A Malaysian private university's alumni and students' experiential learning process in an outdoor programme

Type of content
Theses / Dissertations
Publisher's DOI/URI
Thesis discipline
Education
Degree name
Doctor of Philosophy
Publisher
University of Canterbury
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Language
English
Date
2021
Authors
Yeap, Evelyn Ewe Lin
Abstract

The Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education has emphasised the importance of soft skills that higher learning institutions need to include in their curricula to graduate holistic, entrepreneurial and balanced students. Soft skills are usually taught through workshops conducted by instructors delivering the definitions and examples in a classroom setting. In this study “camp” refers to an outdoor experiential process experienced by the research participants. The research participants were selected by purposive sampling determined by their previous involvement as either camp participants and/or camp facilitators. Camp participants were those who had attended the camp without previous experience of this type of camp programme. Camp facilitators were those who had previously been camp participants and then facilitated the same camp programme more than once. The camps were held for a duration of three days and two nights. This study explores a camp programme repeated over the past 5 years utilising the same concepts and location. The main objective of this study was to gauge the camp participants’ and facilitators’ perceptions about their outdoor camp experiences in learning soft skills. The study employed phenomenography as the research methodology. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and focus group interviews. Interviews were carried out until the data reached a saturation point. The study found three variations of learning for how camp participants and facilitators learnt soft skills through the camp. A framework for a future soft skills development camp was created from the elements that emerged from the data. The conclusions and implications aim to contribute to the field of experiential education and its role in students' learning of soft skills in Malaysia and other countries.

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Citation
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Ngā upoko tukutuku/Māori subject headings
ANZSRC fields of research
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All Rights Reserved