Outdoor Leadership with Integrated Foundation Year

You have a passion for being active outdoors, learning about yourself and how to work as a team. You enjoy acting for the environment and ensuring the safety, welfare and engagement of others.

Our outdoor leadership foundation year in Carlisle will build a solid base in scientific, intellectual and investigative skills and knowledge so that you reach the level needed to undertake the remainder of your degree in Ambleside.

Course Overview
You’ll develop outdoor and leadership skills, knowledge and experience working with people in challenging environments. You will enjoy great facilities at our Lake District campus whilst gaining all the skills you need to work in the outdoor sector. There will be plenty of opportunities to get outside and enjoy exciting field trips in a range of locations which may include the Highlands of Scotland, North Wales and the Spanish Pyrenees.

The outdoor leadership degree course is organised to blend theory and practice seamlessly, using a range of adventurous outdoor activities to promote your learning whilst gaining valuable experience and skills to support your journey towards National Governing Body Awards.

On this course you will...

• Benefit from the outdoor experience that's at the heart of this course with theory backed up by practice.

• Improve your competencies in mountaineering, climbing, sailing, caving and paddling.

• Explore the Cumbrian outdoors while developing academic, critical-thinking and valuable life skills.

• Learn to successfully lead people with the most up-to-date and best practice coaching.

• Gain valuable commercial and entrepreneurial skills – enhancing your employability.

What You Will Learn
You’ll have an outdoor classroom quite literally on your doorstep – with more than 150 lofty peaks, 16 lakes and an abundance of rivers. So, there are ample opportunities to learn all the academic knowledge and practical skills you need to kick-start your career as an outdoor leader.

We don’t just teach you the theory, you’ll get on with it in practice so you become a proactive and confident problem-solver able to make sound professional judgements and decisions.

So, if you have the desire to operate effectively and lead in challenging environments, then our uniquely-located course will provide everything you need to succeed. Experience-gaining and skill development sit at the centre of all our modules.

Year One

• Essential University Skills 1

• Essential Biology

• Scientific Investigation

• Essential University Skills 2

• Environmental Sciences

• Dynamic Earth

Year Two

• Outdoor Adventure Skills and Learning (Water)

• Outdoor Adventure Skills and Learning (Land)

• Living and Working in Groups Outdoors

• Outdoor Professional Development

• Physiology and Psychology for the Outdoor Leader

• Outdoor Leadership Theory and Practice 1

Year Three

• Outdoor Leadership Theory and Practice 2

• Psychological Applications in Outdoor Contexts

• Coaching Individuals and Groups

• Evaluating Outdoor Leadership

• Research Design

• Traditional and Innovative Approaches to Outdoor Education (Optional)

• Sustainable Outdoor Event Management (Optional)

• Health, Wellbeing and Environmental Health (Optional)

Year Four

• Dissertation

• Coaching and Facilitation in Outdoor Environments

• Outdoor Leadership Theory and Practice 3

• Commerce and Employment in the Outdoor Sector (Optional)

• Outdoor and Environmental Education (Optional)

• Therapeutic Opportunities (Optional)

Assessment methods are designed to provide both a creative and balanced strategy but also a range of engaging and challenging opportunities which include essays, reports, practical tasks, posters projects, portfolios and oral presentations to name a few.

The assignment methods are related specifically to the stated module aims and learning outcomes, and the staff team work hard in the planning phase of programme delivery to ensure all assignments are equitably spread, through the use of the department assessment calendar across all levels. Furthermore, there is an over-arching ethos within the department that assignments are designed to encapsulate the idiom of ‘assessment for learning’ rather than of learning.

A variety of modules are linked directly to employability, and particularly the actual behaviours and capabilities required of a professional outdoor leader. This is exemplified in the Level 6 module, entitled Participant Coaching, whereby students are assessed in coaching their peers, with the specific intention of improving their outdoor performance.

Formative assessment is available in most modules, where students receive specific feedback on their progress this far, without the attempt being graded.