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Recreation 375

Leadership development was a class I took as a requirement for my outdoor education minor. This class focused on creating leadership qualities through adventuring outdoors and learning skills, qualities, and techniques required for leading outdoor trips. This course was changed to an online asynchronous class because of the COIVD-19 pandemic and suffered because of it. I found out through correspondence with the professor during rock climbing club meetings that many of the activities had to change and the class looked very different from how it normally would. We were unable to take a backpacking trip which he said was one of the big events for the class and something we both looked forward to. While many of the assignments were online and due at your own pace professor Dolence found ways to both stay inside the bounds of the restrictions and get some hands-on activities through various ways. Although I would have loved to take the class in a normal format I think it was done excellently with the restrictions that were in place during the time and that the use of the disc golf field for activities provided a great break from the monotony in my daily routine. The formatting of the canvas page and detailed information/videos/instructions given were very helpful and made the assignments much easier to complete without the classroom experience (i.e. being able to ask questions easily, in-class discussions, etc.). This was also helped by professor Dolence being very willing to meet and set up a time to answer questions, help with directions, or find the next place to hike.

This paper was to show how the outdoors shaped your life so far and how your experiences have influenced views on the wilderness.