Outdoor Education Research & Evaluation Center - Review Comments

It has taken some time for such a resource to appear in cyberspace. There have been notable individual efforts by a number of people who have gone the extra mile in making such information available. Christian Itin was (I think) the first to produce a portal site. Mikal Belicove runs a huge news and information site. Steve Bowles digs deep on his own research site, and Rick Curtis is gathering research together on his new site. Many professional association sites are also contributing to this growing web of outdoor research and researchers. There are also discussion groups based in the USA, UK and Australia that occasionally spring to life on issues in outdoor education research.

James Neill's site gives you easy access to all these other sites, as well as providing access to research conducted by James and other staff at the University of New Hampshire. But this is far more than an information portal. It is part of a campaign to encourage all researchers in this field to make better use of the web. For example, James points out that articles published on the web are more likely to be cited. And research has even demonstrated this!

There is still a long way to go in encouraging outdoor researchers to make full use of the internet and its various resources. As more people take an active part in this growing community of researchers, will small, new, alternative voices be welcomed or smothered? How can we bring a community together that speaks with so many different voices? James is helping to develop a living library for us - it is up to the users (us) whether we choose to stay on the research motorways or choose to take the byways into our own special adventures of curiosity and discovery.

James left a comprehensive summary of the research carried out by himself and his colleagues at Outward Bound Australia (see their website). He is active in many internet discussion groups and took a key role in the 'Scisco Conscientia' experiment - an online research journal and discussion group that gained much less support than it deserved (the archives are on James' site). We need more experimentation to discover what works online - while also working out what works well in the wilderness (or in our own particular outdoor play space). Thanks to James' continuing work for the outdoor research community, we have an opportunity to make some real progress on this difficult journey.

James has a simple and useful question page at the heart of this website. Not only does it help you to navigate this fast growing site, it also invites you to ask questions to James. If you do visit this site, say hello to James and show some appreciation, even if you do not have a question to ask. Perhaps a good research site should provoke more questions than it answers?

reviewed by Roger Greenaway

• on-line, full-text articles and theses (including access to on-line e-libraries for individual authors)
• evaluation and research tools
• list of people with areas of expertise and interests
• links to conferences, other research sites, journals, etc.
• information on how to conduct research and evaluation, including help with quantitative and qualitative research design, analysis, and report writing
• access to UNH's research & evaluation support services
• links to, or hosting of, your research & evaluation material

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