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 orientation 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 and 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