Abstract
This article examines the impact of an outdoor orientation program (OOP) on a cohort of first-year university students who participated in a canoe trip facilitated by peer leaders. The curriculum included training for outdoor skills and transitional guidance to university life (i.e., strategies for time management, critical thinking, becoming independent, diversity, and information about interpersonal relationships and healthy living). Employing McMillan and Chavis’s (1986) community development model and a qualitative case study approach, data were collected via a structured focus group designed to investigate the impact of the OOP on students’ adjustment to university life. Results of the study revealed that the OOP experience favorably affected students through the development of a strong sense of community, the facilitation of knowledge transfer from the wilderness context to the university setting, and the generation of a definitive sense of commitment and institutional loyalty to the university.
The transition from high school to the first year of university is stressful for many students. Students face adjustments to new academic expectations and social environments (Selesho, 2012). As a result, orientation programs that entail enrichment opportunities focused on helping students adapt to university have been implemented by many institutions around the world (Palmer, O’Kane, & Owens, 2009). These programs often focus on strategies for academic success, advice on how to live in diverse contexts, and information about interpersonal relationships and healthy living (Bell, 2012). These orientation experiences take on many different formats, including “open days,” non-credit bearing courses, pre-semester seminars, and other activities such as orientation week events (Palmer et al., 2009).
One popular category of orientation experiences that help students transition to university include outdoor orientation programs (OOPs). In these programs, participants frequently spend at least one night away from campus with a small group and engage in activities such as backpacking, canoeing, or rock climbing (Bell, Holmes, Vigneault, & Williams, 2008). These experiences are often several days in length, and may occur in either the natural environment (i.e., rock climbing in the wilderness) or built environment (i.e., indoor rock climbing; Association for Experiential Education, 2011). Similar to theory-based orientation programs, OOPs have been found to promote interpersonal relationships (Austin et al., 2010), foster a sense of community (Lathrop, O’Connell, & Howard, 2012), increase life effectiveness (Frauman & Waryold, 2009), and enhance social support networks (Bell & Williams, 2006), thereby increasing grade point averages and retention rates (Gass, Garvey, & Sugerman, 2003). Although the success of the various types of orientation programs has been documented in a number of ways (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005), research has focused primarily on the outcomes of these programs and not the actual experience of the students while transitioning to university (Palmer et al., 2009). The purpose of this study is to investigate students’ experience of building a sense of community through participation in an OOP and explicate the themes that comprise this experience.
Review of Literature
“Community” is a concept that has traditionally been conceptualized in two distinct ways. In one sense, community refers to a geographic descriptor that has territorial connotations, such as “neighbourhood,” “city,” or “campus” (Heller, 1989). In a second way, community may be conceptualized as primarily relational, with a focus on interpersonal interaction, social cohesion, and emotional connectivity (Halamova, 2001). Sarason refers to the latter as a “psychological sense of community” (1974).
Within this psychological interpretation of community, McMillan and Chavis (1986) offered a helpful model of four components that serves as the theoretical framework for this study. The first component, membership, is characterized by an individual’s feeling that he or she has made an investment in the group. They believe they have a right to belong. Membership implies acceptance in and ownership of a group—and may be evident through shared symbols, rituals, and “insider language.” These signs convey an element of safety and belonging (McMillan & Chavis, 1986). The second component, influence, reflects the authority or sway that a group member holds and also carries with it the expectation that the individual will adopt group norms. Influence is a bidirectional concept. A strong community will exhibit a highly correlated, positive feeling of cohesiveness and will also convey the pressure to conform. The third component, integration and fulfillment of needs, is related to the reinforcement of behaviors in a group. Ultimately, this provides the individual with reward for being a part of the community through the reciprocal nature of contributing to the group and receiving affirmation from the group (McMillan & Chavis, 1986). The final component is a shared emotional connection. This emotional connection is fostered by ongoing, positive group interactions, the successful achievement of group tasks, a feeling of achievement from coming through challenging events together, and the “esprit de corps” that reflects a feeling of pride, fellowship, and common loyalty. For the purposes of this article, McMillan and Chavis’s (1986) definition of sense of community will be used: “Sense of community is a feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their commitment to be together” (p. 9).
The scholarly literature that examines the successful transition of students as they enter postsecondary educational institutions identifies the importance of making connections with others (Palmer et al., 2009). If students do not make friends and thereby develop a community, they are in a position of academic risk, may not persist through their first year (Selesho, 2012), or realize their long-term educational objectives (Kuh, Kinzie, Buckley, Bridges, & Hayek, 2006). For example, in her study of over 1,800 students, Woosley (2003) found that initial social adjustment was a significant predictor of degree completion. She stated, . . . the students who thought they had made friends, were adjusting well and satisfied with their social life during the first three weeks of their first semester in college were also more likely to complete a degree within five years. (Woosley, 2003, p. 206)
Similarly, Cheng (2004) noted that feelings of care and acceptance, not feeling lonely, and being a part of an affirming social network contributed to an enhanced sense of community. He further observed that these sentiments are often lost in contemporary universities that tend to focus exclusively on academic success within narrowly defined disciplinary parameters, rather than linking academic excellence and social capacity in an integrated way across the campus. Indeed, research suggests that student persistence is linked to both academic and social involvement—and that both of these elements are critical for student success, particularly in Year 1 (Tinto, 1998).
With this in mind, many universities have turned to OOPs to provide students with positive transition experiences (Austin et al., 2010; Bell & Holmes, 2011; Hill, Nolan, & Scrogin, 2010; Wolfe & Kay, 2011). The creation and maintenance of social support networks is a primary objective and has been found to have both short-term and long-term positive effects (Gass et al., 2003). Researchers have generally reported that strong interpersonal connections develop. For example, Wolfe and Kay (2011) noted that students in their study referred to their connections with others as “family.” Similarly, Austin et al. (2010) reported that students indicated significant changes in three of four domains of community including personal comfort, cross-cultural relationships, and unfamiliar social environments. Students also indicated they had a significant increase in the number of friends and peers whom they trusted. Bell and Holmes (2011), in a content analysis of 450 student papers, reported students had improved connections with peers, developed positive views of social support (particularly around shared views toward alcohol and substance use), and held stronger feelings of trust in others.
Although the outcomes of student participation in OOPs have been examined for more than 20 years, student experiences during these transitional programs have been studied on a much smaller scale. The purpose of this study is to examine student perceptions of how a sense of community develops and subsequently finds expression in the transition to the postsecondary environment.
Method
This study explored the development of sense of community within an OOP through a qualitative case study research design (Stake, 1995; Yin, 2003). A case study research design allowed for focused inquiry and rich descriptions of the experience of a sense of community within a bounded unit (i.e., trip group) within a general program model (i.e., OOP; Yin, 2003). Binding the study within a specific group allowed for this research to contextualize the experiences of the group as they developed a sense of community and enabled the examination of the importance of the findings for design characteristics, theory, and purpose within the OOP.
A general case study design is appropriate for this study’s purpose. In particular, (a) this study addresses how and why questions, (b) participants’ behaviors are not manipulated throughout the research process, (c) the contextual conditions are significant within the study milieu, and (d) the boundaries between the phenomenon and context are important (Yin, 2003). Furthermore, a case study design supports the deconstruction and reconstruction of the phenomenon under study to better understand the effectiveness of an OOP model for building sense of community (Baxter & Jack, 2008).
Program Description and Sampling
Given the research design, this study utilized a purposive sample that was bound to one OOP trip group at a mid-sized university in Ontario, Canada. The trip group consisted of seven incoming (first-year/freshmen) university students who self-selected to participate in a 5-day wilderness canoeing and camping experience. Students were enrolled across a diversity of academic programs of study at the university. The trip occurred 2 weeks prior to the start of their first semester and consisted of 5 days of canoeing and camping in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario. Two upper year undergraduate students with wilderness travel experience led the trip. Group size restrictions within the Provincial Park limited the total group size to nine. Students did not stay on campus at the end of their OOPs experience until they returned for the beginning of their fall semester 1-week posttrip. Six of the students were living in residences while one student lived off campus during the subsequent academic term.
In addition to learning outdoor skills, an orientation curriculum guided the experience. This curriculum focused on time management, healthy living choices, where to go on campus for academic counseling, and an array of tips to enhance academic success. For example, each evening, trip-leaders focused on a specific topic of discussion that was designed to facilitate students’ transition to the undergraduate student experience. The trip-leader’s role as facilitator was to encourage conversation and offer a “firsthand” peer student perspective on each topic. In addition to the daily curricular topics, emergent topics and questions were covered as the group progressed through the trip and as students conversed with their peers and trip-leaders.
Six months postexperience, students were emailed with an invitation to participate in a 1-hr focus group session to reflect on their OOP experiences. Six of the seven students who originally participated in the OOP experience gave written consent to participate in the qualitative focus group. Research practices were guided and approved by the university’s Research Ethics Board.
Two researchers conducted a 1-hr long focus group with six participants, including four female and two male participants. The focus group was structured by an interview guide developed by the researchers. This guide contained open-ended questions (influenced by McMillan and Chavis’s [1986] model) that allowed students to discuss their experiences on trip and reflect upon how these experiences may have affected their first 6 months at university. Questions were worded to be reflective. For example, the following question was used to frame the valuable moments of their OOP experience: “Now that you are half-way through your first-year experience, looking back on your [OOP] experience, what did you value most about it?” Focus group data was audio recorded and transcribed verbatim by one of the two researchers who were present during the focus group session.
Raw focus group data were distributed to each of the three primary researchers for independent initial analysis. Each researcher individually open-coded the transcription data to identify codes and determine themes. The researchers met to discuss their initial coding and triangulated the data to ascertain thematic patterns. Researchers then developed the thematic structure of the patterned codes by determining what codes attracted and detracted from each other. From this process, researchers were able to reliably ascertain that the themes that were developed were sufficiently trustworthy and represented the experiences of the trip group in relation to the topic of sense of community.
Results
Three main themes describe the results of this study. The first major theme, community development, speaks to the process by which students identified themselves as members of a tightly knit group—a community who shared a profound and transformative experience and thereby emerged as loyal “kinsmen.” The second theme, transitional value, describes the importance and influence the OOP program had on students as they reflected on completing their first semester. Finally, the third major theme, institutional affiliation, describes the OOP’s ability to bring students into the University community as ambassadors who feel a strong connection to the institution. The themes of community development and transitional value are each further described by three sub-themes.
Community Development
Three sub-themes were clustered within the theme of community development among the OOP participants. These three sub-themes include building a family community, profound experience, and commitment to long-term relationships.
Building a “family feeling.”
Students described the profound relationship that they developed with their peers and OOP trip-leaders (upper year students) in familial terms. Four of the participants openly discussed the feeling their group had at the completion of their OOP to be comparable to that of a family or tightly knit community. Participants believed that this feeling was accomplished throughout the trip and was unexpected given the limited number of days they were together. Jordan commented, “You had no idea before. Just sort of coming together as a team of people you didn’t even know, and by the end of it you were like a family almost.” In addition to this family feeling, participants believed that their trip-leaders resembled peers within the group, and they did not feel distanced by virtue of their leadership responsibility. Jordon further reflected, “By the second or third day, they didn’t seem like our leaders, they seemed like one of our peers. They were just one of us.” As a result of this, peer leaders were able to provide a model of community that students could emulate when they returned to campus.
Peer leaders were approachable and accessible, and they encouraged students to not be afraid to engage with leadership figures on campus. For example, Julie applied this advice when she was faced with a family crisis at home and had to ask for academic accommodation during the first weeks of term.
I felt that it is like a big community, because I went through a lot last week because there was a big family thing. But I felt like everybody was approachable, I had to have some things moved around by my professors because I had to go home last week. With [the OOP], the leaders helped us see how the school is smaller and approachable. They told me to talk to my professors, so because of that it was easier to go and talk to people.
The OOP community allowed students to feel that they could relate to the larger university campus as a community.
Profound experience
All participants agreed that their OOP experience was profound and transformative. Three students remarked specifically about the difference in group cohesion and enthusiasm between the van ride up to the point of the trip’s departure and the van ride back to campus. Jordan commented, “[On] the car ride up, no one was talking. On the ride back, me and [one of the trip-leaders] were singing.” Jordan further described the evening of the first night: For me it was, I was sort of thinking that the first night when we were sitting around the fire, we sort of started to talk and make jokes and stuff. The awkwardness of not knowing each other melted away. That is when I started to realize that this was a group of people that I could feel comfortable with, that I am definitely going to enjoy spending the next five days with.
In addition, students commented about overcoming adversity. All students believed that the success of their ability to overcome individual challenges was tied to the success and functionality of the group. Several students mentioned overcoming hardships and adversity on trip. As Jordan explained, the experience of overcoming adversity was profound for him because he discovered the collective strength of the group as community: I think what I got from it was, no matter how tough a challenge might seem or what group of people you are with. If you put your heads together and stay calm about it, and plan well enough you can do anything.
Megan also noted that the physical challenge of a portage was a profound experience for her. She observed, It was a great challenge to see what you are capable of. Who would have thought that we would have done a 2.5 kilometer portage, then be like ready to go at the end of that, right? It was awesome.
Commitment to long-term relationships
Participants also expressed a commitment to maintain a long-term relationship with each other. Both Rose and Megan agreed to help each other during the academic term. Rose agreed to save a “good seat” during lectures for Megan and help with in-class related work whenever possible. Finally, when looking to the future beyond the first-year experience, Max noted that he anticipated the connections among his OOP peers would continue: Next year, with moving off campus I am sure that, because we are not going to be so close, it will sort of be, have everyone over for dinner type thing. I mean I would definitely like to see that as much as possible.
Transitional Value
The second major theme, transitional value, reflects the skills, knowledge, and individual capacity that students heard about or experienced on the OOP and were able to transfer to other areas of their life. Specifically, through peer mentorship and advice, students were able to discover new knowledge about university life, dispel myths and misconceptions that they previously believed, and learned to develop new insights and capacity about their level of personal autonomy and self-reliance.
Peer mentorship and advice
Participants reported positive gains from having their trip-leaders act as mentors. Jordan explained, Especially having [the leaders] who are students at [the university] tell us about their experience, the ups and downs and how to sort of prepare for things that was really helpful too. You don’t get that voice when you just look at the website or something like that.
Students also valued the kind of information that was shared. Andrea said, “They gave us lots of advice, in terms of meeting our professors and keeping up with readings. If they didn’t tell me to do my readings, I probably would not have.” Rose noted that in addition to important strategies for academic success, trip-leaders were able to share important “informal” institutional knowledge. With regard to hearing about best hours to access Health Services on campus, she commented, “This is not something that I would have expected [the trip-leaders] to know . . . there are certain days in which going to the Health Centre is more effective than others.” Participants noted that they valued this because it came personally from a student-peer rather than formally from a university staff or faculty member.
Dispelling myths
Students also found that through participation in the OOP, they were able to dispel certain myths about the university experience. Students were surprised to learn from their trip-leaders that professors were everyday people who were not only interested in the topic of the classes they taught but also genuinely cared about students. Jordan shared with the group his preconceived notions about what he thought a professor would be like: I didn’t know that, you do not know until someone tells you that the professors are actually approachable, a university professor has such a negative connotation of being such a stuck up, robotic type of [entire group laughs] person, the suede patches on the elbows, that kind of thing.
However, after hearing a little more about the approachability of professors, Jordan took the opportunity to take the chance and try for himself. He stated, “Once you go talk to them [professors], they are just as interested in the course as you. They are passionate about it and that is why they are teaching it, you know they are real people.”
Students who participated on the OOP not only learned new cultural norms about university life but were also willing to share these insights with their fellow classmates. Students also reported they felt better prepared for the transition, recognizing that they had been given a “heads up” that university would be significantly different than their high school experience.
Self-reliance and personal development
Students reported gaining a greater sense of self-reliance and personal development. Julie expressed this feeling when she said, “I guess [the OOP] made me grow and then kind of helped me transition into the next four years of independence.” Jordan saw a very specific challenge as transferable to his university experience: When you look at a two and a half kilometer portage as a whole, it is pretty intimidating and pretty scary, but we split it up into a few different sections that made it a lot easier. Sort of the idea of a huge task, you may have a 2000 word essay and doing it all at once would be like doing a two-kilometer portage all at once, but if you split it up into different parts, it does not seem so daunting. It just seems like a few little tasks one at a time.
Furthermore, all students believed that the OOP offered them an opportunity to reflect inwardly and to contemplate their future. Andrea shared, For me it was kind of like escape from reality. I found that even like canoeing it was silent and you just had so much time to just think to yourself and have those internal moments and think of about who you are, what you can accomplish and what you want to accomplish.
Commitment to the University
The OOP experience also imparted a strong sense of commitment and institutional loyalty to the university. Participants expressed their relationship with the institution as one of give and take—rather than as just a way of procuring a degree. Students expressed this connection through their relationship with peers, trip-leaders, and faculty, and by their willingness to engage in university-wide promotional engagements. As Megan expressed, Being in touch with [Professor] and [Associate Dean] has afforded me the opportunity to be part of the University Fair . . . . I would certainly take part in any other promotional opportunities for the program as I think it is valuable.
By virtue of their connection with these people, students in turn felt compelled to help promote both the university and the OOP experience. Rose recalled, “When I was plugging the OOP at the Open House day, I kept using the sentence, ‘University is like this big scary experience, and knowing some people makes it less big and less scary.’”
Finally, students saw themselves as professional members of the university community. They believed that they might not have felt this way if they had not participated in the OOP. Megan saw her role not only as a student but also as an active member of the university community with professional responsibilities. She stated, It is important to be aware that this is no longer just fun. It is not just school. It is the beginning of your career. This is the beginning of your professional life. You have to act like that.
Discussion
As highlighted in the results, participants reported several aspects of their transition experience through participation in an OOP as being important to their ongoing sense of community and ensuing connection to the greater university. These can be contextualized in the four components of McMillan and Chavis’s (1986) framework of sense of community.
First, students described the importance of membership (McMillan & Chavis, 1986) as central to their transition experience. For example, they reported that group boundaries (or the fact that they were part of the group) developed quickly over the 5-day trip. This was something that was unexpected, continued as they transitioned into the semester, and was supported both by the students themselves and the OOP administrators. While Palmer et al. (2009) suggested that these “turning points” can be difficult to sustain throughout students’ first year in university, this appeared not to be the case for these students. Participants also indicated that the capacity to feel they could share their emotions and ask questions during the trip affected their transition to university. They indicated this was an artifact of the leaders modeling these behaviors on the trip and confirms the findings of Austin et al. (2010) whose participants reported having more people in their lives with which they would share an emotional secret as the result of engaging in an OOP experience. Finally, students mentioned the personal investment, both physically and emotionally, in being part of this group. This was most evident through their recounting of their experience with the long portage, and played a role in their ongoing perception of transition to university. Effectively overcoming physical challenges, a key element of most OOPs, has been found to be positively linked to personal growth in students (Passarelli, Hall, & Anderson, 2010).
Students also commented on how influence, the second component of McMillan and Chavis’s (1986) framework, was a factor in their transition experience. This was most evident in the students’ perception that the leaders were peers and not authoritarian figures or overly controlling. This approach to leadership allowed feelings of being a family to develop, which has connotations of cohesiveness and conformity, two of the hallmark attributes of influence (McMillan & Chavis, 1986). This extended to the students’ transition to the fall semester. Cheng (2004) noted it is important for students to feel they are cared about and valued as an individual to experience heightened feelings of connection to the university community. By creating conditions in which students felt influential, both on a small and large scale, the OOP helped students feel they could confront an often-difficult part of first year (i.e., approaching a professor). As Cheng (2004) aptly stated, “They [students] need to feel at home in the institution, and they want their individual values and differences to be respected and recognized” (p. 227).
In terms of integration and fulfillment of needs, McMillan and Chavis’s (1986) third component, students indicated that the OOP helped them clarify and crystallize their understanding of some of the details of university life with which they weren’t familiar. This helped with their transition as they were more appreciative of the “bigger picture” of what they might encounter during their first year. In addition, the essence of traveling through the wilderness with a small group of people helps focus individuals’ attention to the basic needs of the community as well as their own. This “stripping away” of the distractions of everyday life reinforces that individuals have essential shared needs (e.g., food, shelter, moving from campsite to campsite, accomplishing tasks, etc.). When thinking about how this affected their transition to university, students recognized that the university community was ultimately there to support them in their studies (e.g., their “need”). Megan’s story of her encouraging another student (who hadn’t been on an OOP) to go to a dean for help is testament to this. She recognized, through participation in the OOP and through developing a strong community with her trip group, that this was a possibility in the larger university context. This integration and fulfillment of needs has been highlighted as a critical factor in student engagement and success (Kuh et al., 2006).
Finally, shared emotional connections (the fourth of McMillan and Chavis’s [1986] components) also played an eminent role in students’ transition to first year. For example, students recounted the importance of completing the long portage, which served as a focal point and culminating challenge for the group. McMillan and Chavis (1986) referred to this as a “shared valent event” and noted that groups that experience important occasions form stronger bonds. This most likely contributed to more intangible indicators of strong community such as esprit de corps. Jordan indicated how being in a wilderness setting with a small group forced people to get to know each other quickly. Close contact with others has been cited as a key factor in the development of strong communities. Bell and Holmes (2011) noted that students cannot get “lost” in OOP groups like they can in larger orientation events and that their contribution to group tasks is more visible. In this sense, OOPs create conditions through which participants realize their contributions “matter” and that their future contributions to the university community as they transition to first year are important as well.
Recommendations and Implications
There are several recommendations that emerge from this study. First, purposeful planning of OOP curriculum with a focus on creating conditions that enable students to transfer what they experienced on their trip throughout their transition to first year (and beyond) is important. A primary goal of this OOP was to create community as new students often experience an emotional shock when moving away from their home for the first time (Wilcox, Winn, & Fyvie-Gauld, 2005). Although outdoor adventure trips inherently offer opportunities for bonding to occur and community to develop, this cannot be taken for granted.
Second, opportunities for students to establish, maintain, and utilize relationships with faculty and staff should be initiated in an OOP, and continued as students transition to (and through) first year. Participants in this study indicated the importance of meeting a professor and associate dean and learning from trip-leaders that faculty and staff are approachable. This supports Cheng’s (2004) recognition that university communities involve both students and faculty in pursuit of a common goal. It appears as though OOPs enable these student–faculty/administrator relationships to be fostered more quickly.
Third, this study supports the findings of others (Bell & Holmes, 2011; Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005) who contend that the use of peer leaders is paramount to helping first-year students’ transition to university life. The OOP in this study purposefully selects leaders who participate in an extensive training program and who develop a large part of the curriculum, which encourages them to take ownership in it. Furthermore, it is important to provide peer leaders and first-year students the opportunity to have experiences in which faculty and staff are not present to arbitrarily influence these interactions. Some other forms of orientation programs do not offer these occasions to the same degree. Peer leaders also help overcome the feeling that many first-year students have about being only a “number in the crowd.”
Finally, it is important to provide OOP participants the chance to revisit their experiences, debrief, and assist them in transferring what they have learned throughout their first year (and subsequent years). While students in this study reported they got together as a group on their own, they also indicated they appreciated the chance to get together for the focus group as the discussion was primarily directed toward these transitional experiences. Although it might appear obvious, regular follow-up sessions can enhance feelings of community and address the ebb and flow of students’ experience of being a member in that group.
Limitations
There are several limitations to this study. First, the participants are relatively homogeneous in terms of demographic background (e.g., Caucasian, mostly from suburban/urban areas, traditional first-year age). As this is a qualitative study with a small number of participants, results are difficult to generalize to a larger population or other settings. Importantly, the trip that was the focus of this study was the first offered through this OOP. Students participating in an OOP that has been established for a longer time with a refined curriculum and better developed posttrip opportunities for students to get together may have different perspectives on their transitional experience.
As Astin (1999) noted, one of the challenges for faculty and staff is finding a “hook” that will encourage students to engage in university community. OOPs certainly provide one avenue for this to occur and can assist students in successfully confronting the challenges of transitions and turning points that prohibit them from completing their program of study in a timely manner, or at all.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.