How does an outdoor orientation programme aid transition and adaptation to university for 1st year students?

Outdoor orientation programmes aid transition to university through adventure experience. The assumption is that transition processes are achieved by helping students develop constructive social support systems as well as providing them with feelings of belonging, trust and connection to a group of peers. These peer relationships provide both critical emotional support and strengthen educational gains (Bell et al., 2014). Programmes vary in length, content, and objectives. Further outcome and evidence-based studies are needed to examine outdoor orientation programme elements to better understand how and what elements provide support for students and increase retention rates (Cortez, 2014). The aims of the research were to investigate how an outdoor orientation programmes encourages transition and adaptation to university for first year students. Additional aims were to investigate the role of outdoor orientation programmes in social integration and personal growth and to develop standardised practice for outdoor orientation programmes. A mixed methods data collection was used to explore student experiences of the outdoor orientation programme. This included semi structured interviews, questionnaires, focus groups and participant observation. Results of the SAUQ questionnaire for stage 1 and 2 indicate that the intervention group had a significant overall better adaptation to university (and each of the 4 individual constructs) than the control group (p<0.05). These benefits of adaptation to university for 1st year students were explored through thematic areas of personal and social growth and development and explained through resilience theory and social penetration theory.