Discussion: View Thread

I'm interested to know if anyone uses outdoor education activities in
connection with MBA or similar types of courses. If you do, what
benefits do you think you and the students accrue from this? Have you
ever had problems? What happens if you have disabled students?

Cheers

Rebecca Dale
Research Fellow
Business Processes Resource Centre
tel.: (01203) 524 344
fax: (01203 524 307
email: R.Dale@warwick.ac.uk
http://bprc.warwick.ac.uk

We have a day long retreat at the beginning of our Professional Skills
course. Students are required to take this course within their first 9
hours of the MBA core. There are a variety of team-building and personal
challenge (ropes activities in the Fall) that take place during the
retreat. Students are nearly always surprised by how much they enjoy the
day in spite of giving up a weekend day to do it (we shorten the course by
a week to make up for it). Since this is a course where we encourage a lot
of peer mentoring, we've found that the familiarity provided by the retreat
accelerates the collaborative/mentoring process. Ben

At 10:52 AM 3/3/99 +0000, you wrote:
>I'm interested to know if anyone uses outdoor education activities in
>connection with MBA or similar types of courses. If you do, what
>benefits do you think you and the students accrue from this? Have you
>ever had problems? What happens if you have disabled students?
>
>Cheers
>
>Rebecca Dale
>Research Fellow
>Business Processes Resource Centre
>tel.: (01203) 524 344
>fax: (01203 524 307
>email: R.Dale@warwick.ac.uk
>http://bprc.warwick.ac.uk
>
Ben Arbaugh
Assistant Professor of Strategic Management
College of Business Administration
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
e-mail: arbaugh@uwosh.edu Phone: (920)424-7189

Dear Rebecca, As part of our Executive Skills course, we schedule 6 hours
of what we call the "Ropes course." This consists of team and indivudual
challenges held outdoors. For example, at the individual level, students
must climb to the top of a telephone pole, stand up on top of it with no
supporting materials, turn around, and try to leap to a bar that is six
feet away. Of course we have safety harnesses and spotters to protect the
students. (In my class last year 31/32 MBAs managed to meet this
challenge). We present them with many team challenges/puzzzles that
require ingenuity and cooperation to solve.

We hope these experiences build individual self confidence and team
cohesion. On course evaluations, students rate these exercises quite high.

Regards, Kim Boal


>I'm interested to know if anyone uses outdoor education activities in
>connection with MBA or similar types of courses. If you do, what
>benefits do you think you and the students accrue from this? Have you
>ever had problems? What happens if you have disabled students?
>
>Cheers
>
>Rebecca Dale
>Research Fellow
>Business Processes Resource Centre
>tel.: (01203) 524 344
>fax: (01203 524 307
>email: R.Dale@warwick.ac.uk
>http://bprc.warwick.ac.uk
>
--------------------------------
Kim Boal
College of Business Administration
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX 79409
(806) 742-2150
KimBoal@ttu.edu