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Residential week enhances learning experience



UCLan Outdoors students enjoy a range of activities designed to underpin their academic studies.

Through our link up with the Plas y Brenin, the National Mountain Sports Centre in North Wales, these activities provide practical, coaching and leadership skills which are designed to develop highly employable outdoor practitioners.

Jack Ricketts was one of a group of students who recently completed their second residential week at Plas y Brenin. Canoeing sessions were the focus of the trip, with the students having the opportunity to develop personal and technical skills such as perfecting different canoeing strokes. The group were also able to apply their academic learning in a real world environment.

Jack commented: "While these residential weeks are extremely fun and physically demanding, the hardest part is integrating the theory learned in lectures to the decision making processes and methods of teaching used by the instructors.

"The emphasis was placed on problem-based teaching. While the instructors gave us tasks to do without much explanation, we had to come up with a solution to solve the problem. An example of this was performing rescues.

"The instructors chose a safe spot for us to practise with little consequence in case anything went wrong, and as we progressed they changed one of three things - the environment, the individual or the task.

"As each of these things changed the other two became increasingly difficult and more problems were encountered. This is an example of the theory developed by Newell and Simon in their 1972 book 'Human Problem Solving', and is used by outdoor instructors on a daily basis."

To find out more about our partnership with Plas y Brenin please click here.

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