Outres,
Another thought provoking message from Chris! But it seems more
'right of centre' than 'left of centre' (part of your original
subject line, Chris) - because the Experience Economy is all about
selling intangible stuff to people: businesses used to sell goods and
services, now they sell experiences and transformations. (I think
there's more than a few on this list trying to track down and measure
the intangibles in our trade.)
So are we in the business of selling experiences? The knee-jerk
answer is that we sell learning that arises from the experience, not
the experience itself. But can we be so sure? Experience and learning
are so closely intertwined that I'd challenge anyone to draw a clear
dividing line between the business of selling experience and the
profession of experiential learning. Just take a look at the images
in the brochures of adventure education providers and work out the
balance of what they are really selling i.e. what is the balance
between experience and learning being offered?
If we accept some connection with the ideas expressed in the
Experience Economy then it may throw some new light on old thorny
issues in outdoor education.
For example, I thought there was only one kind of authenticity, but
apparently there are five 'genres' of authenticity all of which are
about the _perception_ of being real. However these genres of
authenticity (exceptional, natural, original, referential and
influential) may help us work out what kind of real is most
significant in OE (I think all of them already exist in OE). Maybe
this is a more sophisticated than real vs. apparent? Maybe 'real' can
be measured in terms of 'vibrancy' (another of their terms) rather
than being a term related mainly to risk assessment?
I think there is also something valuable in the concept of 'staging
experiences'. Some ideas seem to contradict the constructivist view
of experience such as when they define absorption as 'experience
going in to the person' and immersion as 'the person going into the
experience'. They do talk about experiences being personal and
memorable. Maybe the big difference in educational experiences is
that a greater degree of personalisation is (or should be) possible?
Unless self-development is a process of conformity.
Thank you Chris for bringing these different ideas about experience
and authenticity into the world of outdoor education research.
Roger
Roger Greenaway
Reviewing Skills Training
<http://reviewing.co.uk>
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