Outdoor Orientation - Blog

Do you inform pre-orientation students that they must follow college policies while traveling off-campus?

Brent Bell — Thu, 03 May 2012 14:45:14 GMT

Another listserve I monitor (National Orientation Directors Association) has started a discussion regarding policies. How are students informed that they are expected to follow college policies while on a pre-orientation trip away from campus? Although this is not confusing to most program directors, it may be confusing to participants?

I wonder about student led programs that perceive a bit of distance from the administration, is it clear that college policies apply during trips in the summer?

I am hoping to hear how others inform students and if their are any stories to learn from. It is one detail that you may want to include with your paperwork distributed to incoming students.

Brent

Introducing The Curriculum Project

Rick Curtis — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 04:18:00 GMT

I just got back from this spring's OOPS Conference (Outdoor Orientation Symposium) hosted as the Association for Experiential Education AEE new England Regional Conference). OOPS is an annual event that brings together student leaders and program directors and staff from college outdoor orienation programs.

Brent Bell, Professor from the University of New Hampshire and the leading researcher on outdoor orientation programs again served as conference convener. Brent's opening presentation was on his ongoing research project - The Neighborhood Project - the goal of which is to identify adn track the various outdoor orientation programs in North America to understand the range of programs and to ascertain what are the key elements that make programs successful and, as a corollary, what factors cause programs to fail/be discontinued.

During the discussion period of Brent's talk and throughout the other presentations during the day, one factor emerged as the key reason for program success - CURRICULUM. Good curriculum is what creates, builds and maintains successful programs.

Based on the understanding, those of us in the outdoor orientation field are coming together to create a corollary to The Neighborhood Project that we are calling The Curriculum Project.

The goal of The Curriculum Project is to gather curriculum and successful practices from all of the existing outdoor orientation programs on the OutdoorEd.com Outdoor Orientation Community site so that all of us can benefit from the individual expertise of our peer programs. It's simple to do. Go to the Files Tab and upload files you want to share.

For specific guidelines on the types of files we can take, see the general Submissions Information page.

Start Posting Now. Strong Curriculum means Strong Programs

The Outdoor & Adventure Orientation Program Census 2012

Rick Curtis — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 02:24:54 GMT

Dear orientation program representative,

The following survey collects information on adventure orientation programs, such as outdoor orientation, camp-based, service, academic, and arts based orientation programs. The term adventure orientation is defined in a recent paper (Vlamis, Bell, & Gass 2011) as an orientation using novel experiences and challenges combined with reflective activities to meet the goals of student orientation.

The first census of such programs was completed in 2006 with a 98% participation rate. This census updates the 2006 study and will be used to verify adventure orientation program trends and complete an accurate account of adventure orientation program practices. This survey will help form a deeper understanding of the 200+ programs in the USA and Canada. This survey focuses on program features and operation; it does not ask for information about individuals. All information will be used in aggregate. The research will not be reported in a manner to identify individual program practices.

This survey is comprehensive. It will take most people 20-30 minutes to complete up to a maximum of 57 questions (where the total number will depend on the response path taken). We understand that directors of adventure-based orientation programs are busy people, and we appreciate your time responding to this research. If you would prefer to take the survey by phone instead, please email the researchers (emails are listed below).

If you have any questions about the survey, please contact us. We (the research team) appreciate your participation. The cooperation of the "neighborhood" is an outstanding feature of adventure orientation programs.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFhITkN1Vjl3ODFTR0pvNU5hcDlVUmc6MQ#gid=0

Sincerely,

Dr. Brent Bell
UNH Outdoor Education
bbell@unh.edu

David Starbuck, Ph.D. ABD
UNH Outdoor Education
David.Starbuck@gordon.edu

Patricia Chan
Graduate student in outdoor education at UNH
patriciagchan@gmail.com

Running 'Mega' Programs - Part 3

Rick Curtis — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 06:24:00 GMT

Following up on the two previous Blogs on running Mega Programs. I've updated the MindManager Map and have published it as a PDF file so that anyone developing a large program can see all of the details of how we plan one of the largest college wilderness orientation programs in the world. The big thing I've learned is that 'the devil is in the details.' Scripting out your program in the finest detail makes sure that you won't miss critical things and means you won't waste lots of time 'reacting' to problems due to lack of planning. You can view Part 1 and Part 2.

You can find an Interactive PDF File of the MindManager Map - Here

If you have a copy of MindManager, you can download the complete Map - Here.

Running 'Mega' Programs - Part 2

Rick Curtis — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 05:18:00 GMT

I just got finished with running the fall wilderness orientation program at Princeton University. This was our largest program in our thirty-four year history with 644 freshmen, 165 leaders, 46 Support Team members and 12 Command Center staff. We ran 74 different trip groups of 10-12 per group in areas from the Shenandoah Mountains in Virginia to the Green Mountains in Vermont. This is one of the largest single wilderness orientation programs in North America. Now that I've decompressed some from the busy week and all the gear has been put away, I thought I'd share some of the techniques I've developed for running 'mega' programs like this one. Being a tech geek I've found that technology has been an essential tool for me to handle the vast amounts of data that one has to process when dealing with this many people, spread out over this large an area. You can also view Part 1 and Part 3.

Okay, this is Part 2 of the 'Mega' Programs series. Once again it's all about data. I'll tell you a story that illustrates how a little piece of missing data can ripple out into a mess.

Tonight we did debriefing our some of our Support Teams in the field and finding out how one huge snafu happened on the first day of the Trip. We have one bus that drops off 5 canoeing groups along the Delaware River. The problem is that the luggage carriers under the bus aren't big enough to carry all the river bags, paddles, and PFD's for the 5 groups so we planned to have our Support Teams in mini-vans (which go with the bus to make sure the bus driver doesn't get lost) carry the paddling gear up. All the groups were told this in their briefing, but it turned out that the last group to get dropped off (we'll call them Group X) had put their paddling gear underneath the bus (and didn't clear this with me or the Support Team so we didn't know about it). The Support Van had a bunch of other group's paddling gear and assumed they had Group X's gear as well (they didn't count all the gear).

The Support Van dropped paddling gear for another group at the put-in and realized they didn't have any more gear for Group X and called the Command Center. We then tried to call Group X but couldn't get them on their cell phone. So we got another Support Van to drive to base camp, get more paddling gear and start to drive up to meet Group X at their put-in. About half-way through the drive we found out that Group X did indeed have all their paddling gear and had headed off down the river so the second Support Team turned around and drive back to base camp. Not a huge emergency but a big, and avoidable hassle.

Of course these kinds of things happen on trips. The problem is that with Mega Programs you don't just have one of these things happen you have lots of them happening all at the same time, especially on high logistical transport days like the first day and last day of a trip. Having 6 of these happen at once can suddenly cause you program, or parts of it, to grind to a complete halt. So how do you handle the incredible level of detail that's needed to make sure all your bases have been covered? Being a techno-geek I'll go back to a software program that I've found really helpful. It's called Mind Manager from a company called MindJet and it's available for Mac and PC.

I first learned about Mind Manager from my buddy Preston Cline of Adventure Management who uses it a lot in doing risk management assessments. Since I'm a visual learner and thinker I find it very intuitive and really help (though for people who aren't visually oriented it may not be your cup of tea).

Here's how it works. Mind Manager basically takes a bulleted or outlined list like you would do in Microsoft Word and turns it into a visual hierarchical map (which they call a Mind Map). Let's look at a few screenshots of my Frosh Trip Mind Map.

Here's a basic list of the top level things to do for Frosh Trip shown in Mind Manager Outline View. It looks just like any bulletted list in Word.

Now here's the typical Map View in Mind Manager

Okay you can see the visual clues here. There is a plus sign next to each of the major headings (just like there is a plus sign in the first picture). Let's click one of the plus signs next to FROSH and see what happens.

Now we see the next levels down in the FROSH category. These are all the things that we need to do in working with our program participants. We can keep going deeper and deeper by clicking on the SCREENING category. You can nest things as deeply as you want and then expand or contract nodes to see only the level of detail that you need. Trying to look at a deeply nested list in Microsoft Word makes me dizzy because I get lost as to where I am in the overall scheme of things. Not so with Mind Manager.

Now let's look at some of the detailed features as outlined in the list below and numbered on the screenshot.

You can attach notes to items
You can indicate Task Completion level (75%)
Task Completed
You can create arrows, borders, and other graphic elements to link topic areas
You can add you own icons ('thumbs up') to identify topics (priority level, etc.)
You can set starting and ending dates
You can link to a Web page (www.noaa.gov)
You can attach files to a topic
You can link to a file from another program

And this is just a small sample of what Mind Manager can do. I use the software to keep track of all sorts of program tasks, staffing requirements, protocols, etc. Besides being able to expand and collapse nodes I could take an entire node like the PLANNING node and drag it over to some other place on my Map. If I have something "repetitive" that occurs I can create it once and then cut and paste it in other sections. For example, here's a list of things that we have to do when we run a first aid course. We have to do the same things when running a CPR course, a Leader Training Class etc. So I just copy and paste these nodes under CPR, FIRST AID, and the LEADER TRAINING nodes.

So, I've given you just a small taste of how a program like Mind Manager can help you handle the huge amounts of data you have to keep track of. When we expanded all of the nodes of FROSH TRIP and printed it out on large format paper and taped it together it was 5 feet tall and 4 feet wide! I can tell you that I definitely need a 'mind manager' to help me out with Frosh Trip and other aspects of the OA Program and this piece of software really does the trick. If you think it might help you, download a trial copy from MindJet.com and test it out. For people in K-12 schools or Higher Education you can find educational discounts for Mind Manager at places like AcademicSuperstore.com.

All of these things are just tools in your tool chest. The key thing in running 'mega' programs is that there is an incredible amount of data collection and transmission that has to take place. These are some of the tools that I've found indespensible in tracking trips, people, and information effectively. Hope it helps you in your next 'Mega' Program.

Rick

Running 'Mega' Programs - Part 1

Rick Curtis — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 05:14:00 GMT

Transportation & Support

Just to give you a sense of our program, we drop groups off along the trail by 55-passenger bus. For every bus there is also a Support Team, two students in a mini-van who stay in a local motel and are on call to provide non-emergency transportation for our groups. The Support Team concept came about years ago when we had some bad drought summers. In some of the trip locations there simply wasn't water on some days so we had to bring water in to the groups. To accomplish this we examined each day of our routes and identified locations where the group intersected a road where we could do a water drop. Other years we haven't needed to do the drops, but we keep them in nonetheless. We keep all of our Route Plans in a Microsoft Access Database. For each day there is a listing of any road crossings that looks like this.

Rendezvous

1. 9:00 AM - AT jct. Skyline Drive at Jenkins Gap mile 12.5
2. 2:30 PM - AT jct. Skyline Drive at Hogback Overlook mile 16

The rendezvous marked in red and italics is a "required" water drop. That is our Support Team in the area will come at that time and wait for 45 minutes for the group to drop off water. It's also a chance to resupply the group with needed items, bring the group snacks, or pick up someone that is having trouble. This informal interaction adds another fun part to the trip when the group shows up and the Support Team has goodies for them. It also means that the Support Teams have a good time which makes it much easier to recruit students to come back two weeks before schools starts to help out. Each Support Team travels with an Iridium Satellite phone (Globalstar is having some satellite problems and their signals are not as reliable as they used to be).

Command Center & Telecommunications

During the trip we have a Command Center set up in our Equipment Room. The University Telephone Office sets us up with a bank of telephones (6 multi-line sets) with a "hunting number." That's the central number that people call (@@@-@@45). If that number is busy it automatically rolls over to the next line (@@@-@@46) and so on. The Command Center is staffed by 8 people, six students and two administrators from 8:30 AM until 8:30 PM (or until we are done). At night I talk call from home. The Command Center is also equipped with wireless Internet and we have about 6 laptops on.

Groups in the field carry either standard cell phones or satellite phones depending on their location and the availability of basic cellular phone service. Groups keep their phones on from 12:00 - 1:00 PM and from 6:00 - 8:00 PM each day so that we can call in to them if there is any situation that develops. If groups need assistance they call in to the Command Center (unless it is a serious emergency in which case they call 911/local EMS first). We use a code system to identify the severity level of the problem.

Code Red = life-threatening medical emergency
Code Orange = medical emergency (non-life-threatening)
Code Yellow = minor medical problem
Code Green = minor logistical problem

As soon as a group calls in to the Command Center they say, "This is Trip BF27 we have a Code Yellow." At that point, if communication were lost, we would know the group, something about the severity of the problem, and their approximate location based on their daily trip route. More than once this communication shorthand has come in handy when the cell or satellite connection was lost.

Mapping

Like everyone maps are critical to keeping track of people. In the Command Center we have the maps of each area assembled on a map board on a 4 by 8 sheet of thin plywood. This makes it much quicker to locate a group and see the big pciture of the area rather than flipping through individual maps. We use Tyvek maps for the most part or laminate them so we can make notes on the maps with a wax pencil.

The other main mapping tool we use is various mapping software programs. For the big overview of the area we use Microsoft Streets and Trips (Streets). Various other mapping and auto route planning software works the same. In Streets we mark the bus drop offs (shown below as a red stop sign) and all the scheduled water drops (shown as blue dots). This is accomplished by dragging 'pushpins' onto the sport on the map. You can then add a descriptive label and text to the pushpin and use it as a point in point-to-point directions. We also mark the motel where are Support Team is staying, area hospitals, and Evacuation Locations (red flag). In each area we contact a state park, summer camp or other facility to be 'on standby' in the event that we had some major event that required us to evacuate one or more entire groups. I learned this lesson the hard way back in 1998 when we had the remnants of a hurricane hit Shenandoah National Park and the rangers decided to close the whole park and required us to evacuate all of our groups.

Using Streets we are able to provide point to point directions to our charter bus drivers and to our Support Teams. In the event of an evacuation or minor medical transport we can help guide the Support Teams into the group's location. In addition to Streets we also use Satellite Photos extensively through Google Maps on the Web, Google Earth installed on laptops, and Microsoft LiveEarth on the Web. One of my favorite Web sites is FlashEarth (www.flashearth.com). This extemely talented programmer has provided a way of swithcing back and forth between various satellite photo sources (Google, Microsoft, and others). What's great is that for different locations different satellite photo providers have better resolution photos. Just click the radio button on FlashEarth to change your source photo.

I've used the satellite photos to help find locations for the buses to drop groups off, see if a road really exists, guide Support Teams to groups and groups to Support Teams.

Check out various Map samples below.

Microsoft Streets Overview Map for the Black Forest in Pennsylvania

Red Flag = Evacuation site
Red Stop Sign = Bus Drop Off/Pick up
Blue Dot = Water Drop
Red Cross = Hospital

Microsoft Streets Zoomed in to show various water drop locations. You can see how you can add information to each pushpin.

Microsoft Streets zoom-in on The Black Forest at the Ruth Will Trail (the same area shown below in the satellite photos)

Google Earth Satellite Image - Ruth Will Trail in the Black Forest Trail in Pennsylvania. Compare the map directly above to the satellite photo below. The Streets map shows the Ruth Will Trail as a road that connects to Rt. 44 both north and south rather than as the connector coming west out of Rt. 44. The Google Earth map below marks the trail correctly but doesn't show the road going all the way through.

Google Maps Satellite Image (taken with www.flashearth.com) - Ruth Will Trail in the Black Forest Trail in Pennsylvania (same area as above). This photo doesn't give enough detail.

Microsoft VirtualEarth Satellite Image (taken with www.flashearth.com) - Ruth Will Trail in the Black Forest Trail in Pennsylvania (same as above). While the Microsoft map is in black and white it shows the roads correctly labeled and does show an undeveloped road that connects to Rt. 44 both north and south.

Rick Curtis
Director, Outdoor Action Princeton University
Founder, OutdoorEd.com