Our four-year degree has a distinctive focus upon the adventure education experience which it achieves through three themes. You will reflect on your past experiences, laying down a framework for the understanding of new adventure experiences.

Year One

Conceptualising Outdoor and Adventure Education

The module is a mix of practical and theory elements designed to inform each other. During the theory sessions you will be introduced to the main concepts that form the core of the current facilitative debate in outdoor and adventure education. The practical elements enable you to experience how theory and practice interact and how facilitative experiences must be constructed individually to optimise personal growth.

Understanding Groups

This module introduces you to the study of group formation and group dynamics. You will consider the pressures placed on society in general by different groups. The study of group formation and processes is then placed in outdoor and adventure contexts where you will consider models of group formation and the dynamics of group processes. 

Introduction to Psychological Issues in Outdoor and Adventurous Activities

You will examine what psychology is in its role within the adventure and outdoor environment. Developmental and lifespan issues will be addressed from a motor, cognitive, social and moral perspective. Individual differences within the learning environment will be examined through personality, motivation and the development of self-concept. 

Developing Professional Skills

You will consider yourself as a developing professional within the field of Outdoor and Adventure Education and take a longer term look at possible career destinations and route ways to achieve your ambitions.

Understanding Performance (Water based) - Canoe/kayak each week

This module explores current issues within the coaching process considering their application within specific sport adventure activities and taking into consideration the adaptation of Long Term Athlete Development principles. Observation and analysis of performance will be examined along with scientific assessment tools to identify performer needs. Aspects of sports science are applied in the development of training programmes within specific adventure contexts. 

Adventures in Education 1

You will be introduced to learning theories that have dominated formal and informal education contexts. This module also challenges ideas historically implicit in outdoor and adventure education.

Understanding Performance (Land Based) - Indoor and Outdoor rock climbing each week

This module aims to provide an introduction to the examination of land based adventure activities. Some of these activities may be additional to those forming the major part of activity areas used in the domain of adventure. The activities selected will enable you to develop both, strength in a particular area, or breadth of understanding across a variety of areas. 

Exercise and Health for Outdoor and Adventure Education

It will consider the current body of knowledge on physical activity and health and highlight the rise of modern chronic health conditions, such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease and demonstrate the positive influence that physical activity has on these disease states. Currently the use of adventure therapy as a therapy has only been investigated in small and select groups of individuals. This module will  provide practical suggestions for tailoring adventure programmes for adults and or children for whom the lack of physical activity, and nature deficiency results in ill health.

Year Two

Outdoor Environments 1

The shaping of the environment: including introduction to geology and to landscape formation; interpreting the landscape, with use of conventional, geological and historical maps; coastal processes including understanding of tides and formation of coastal features; introduction to ecology with particular reference to coastlines, including abiotic and biotic influences on biological communities; freshwater environments, including physicochemical and biological properties of rivers and lakes; impacts of human activities including adventure sports on marine and freshwater environments; effects of clean and polluted waters on users; and environmental impact assessment of adventure activities. 

Adventures in Education 2 (Developing Pedagogy) 

This module will include key themes such as Blooms Taxonomy, Behaviourism, Constructivism, approaches to developing learning outcomes, Mosston and Ashworth’s spectrum of teaching styles, pedagogy of place and experiential learning. 

Management Issues in Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning

Key topics will be introduced and developed where visiting speakers will be invited to provide the essential links between theory and practice. The module will include a visit to an Adventure Centre and an agency responsible for managing the environment.

Psychological Dynamics of Adventure

(Module information to come)

OR

Applied Techniques

You will explore the role of applied sports science in the enhancement of performance as well as in quality coaching within the Adventure Environment. The module aims to examine the use of analysis and assessment tools, to provide an introduction to mental skills training or physical training within high performance and coaching environments, and consider the implications for coaches and leaders to enhance performance within the outdoors. 

Research and Enquiry in Outdoor and Adventure Education

The aims of this are to introduce the notion of research paradigms, consider a range of traditions and provide a solid foundation of research design. The intention is to develop your critical awareness of a variety of qualitative and quantitative research methods and data analysis techniques. You will also consider data analysis techniques that will be immediately transferable to other areas of the degree.

Applied Meteorology

Gain a basic knowledge of the earth’s atmosphere, the principles underlying its behaviour and the effects of weather on adventure environments. 

Outdoor Environments 2 (Asking and Answering Environmental Questions)

A week of fieldwork in a location contrasting sharply with West Sussex will provide you with experience of unfamiliar environments and provide an opportunity for you to develop problem-solving skills through short, intensive practical investigations of the unfamiliar. 

Expeditioning and Journeying

The module seeks to provide you with the theoretical knowledge that allows you to understand and partake in a prolonged educational journey or expedition in an adventure environment. This takes place through the understanding and application of philosophical, physiological and psychological concepts. 

OR

SCUBA Diving

(Module information to come) 

OR

Reflective Practice 

Practical modules looking at expeditioning or diving. Diving has additional costs due to: location in Lanzarote, use of outside providers and a professional diving qualification being included (about £300) We are proposing that the expedition next year is a canoe trip down the Ardeche which will cost about £150 per person.

Year Three

Placement

Anywhere in the world of your choosing. See our Work Placements section for some examples of where our students have been.

Year Four

Dissertation - Self-selected but supported research project

Translating research reports into a coherent plausible account calls for creative and technical skills of a high professional order. This module is based on the conviction that outdoor and adventure facilitators need to be highly effective in communicating with a range of professional agencies, and be able to integrate and apply research to their professional practice as appropriate.

Research Methods for Outdoor and Adventure Education

Aims to develop dialog, research skills, reflective practice and critical thinking about problems and gaps in knowledge within adventure and the outdoors. The module will help you develop as an independent researcher capable of planning and executing a small scale research project in an appropriate academic or professional setting. It is intended to be interdisciplinary in nature and to be applicable to a wide range of research paradigms.

Environmental Exercise Physiology

Hundreds of people enter and complete competitions at altitude, in the heat, and in the cold; for example the Marathon DeSable, Everest Marathon and Idita Challenge. This module aims to examine the physiological challenge of performing in extreme and hostile environments and to examine how the human is able to exercise, maintain homeostasis, and survive. The module will explore the theoretical limits of human performance, looking to identify mechanisms of physiological acclimatisation and adaptation. 

Plus Elective(s) e.g:

Wilderness

Wilderness, defined by Conservation International as areas with fewer than one inhabitant km-2, covers the least hospitable 40% of the earth's land area. This module will approach the broad theme of wilderness from a number of perspectives and will challenge you to draw these together to construct your own trans-disciplinary understanding. 

Outdoor Environments 3

Outdoor professionals at centres and protected areas and others as diverse as teachers, journalists, councillors and politicians need to be able to help the public understand the environment which surrounds them. Not only do they require their own solid grounding in aspects of ecology and natural history, physical geography, environmental history and human ecology, but they need to be able to get others interested and excited too. This module builds on Environments I and Environments 2 by drawing together aspects of environmental science and environmental education so you are comfortable with both in a professional context. 

Soft Skills Facilitation

(Module information to come)

At least one module from:

Applied Coaching

This module explores current issues within the coaching process considering their application within specific sport adventure activities and taking into consideration the adaptation of Long Term Athlete Development principles. Observation and analysis of performance will be examined along with scientific assessment tools to identify performer needs. Aspects of sports science are applied in the development of training programmes within specific adventure contexts. 

OR

Adventures in Education 3

You have now completed a work placement during which you have been required to adopt organisational and pedagogical strategies as directed by organisations that fellow teachers, coaches and facilitators would employ in delivering outdoor and adventure education. This module asks you to go further by challenging this conventional wisdom and critically appraising the basis for your teaching approach.