This study examined trust development between participants of outdoor education programs and outdoor leaders. Participants were college students enrolled in outdoor education courses. Using a factorial survey design, the technical ability, interpersonal ability, benevolence, integrity, and gender of an outdoor leader was displayed randomly in a…

Wilderness orientation programs have been utilized by colleges and universities in the United States for nearly 75 years. This study, using means-end theory, reveals the outcomes of a wilderness orientation program for incoming students. A retroactive study was conducted for all participants who had taken part in a wilderness orientation program…

The Serve Program at Ignatius University is a community service-learning program that combines academic study of philosophy with a yearlong field-based project at one of approximately 50 different sites. Half of these projects entail working with youth, while the other half entail working with adults. This mixed methods analysis found that college…

Higher education often supports new student transition through various orientation programs. Recently a greater focus on student spiritual growth has emerged as an important aspect. The wilderness orientation program in this study is unique because of its length (12-14 days) and its focus on students' spiritual development. The purpose of this…

A critical element in lifelong learning is the self-regulation of motivation to learn. Learners without motivation to learn lack the drive to actively engage with ideas and content, even if they have the ability to learn. Motivation for sustained engagement can be considered a combination of goal-relevant motivation and experience-defined…

"Voluntourism" refers to the use of "discretionary time and income to travel out of the sphere of regular activity to assist others in need" (McGehee & Santos, 2005, p. 760). These experiences have been shown to raise consciousness and increase interest in activism (McGehee, 2002; Wearing, 2001) and to build pro-social values, affection for…

To be effective, experiential educators need to understand the developmental characteristics of their students so that they can tailor their programs to their capabilities. Often, their primary population consists of teens or college students. Recognizing that learning is a primary objective of experiential education programs, experiential…

Research on wilderness experience programs indicates there is much to learn about specific components of the overall experience. The solo, where students are intentionally separated from their expedition group for an extended time for reflection, has long had an anecdotal reputation for enhancing the quality of participants' experiences. The…

The literature on reflective journals reveals that unless instructors use reflection in an educationally meaningful way, students often view journaling as busywork. The instrument we have designed and propose here for analyzing reflective journal entries provides students with useful methods for reviewing and critiquing connections between…

The purpose of this study was to describe and examine a model for assessing student learning through reflection in service-learning courses. This model utilized a course-embedded process to frame, facilitate, support, and assess students' depth of learning and critical thinking. Student reflection products in two service-learning courses (a…

The purpose of this study was to examine the possible enhancement of compassion in college students as a result of participating in community-based learning immersion trips. In two separate experiments, a total of 123 college students were given a series of questionnaires immediately before and after university-sponsored immersion experiences to…

The purpose of this article is to examine the potential application of sweat rituals to group counseling, adventure therapy, and other forms of group work by describing a theoretical model for how sweat rituals work and presenting the results of a randomized comparative outcome study on the efficacy of sweat therapy. The theoretical model proposes…

A qualitative analysis of written reflective assignments during a service-learning project at a Southeastern university provide insight into students' learning, as well as a means of assessing the experience for student growth and change. Expectations and concerns of students prior to the project were compared with post-experience reflections to…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of participation in a three-week adventure-based expedition on levels and types of resiliency. Defined as an individual constellation of characteristics and capacities that mitigate the impact of biological, psychological and social factors that threaten an individual's health (Kaplan, 1999;…

The concurrent conditions of deafness and blindness present a set of unique needs within a community that highly values independence and autonomy. This project assesses the service-learning initiative in a post-secondary Interpreter Education Program (IEP) in which students learn via civic engagement with the Deaf-Blind community to employ…