My Experiences on Rope Course

What was the experience like for you?

It was a great experience for me to have outdoor activities in a language class. Instead of sitting inside the classroom and listen to lectures, I personally found that outdoor activities work more effectively for learning and reinforce the relationship between classmates.

 Were there any benefits to you as an individual? 

I learnt “teamwork” and “leadership” from this rope courses. As the mentor said, there are two types of leadership among the group of us and I found out which category I belongs to.

 What were the benefits to us as a class? 

We learnt how to work together as a group to solve problems. We also learnt that gathering ideas from each different individual is the best way to cope difficult tasks. It even embedded us with the value of trust through the “commander and tank” game whereby we need to trust our partner’s instruction while we were blindfolded.

Compare and contrast how this activity relates to the themes in Ch 4? 

This activity portrayed the “can-do” spirit which is one of the themes in Chapter 4. We tried many ways in crossing to the boxes using a wooden plank which seems impossible for us and we finally succeed after many times of trail and errors.  The theme of “equality of opportunities” also can be found in this rope course as we have equal chances to play the game in “commander and tank”. However self reliance is not found through the rope course because we work as a team throughout the activities. 

Is this activity uniquely “American” or is this something your culture has or could have as well?    

I don’t think that this is a uniquely American activity because I had done 2 out of the 3 activities in this rope course back in my country.