Reconceptualizing outdoor geoscience learning for the generative AI era: a human-centered instructional model

The advent of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) presents a unique challenge and opportunity for outdoor geoscience learning. While GenAI can enhance inquiry and explanation, it also risks pre-structuring observation and displacing learners' direct interpretation of field evidence. This analysis posits GenAI as an epistemic reorganization of field inquiry, suggesting it will more likely augment, rather than entirely displace, human learning processes by redistributing epistemic work and authority.

The integration of Generative AI into educational and operational field settings redefines the nature of expertise and learning. Understanding how AI reallocates cognitive load and decision-making authority is critical for designing effective training programs and ensuring robust knowledge acquisition.

Generative AI introduces a dilemma in outdoor geoscience learning by simultaneously broadening questioning and potentially pre-structuring learner observations.

Forward consideration, not a verified fact.