Research

Conferences

Brent Bell — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 02:28:00 GMT

I have just returned from a couple of weeks of conferences. I attended the Outdoor Orientation Program Symposium in Asheville, NC, a pre-conference to the AORE conference. I then attended the AEE conference in Little Rock, Arkansas. All in all I had a great conference season, but I am continually struck by the overlap of conferences and professional associations. I dream of outdoor programs having a large and powerful voice in the public deliberation on education, but instead I feel as though professional association is looked through the model of fast food restaurants rather than developing a unified voice for outdoor education. To explain, McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's have an individual mission--to make money. Professional associations have a mission in bringing as many people together with similar interests to advocate for promotion, and sometimes change. I truly believe we work against the field when we continue to split into smaller, more specialized, more homogeneous groups of people. When goals are based upon the specific mission of the particular association (increase membership, increase services, increase program quality, increase products better than the 'other' associations) we move toward acting like McDonalds. The mission of the association should be first and foremost to advocate for the whole. We should look to unify, not compete. Just think of the power if all burger joints joined together, the world would take notice. I hope we can organize ourselves so the world takes notice. I hope we figure out a way to bridge the differences in organizations for the good of the field of education and outdoor recreation.

My own secret dream was for AORE and AEE to come together. Below I have outlined some of the benefits each group could probably learn from the other. I believe that when we work to get an organization to bridge to another group, important learning occurs which will hopefully strengthen outdoor education. When we split into smaller and smaller groups, we only make it more comfortable for people to exist with their assumptions and attitudes (it is anti-educational and anti-diversity). For example, my grandmother lived in a farming community in Northern MN of just over 2,000 people. In here town there were 10 Lutheran churches, all with about 200 members. Each church had its committees to respond to funerals, child care, fundraising, etc. This system seems built for people unable to work out their differences, and these differences have to be small relative to the other religious traditions. I mean they are all Lutheran. Instead of working together, the community split itself into ten smaller organizations.

I would love to see some creative solution to bringing a larger voice to oudoor education through the professional associations. I fear if we continue to operate like a small burger joint and compete with the other associations, we all lose. Outdoor Education, Experiential Education, Outdoor Recreation all lose. The world of recreation and education will go on without our voice, but at the cost of many people we know work too long and too hard trying to make a difference.

Here are some thoughts on the two conferences, which I think could add positive benefits to each organization:

I was struck working with AORE on how well organized they were with all communications from the conference committee. The conference contacts were professional, well organized, and treated the Outdoor Orientation Program Symposium folks with a lot of respect and professionalism.

The vendors attracted to the conference were fantastic and really seemed engaged in being at the conference. AORE put all of the vendors in the main tent where the meals were served, so when you went to a meal you also passed the vendors. It was a great integration.

I really appreciated the work AORE was doing with the Access Committee. Getting the folks from Washington to attend AORE was great. Having someone working proactive on these issues is important. Unfortunately this has not been a focus of AEE.

A mixed review of AORE for me was the presence of students. I was really happy to see so many college students, but was dismayed at the party atmosphere. I cringed in my room in the wee hours of the morning as noisy, drunken groups would wake up a wing of the hotel with disrespectful behavior. I do not know if the hotel had another roving band of non-conference folks who were causing the hotel damage, but I suspect the conference attendees had some really poor LNT habits. Here is a great research question, "Does disrespect in a hotel correlate with poor LNT habits in the woods?"

At AEE I found some other things of note. I thought the conference workshops were of very high quality. This was the best group of workshops I have ever seen. I kept bumping into people raving about the workshop they just attended. I also was enthused to see how well SEER (Symposium on Experiential Education Research) is doing. Fifteen research presentations were presented which were chosen from 32 submissions. It was great to see the types of research folks were doing and it was a great way for me to collect many ideas. I also went to a really fun workshop on Foucault, which is not something you often hear, 'fun and Foucault' in the same sentence. It was great to be thinking deeply about facilitating experience and the power of structures.

For much of evenings at AEE I huddled in my room working on some papers, but I was able to catch some of the Karl Rohke show, lots of games and activities that had a great dual purpose--fun for the conference attendees and useful in expanding your own bag of tricks.

I also saw the keynote by Jasper Hunt who did a great job of laying out the argument of the different philosophical roots of educators that value different types of experience (primary experience or secondary experience). This was a well articulated argument that I wish every outdoor educator heard. I always enjoy hearing Jasper's thoughts.

In all, both conferences had a lot to offer.

So I will go back to my own work and research, but I can not help but murmur, we are not McDonald's (aka. a corporation) we are members of professional associations. I hope someday we are part of such a large association. I figure it will be about as difficult as bringing together 10 Lutheran Churches, but it is possible and it will be an extreme adventure. I am excited by both the challenge and the potential. I hope you will join me in pushing for such inclusion.

Research Conference

Brent Bell — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 01:14:00 GMT

Blog #2

I am still getting used to the idea of blogging. A few times a day I think "I should write something on that blog thing" and then it somehow gets lost. Since this is a blog on research, I am happy to report that any lack of blogging is due to my being overwhelmed with research projects.

Last weekend I hosted a research symposium at UNH with the help of the Henry David Thoreau Foundation (HDTF). Fourteen people gathered for three days to talk about research in outdoor orientation programs. We had visits from Mike Gass , who spoke on his view of outdoor orientation research since his first study in 1984. Julie Simpson from the UNH Institutional Review Board also visited and discussed the review process for getting research projects approved.

The conference focused on development of outdoor orientation research projects. After a long discussion and overview of the past research studies, the group focused on what type of projects were of interest to the group. Mike Gass provided a great model to think about research, warning us to attend to the foundational studies we will need completed before a group can build towards more complex questions. For instance, do not set out to research blood doping in the Tour de France before you realize that the Tour de France is a bike race, or before you understand how many people participate, where the stages are held, etc. This was very valuable to us to consider. The Neighborhood Project (gathering an outdoor orientation census) has been part of providing this foundation for research in this area.

One of the questions that came up again and again as we discussed past research studies was the question of selection bias among outdoor orientation programs. Are the students who select to go outdoor orientation programs different from the others students in their class? This is a big validity question in many of the outdoor orientation research studies. It was apparent to the group that some foundational research work was needed here. A group formed to take on the task of looking closely at the selection bias question. This group will be seeking the help of program directors across the country to collect some basic demographic information on the outdoor orientation participants at their school and collect how they compare to rest of the incoming class. The hope is to get a big (BIG) picture of the demographic differences. This is a very interesting project. Although many people believe that outdoor orientation groups are partially successful because they gather already successful students, two studies have reported that the outdoor orientation students are initially behind their peers. I look forward to seeing where this project goes and how it can help other researchers.

A second project involves looking at the impact of outdoor orientation on outdoor orientation leaders. This team spent energy deciding upon some current instruments able to demonstrate some of the potential impact upon leaders. This project is very interested to see differences between the growth leaders may get from attending staff training and the growth from actually leading a trip.

Another project is looking at the impacts of programs upon first-year students understanding of a drug and alcohol workshop by analyzing first-year student essays about attendance on an outdoor orientation program. One of the goals of the outdoor orientation program is to impress upon first-years the risks of drinking and drugging at college. This project hopes to report on the factors important for better programming on this issue.

The last project is the Best Practices Project. I am looking forward to working with a talented and motivated team on this project. We are hoping to interview people who have been involved with outdoor orientation programs that have been shut down. We hope to analyze the reasons why programs may not sustain themselves, and use this as platform to then interview successful programs. Learning from programs that have been canceled may help programs developing to avoid pitfalls. I can't wait to get started on this project, but first.......

And here is where I am exactly with my research. I am working hard at getting my second manuscript of the summer into a form where I can collect feedback from some colleagues. I am far from a gifted or talented writer--as this blog may expose--so I have been putting in long hours this summer working on my writing. I feel as though I have turned myself inside out, but fortunately I have seen some improvements. I look forward to reporting to those who struggle with their writing on how I became a writing success, but for now I just try to not get bitter about not having a vacation.

So that is the update on the research blog at present. I will write back soon with some information the IRB experience. That is tomorrow's project once I give this manuscript my final read through before sending it out to friends. Thankful for such friends who will read your work.

Brent

Blog, Blogger, Blogging

Brent Bell — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:31:00 GMT

I told Rick I would "blog" about research in outdoor education not really understanding the world of blogging. So I am working out the kinks in my own learning curve. I certainly do not do a whole lot of working with newer tech stuff because it takes time away from making progress on those pesky research projects piling up and calling out for my attention.

In my short time as a developing researchers I am discovering that it is a difficult skill, not easily developed. My hope is to become better and better at this skill set. I do love getting my hands upon data and seeing what comes of it. The ability of coming across a new piece of information is completely thrilling and satisfies my questions and curiosities. I still remember working as a risk manager and collecting incident and accident forms. The forms were all shoved into manilla folders and kept in a file cabinet drawer. I came across this pile of data and began to sit down put it into some reasonable form--but I had no idea what I was looking for, I just started working with data. Soon I was slicing the data in different ways, how many accidents occurred on different types of trips, what was the accident rate per million hours of use, what time of day were most accidents occuring. Each question led to another question. I spent a few days crunching numbers, sorting data, creating new categories and keeping a curious mind satified. Out of the data came an unknown but startling pattern. Accidents were occuring on bike programs on the second or third day at a very high rate, then trailing off towards zero as the trip progressed. For instance, a mtn. bike trip beginning on day 1, would have maybe six accidents on day two, three accidents on day three, one accident on day four and no accidents for the rest of the trip. Looking at the data it suddenly made sense, the highest day of accidents and incidents coincided with the very first day students biked. This led to questions with leaders trying to explain the pattern. Finally we discovered that students feared being the slowest in the group. The fear would be most powerful the first day on the bike and to compensate, students would get on their bikes and attempt to go faster, longer, further, higher--going to great lengths to avoid being the slowest. This one piece of information led to a rethinking of how to manage the first day of riding bikes, which led to a 100% reduction in accidents the next year, and another 50% reduction the following year. I love when information can be used in a practical manner. I love discovering and learning new things. From there I have been hooked on collecting and working with data. I see the important role it can have in outdoor education.

Brent

Welcome to the Research Blog

Outdoor Ed — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 20:09:00 GMT

This Blog is dedicated to research on outdoor education and recreation.