On the first day of class, Steven W. Truitt, former Outward Bound instructor and current co-director of the Outward Bound program at the Graduate School of Education (GSE), sent his students on a path that seemed quite different from a typical Outward Bound program.

Rather than checking his students' raingear and equipping them with emergency matches, Truitt sent his students to Harvard Square to interview strangers.

It's Outward Bound, Harvard-style.

The GSE's Outward Bound program, the only one of its kind, tries to translate not the particulars (like outdoor living) of the program into the classroom, but the philosophy.

"We're not doing wilderness education," says Truitt, who is also a lecturer on education at the GSE. "We're teaching and thinking and writing about experiential education."

"Most of the instructors who do Outward Bound courses in the mountain, desert or oceans probably can't see what in the world [the GSE program] has do to with what they're doing," Truitt says.

"Our main purpose is to translate the philosophy of Outward Bound and [of] organizations like it into forms that can be used in the classroom, the school, the community," he says.

To this end, the GSE's Outward Bound program offers five courses that use Outward Bound's principles, focusing on experiential education.

They focus on different applications of experiential learning; one looks at school design, another examines the relationship between community service and learning.

Additionally, Truitt and project associate Joann Stemmermann advise and work with the GSE in different capacities.

Truitt's course being offered this fall, "Experience in Education: Building a Curriculum," uses experiential learning to teach the class.

The class prepares students to work with routine material in new ways--ways they will pass on to others as students move into the education field after graduation.

"I have a lot of the skills already, and it's going to help me refine them to speak more intelligently, to engage other teachers in the field," says David A. Platt, a master's candidate in Truitt's course.

Truitt says the philosophy of the organization is reflected in the class structure.

Students say the link is not so obvious, though.