How do you teach trainers and educators how to design and deliver safe and impactful experiential education programmes? This report describes an eight-month, part-time, university-level for-credit course that developed participants’ leadership, task management, and team building skills within an experiential learning framework. Furthermore, the participants were coached in the task of designing and delivering experiential training programmes to several client groups such as a bicycle retailer and a conservation trust. The course exposes participants to several types of experiential learning including Revans’ action learning and outdoor adventure learning.

A key feature of the learning environment was the application of Priest’s principles of isomorphic framing. In other-words, to improve the likelihood of the transfer of learning from the ‘play space’ of adventure learning to the ‘work space’ of corporate life, the learning environment for the participants was framed as a company: ALP-DevCo. As apprentice recruits to the ALP-DevCo company, student project teams were tasked to prototype the development and trial of new training packages for clients. The report describes the training projects conducted by the participants and summarizes the learnings and challenges for implementing and maintaining university curricula that challenge orthodox approaches to tertiary teaching.

Key words

Curriculum development; tertiary education; training experiential trainers and educators; isomorphic framing; self-directed learning; experiential education; action learning; adventure learning; project-based learning; team building; project management; outdoor leadership preparation;

Beginnings: From outdoor adventure to project-based learning

The foundation of the Action Learning Practicum (ALP) began in late 1993. Several staff of the Department of Management Systems, Massey University, met to explore the potential application of corporate adventure-based training and management development methods to the Faculty of Business Studies’ teaching activities. 

In early 1994, a 2-day, not-for-credit adventure-based weekend was held for 15 students, under the guidance of four Massey staff and an external outdoor pursuits facilitator, David Clegg.  Several of the participating students recommended that the 2-day programme be extended and developed into a for-credit academic programme  (Mellalieu, Leberman, Bradbury & Chu, 1994). With the students’ involvement, a for-credit course - the Action Learning Practicum - was developed, approved by the university, and pilot-tested with eight students in the first semester of 1995.

The course prescription emphasizes the role of the student in participating in the design and delivery of the programme:

“Students will develop leadership, task management, and team building skills within an experiential learning framework. The course integrates outdoor adventure activities with selected aspects of contemporary management theory. Students play an integral part in the design and execution of the course. The course integrates the assessment of risk, and the management of safety and ecological care with programme activities.”

The course design, whilst including some elements of outdoor adventure based learning, also includes elements of other forms of experiential learning including role plays and simulation exercises. For example, one exercise involves the students organizing to build a paper house, once under a traditional supervisor-employee work configuration, the second time using a high-performance, self-directed work team approach: work quality, production and “worker” satisfaction all increased very substantially under the second approach.

An important feature of the course in 1995 was the introduction of what we now term a Project Learning framework to guide the overall progress of the course. Project Learning - in contrast to action learning - is our term for describing a process which brings people together, within a project management framework, to find solutions to real, important organisational issues and problems and thereby develops both the individuals and the organisation. We previously used the term Action Learning, as defined by Revans in the early 1940’s, and more recently, by Inglis (1994). We now term our overall approach Project Learning which our clients find more helpful as a descriptor rather than action learning. The term ‘action learning’ has several possible meanings for people unfamiliar with either action learning or adventure learning. Furthermore, the term does not fully characterize the approach taken in the course we designed.

According to the course prescription, within the Project Learning framework, the participants:

1. •Discover their strengths and weaknesses as participants in team-based “work-like” projects.
   

2. •Act as consultant trainers to several clients, developing and implementing management development programmes that meet the clients’ requirements.
   

3. •Learn and practise skills in project development, client relationship management, risk management, leadership, and conflict management as they design and carry out their projects.
   

In developing the ALP, its design was subject to a high degree of appraisal, both from within and beyond the university’s Business Studies Faculty. Besides a strong - controversial (!) - debate at the Faculty Board, the programme proposals were presented for scrutiny at both the Australia and New Zealand Academy of Management (ANZAME) Conference (Wellington,December 1994) and the International Organisational Behaviour Teachers  (IOBTC) Conference (Dunedin, December 1994).  We discovered our course proposal to be unique, and we since have received interest and enquiries from colleagues in Canada, Switzerland, Australia and the United States.

The full paper reviews our progress in refining the ALP as we built on our experience of running the programme over a period of two years.

Contents

1. •Beginnings: From outdoor adventure to project-based learning  
   

2. •Reflection and revision: the ALP-DevCo isomorphic frame   
   

3. •The ALP-DevCo projects  
   

4. •Participants’ reactions   
   

5. •Learning for teachers from the ALP-DevCo isomorphic frame  
   

6. •Reward excellence! Reward outrageous failure!  
   

7. •Funding the ALP   
   

8. •Conclusions and future directions  
   

9. •References