The most powerful learning we undergo rarely follows a pre-defined pathway. This course aims to draw together a diverse group of people, beautiful surroundings, and challenging activities to create an open-outcome experience. Turning convention on its head, this is an event that shapes the programme to the people, not the people to the programme.
Much outdoor learning (and indeed, all training) is outcome focussed. Leadership courses, team skill courses, project management courses all have specific aims; to give precise skills and understanding in a predefined area.
Outdoor learning has successfully been used to deliver these topics for more than 100 years, however for all its power, it can be fickle. If, during a course on communication skills, a key issue surrounding creativity comes up that isn't on the syllabus for that course, does the trainer pursue it?
If he does, he risks not achieving the pre-defined objectives of the course. If he ignores it, he is pushing away what might be a very powerful piece of learning for the participants.
Open outcome courses reject this dilemma by not setting specific outcomes. This allows trainers to pull the most powerful learning they can out of an experience without having to be mindful of the specifics of a syllabus. Combined with agile programming (explained below) this leads to a course that is focussed completely around the participants and not some outside agenda.
While there can be no guaranteed outcomes, the outdoor environment tends to produce learning in areas such as;
- Team and group dynamics
- Leadership and trust
- Problem solving
- Communication
- Creativity
This course is a an outdoors based course with a mixture of taught theory and 'learning by doing' (experiential) challenges. This allows the academic learning to be reinforced by practical examples of working under exciting conditions.
The reason the course is called "Anything Could Happen" is we don't use a fixed programme for the course but we use Agile Programming. This is a term borrowed from the software industry, where we alter the programme at key points depending on the needs of the participants. This allows the trainers to home in on issues that the group feel are important without feeling that they have to dogmatically stick to a pre-prepared plan.
"Thought provoking and loads of fun with plenty to take away to think about (and hopefully apply!)" -James
"A month of life packed into 48 hours!" -Eeva
"Packed full of many varied activities without ever seeming rushed" -Mark
"Thought-provoking; knackering but fun and challenging" -Billy
We asked one of our participants to write about their experience on the course, you can download a one-page PDF and find out what he had to say.
If you want to find out more about this course then you can get in touch with Totem, details on our contact page. Alternatively, register below for updates on when the next course is likely to be running, no commitment, just information.
You don't just have to take our word about it though, we have a list of previous participants who are willing to talk about their course. Get in touch and we'll put you in contact with one of them.
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