoor teaching locations now open at WUR.
Whole School Approach
The Whole School Approach (Wals, A. E. et al. 2024) supports institutions to guide implementation of sustainability throughout the whole institution. By opening these outdoor classrooms, Wageningen Campus has taken a big step forward in the domain of Institutional Practices, since the campus now physically facilitates learning outside with nature. Moreover, having these spaces on location should help teachers and students feel more encouraged to actually go outside and learn about their direct environment, which is in line with the domain of Pedagogy & Learning. Finally, the outdoor classrooms can help to deepen the curriculum, because it significantly lowers the bar for teachers to teach their lessons outdoors. In short, the bookable outdoor classrooms and the outdoor marathon are meaningful steps to more nature-inclusive education at Wageningen University and Research.
A Different Way of Teaching
Forest and Nature Conservation student Gijs van Nes peers at a slip of paper following the opening speech. Like all the other attendees, he is following the organisers’ request to write down what he hopes to learn from the outdoor lectures.
“I think it would be cool if you learned to look at nature even more closely. Just seeing and feeling what comes to mind and reflecting on that. So, less of a closed and theoretical perspective.”
Other slips of paper, already tucked under a red ribbon by others, bear phrases such as How nature teaches us to enjoy life or Slowing down.
Phenologist and climate scientist Arnold van Vliet is eager to start using the outdoor spaces for his classes. “Everyone knows how being outside affects you; you look at your surroundings differently.” At the same time, he doesn’t expect it to be a simple case of copy-pasting course material. “Teaching outdoors requires an adjustment; you have to be mindful of that.” The organisation has at least thought about the risk of wet trousers: sitting mats are already available. For Van Vliet, the opening is a welcome nudge. “Of course, I could have gone outside with my students on my own before this, but this is a great trigger.”
Paul Roncken, director of the NatuurCollege Foundation and one of the initiators, emphasises that this is not an additional program alongside existing education. “This is education not beside, but inside the existing curriculum. We now have bookable outdoor space—bookable nature.”
21 April – 26 June 2026
28 June 2026
