On November the 17th the Adventure Campus in Treuchtlingen hosted the University of Applied Management’s 4th conference on Adventuremanagement organised by the University of Applied Management (UAM), Germany. Interesting key notes on current topics, as well as interactive workshops were attended by experts and key-players form the Outdoor- and Adventurescene. Apart from experts the conference was also welcome opportunity to network for the Adventuremanagement graduates from the hosting University.
Prof. Werner, founder and CEO of UAM spoke about the relationship between the development of creativity and experiences. He presented results from a research conducted with students from 9 countries attending a Erasmus summer school in Treuchtlingen on creativity and innovation.
Prof. Manuel Sand, organiser of the conference and academic director of the adventure campus in Treuchtlingen, spoke about a pilot study that looked into key competences of outdoor trainers.
The participants were encouraged to interact and discuss interesting topics in a workshop session. They could choose between three thought provoking sessions. Katja Rothmeier from the federation for individual- and experiential-education presented the new German guidelines in outdoor trainer education, that were later referred to as a milestone by key-note speaker Prof. Michel. The other two workshops included a discussion about the transfer of the results of experiential learning programs into daily life and a presentation by Katrin Blumberg (European Confederation of Outdoor Employers) from Switzerland about the European Learning Syllabus of Outdoor Animators.
In the afternoon Prof. Werner Michl gave an inspiring key note on experiential learning and the importance of experiences in learning in general. This was followed by a panel discussion about how the theoretical input of the conference can be used in everyday life of the participating practitioners, before Prof. Sand summed up the conference. He was happy to welcome about 70 participants for this interesting and thought provoking day. Prof. Sand (ATRA representative in Germany) is already looking forward to the 5th edition of his conference. Next year’s edition will see a few changes as the conference will get a more international focus. ATRA members will be invited to play a part in German’s long running conference for adventure management.
