Personal Learning or Prescribed Educational Outcomes: A Case Study of the Outward Bound Experience

Experiential organizations often adopt quantitative course evaluation, as this provides them with numbers to justify prescribed educational outcomes to funding bodies. However, it has been argued that qualitative methods better suit the personal nature of the experiential learning process, so that epistemologlcal understanding follows pedagogical philosophy (Allison & Pomeroy, 2000). This article highlights the leaming of participants at Outward Bound New Zealand. A mixed method approach was chosen including quantitative and qualitative data collection, pre and post course. Participants (157) from four different courses were surveyed by questionnaire, with a response rate of 82% for the first to last day responses, and 30% for the 12-week post-course follow-up. The quantitative findings were consistent with the medium change of previous outdoor program effect size research for 20+ day courses (Hattie, Marsh, Neill, & Richards, 1997). However, the qualitative responses encapsulated the value and "real" meaning of these personal experiences.