The students of RLS 225 - Program Planning for Leisure were tasked to put on a physical literacy day for over 360 Edmonton youth
Lunch is weighing heavy in your stomach. You show up right at 1:59pm because your brain is still trying to get back into learning mode. You say hi to your classmates and then settle in for an 80 minute class, which normally consists of lectures, theory and occasional labs.
This is a typical 2:00 pm Thursday class scenario for Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation students…unless you are in Craig Cameron's RLS 225 - Program Planning for Leisure class.
Theories and lectures wrapped up at the end of September for the 45 Bachelor of Arts in Recreation, Sport and Tourism (BARST) students as they traded in their textbooks for experiential learning.
"I wanted to give our students an opportunity to experience what program planning for recreation, sport and tourism in the real-world context may be like, and to put the theories learned in the first month of class into action," says Cameron, Senior Tripartite Liaison with the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation.
With that, the group went from being a class of post-secondary students to young professionals in the working world.
Allocated to nine working groups - Design, Communication, Finance, Anticipation/Recollection, Logistics, On-Site (three groups focused on this area) and Evaluation - the teams collaboratively worked on hosting a Physical Literacy Day for approximately 360 Edmonton-based elementary-aged youth.
"Each team had a set of responsibilities that they would apply their learnings to. We would use the 2:00 pm classes to come together and update on our areas, collaborate and troubleshoot. We would also invite industry professionals to the class to provide their insights and expertise to the students."
One of the industry guest speakers was University of Alberta Campus & Community Recreation (CCR) associate directors Greg Lembke. Working out of the Saville Community Sports Centre on UAlberta's South Campus, Lembke has years of experience event planning and execution in the sport and recreation context.
"We provided information as it related to fundraising and applying for grants," says Lembke. "We discussed scheduling, programming, facility bookings, staffing - ratio planning, game planning, transportation to and from the facility, transportation of 360 youth within the facility, and covering facility policies and procedures."
Further to providing expertise, Greg acted as the site contact for the students as the Physical Literacy Day was to be held at the Saville Community Sports Centre - one of the 37 facilities within the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation.
"The Saville Community Sports Centre acted as a living lab for this class," explains Lembke "With Campus & Community Recreation being a large business unit within the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation, we were able to act as a practical resource to the academic side of the Faculty."
"We are very lucky to have access to so many facilities and industry professionals right in our own backyards," says Cameron. "Working with CCR, as well as the Athletics events and promotions team, we were able to provide an experiential learning environment for the class that had a direct, real impact on our community."
In this case, the community was the Edmonton Catholic School District. The class was able to use an existing relationship between The Saville Community Centre and the District to identify 6 schools from areas of the city where kids wouldn't normally get a chance to visit this kind facility. . This connection also allowed the Dr. Cameron's students to apply their experience towards a certificate in Community Service Learning
After being connected with the Edmonton Catholic School District, the students were left to lead the work it takes to plan a large-scale event.
The event - U of PLAY Physical Literacy Day - was a structured-play day for 366 students from six different schools across Edmonton. The youth, who spanned grades three to six, were split up into six different groups that varied in age and schools, and ran through a series of well-planned and organized games and activities.
The list of responsibilities was long: organizing bus transportation and student arrival; storing the kids and teachers' coats and lunches; keeping the kids busy prior to the morning assembly; arranging and staffing Guba and Patches - the Golden Bears and Pandas mascots; acting as team leads for each youth group; running and monitoring the activities; keeping the events on schedule; taking photos; and so on and so forth.
From relay races and beachball volleyball to games like Red Light, Green Light and British Bulldog, the day and pace was carefully planned out to the minute. The smiling faces, the constant laughter and the seemingly never-ending dance party was a sure sign that the U of Play Physical Literacy Day was extremely well-received by the participating schools.
"Overall, the day was a success," says Cameron "We received wonderful feedback from the students, teachers, principals and parents who attended. The day was not without it's minor hiccups, but the team worked through them with logic and professionalism."
What the students of RLS 225 gained through this experience could not have been duplicated if they stuck to theory, lectures and hypothetical scenarios. The benefits of experiential learning were not lost upon second year BARST student Amanda Magyr.
"To experience hands-on, tangible learning is extremely valuable to me as a student. I could sit in a class doing theory for hours and have learned almost next to nothing. But when you take the theories that you have just learned in class and take it to the next level of actually applying it to the real (recreation) world, I find that it remains in your memory and can easily be applied to what you are doing in the future."
"The students still have their final exams, and I look forward to reading their reflections on this real-world experience when compared to programming theory they learned earlier in the term," says Cameron.
Will this become the new format for RLS 225? "We learn by doing, both my students and I," says Dr. Cameron. "We are still collecting feedback from all those involved. Once this is in I can think about next time, but I hope so."