| by: Benjamin Moore |
Category: Experiential Education Theory |
Viewed 1759 Times |
Conformity is a significant social phenomenon documented in over 60 years of research. However, little is known about the effects of conformity on leaders and leadership. This article presents an overview of significant research on conformity, provides connections to outdoor leadership, and suggests training tools to help leaders understand and avoid conformity traps.
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| by: Paul Van Horn, et al |
Category: Leave No Trace Practice |
Viewed 2145 Times |
While we all utilize Leave No Trace principles in the wilderness, making outdoor programming sustainable is far more than only reducing our impact while we are on the trail. Paul Van Horn and students at Northland College have taken up the challenge of how to make all of our programs more sustainable with an incredibly thought-provoking paper that offers a working model to assess your program's current sustainability index and to think in concrete ways about how to accomplish your program mission while keeping principles of sustainability at the forefront.
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| by: Paul Nicolazzo |
Category: Risk Management |
Viewed 4617 Times |
Paul Nicolazzo of the Wilderness Medicine Training Center explores the components of an effective staff development system. The goal of a staff development system is to train staff to meet the organization's minimum standards for hiring and promotion. The standards must be in alignment with and support the organization's mission, vision, and strategies; and they must be competency-based in order to be effective. Staff training can not stand alone. In order to meet the needs of both the organization and the instructor, training needs to be ongoing and part of a staff development system that includes mentoring, supportive written material, and accurate assessment, evaluation, & feedback.
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| by: Paul Nicolazzo |
Category: Risk Management |
Viewed 4212 Times |
Paul Nicolazzo of the Wilderness Medicine Training Center explores The Outcome Model of program design. The Outcome Model provides a practical decision making algorithm that assists instructors in safely planning and managing their course on an activity by activity basis. In the hands of trained staff the Outcome Model becomes an effective structuring tool for all aspects of a program’s design and management. Prior to a course it allows senior program staff to design, manage, and later evaluate their block progressions, sites, and course outcomes. In the field, it provides instructors with an activity by activity decision-making model that helps them to stay focused on their students safety and education, avoid an itinerary driven course, and increase both the quality and safety of their course.
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| by: Paul Nicolazzo |
Category: Risk Management |
Viewed 6394 Times |
Paul Nicolazzo of the Wilderness Medicine Training Center presents another thoughtful piece in his series that focuses on the integration of properly sequenced activity blocks that provide significant personal challenge alternating with framing and processing that encourages a conscious inquiry into the values and beliefs that each student brings to their course. Combined with strong outdoor skills, including site management, and a supportive administration, the structuring skills discussed here help provide a powerful platform for success.
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| by: Paul Nicolazzo |
Category: Risk Management |
Viewed 5948 Times |
Every trip, every program, and every activity carries a level of actual risk inherent to its design...and some designs carry more risk than others (e.g.: a flat water float trip versus a Class IV whitewater trip; a day hike versus a day of top-roped climbing; etc.). Effective risk management and accident prevention strategies focus on balancing the actual risk present in the program or activity with the competency of the trip’s leaders. Get the balance right and the result is a safe program. Get it wrong and someone is likely to become injured or die. A program design with little or no actual risk is not necessarily safer than a program with a correspondingly higher level of risk if the risk is well managed. Indeed, all things being equal, a program that accepts and manages a higher level of risk successfully may provide a higher quality experience. Outdoor education and recreation programs while they may contain well-managed high risk activities do not and should not expose their clients to high levels of unmanageable actual risk that may result in permanent disability or death. Understanding the complex variety of skills that makeup an effective trip leader permits a program’s administration to set minimum standards for hiring field staff; designing, managing and evaluating an effective staff development program; and balancing their program design with the competency of their staff.
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| by: Rick Curtis |
Category: Climbing |
Viewed 7485 Times |
Cave Rock near Lake Tahoe in Nevada has become a battleground pitting rock climbers led by the Access Fund against the Washoe Tribe. At the heart of the issue is the question of people's right to use federal land versus preserving spaces that Native Americans consider sacred. Members of the Washoe Tribe have sought to have rock climbing banned as an activity at the site. The Wahoe Tribe says that "For us, rock climbing trivializes the site for the sake of sport," says Washoe tribal chairman A. Brian Wallace, 45. The Washoe believe that only a few shamans, who have carefully prepared themselves, should ever visit the site. The Access Fund representing climbers contends that a climbing ban on Federal property is unconstitutional because it promotes religion. What is most poignant about this case is that it pits two groups who are often disenfranchised against each other. Native Americans, who have often had their ancestral claims to land ignored and climbers who are often fighting to save popular climbing spots from being closed to climbers. OutdoorEd.com has put together a summary of the two viewpoints to help you think about the ethics of this issue.
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| by: Roger Greenaway |
Category: Leadership |
Viewed 12412 Times |
One of the main challenges in designing leadership training courses (especially short ones) is to create enough opportunities for each individual to have several turns as leader. Courses for developing teamwork skills are more straightforward because participants are always part of the team, but on leadership courses each individual only experiences leadership when it is their turn to be leader. And on short courses, participants may only have one experience of leadership. Roger Greenaway of Active Reviewing gives us 10 tips for developing leadership
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| by: US Government Publication |
Category: Health & Wellness |
Viewed 14793 Times |
The National Centers for Disease Control reported that obesity and health problems relating to obesity has become one of the leading causes of death in the United States. This trend is also seen around the developed world, especially among children. Rates of juvenile obesity are skyrocketing in part due to diet and in part due to a significant decrease in regular physical activity. When you extrapolate out the health care costs in 20-30 years due to children who are obese now the figures are huge. This has become a significant public health issue. Outdoor and adventure education can contribute to the type of regular physical activity that children need to stay fit. All programs who work with children should be aware of the wealth of resources both information and funding that now exist to help provide physical education to children. The following information, compiled from the Centers for Disease Control Web site will provide you with a range of resources for developing physical activity programs for youth.
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| by: US Government Publication |
Category: Transportation Safety |
Viewed 6566 Times |
All programs that transport staff or participants should understand how rollover accidents happen. While this is a special concern for 15-passenger vans, rollover happens in other types of vehicles as well. The NHTSA has developed a new series of Web pages focusing on rollover causes and safety.
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