Curriculum | Not Just an Outdoor School

By Travis Welch Alumni Programs Coordinator and Instructor

At its heart, NOLS is an outdoor school. Our teachings have historically been delivered by passionate educators in classrooms and the wilderness. But that’s changing. The pandemic has pushed all of us to explore our learning edges, and NOLS is embracing the opportunity to connect with more and different people through digital delivery systems.

An increased need for continuing education became apparent last spring when thousands of grads were not able to re-certify their Wilderness Medicine certifications due to class cancellations. The solution was not simple, but it was elegant. NOLS built a free online continued learning platform for anyone who would like to join it. This platform uses videos, articles, slideshows, case studies, and practice tests to help participants recall existing knowledge and to refresh them on curriculum changes. It is self-guided and self-paced and has become very popular since its launch last June. The key differentiator: when compared to past digital resources, it’s organized to be easily navigated.

Back in 2013, NOLS launched a hybrid Wilderness First Responder Recertification course, a combination of online and in-person learning. While not appropriate for all cases, it’s become popular because of the shorter time needed for in-person learning. With increased acceptance of online learning, we pushed forward, creating a hybrid Wilderness First Responder course.

The NOLS Hybrid Wilderness First Responder course blends online and in-person learning. Students have three weeks to complete 30-45 hours of online education before attending five in-person days to complete the course. This provides a shorter in-person experience while also creating the appropriate depth of knowledge important for this certification. This new course launched in May. While we will keep our bias towards fully in-person education intact, we’re very excited to expand our offerings.

We haven’t spent all of our time focusing on external products, though! Internally, NOLS has been using similar digital platforms to provide continuing education to our faculty. These vary between self-paced exercises and live training or forums. We now understand the power of bringing together people from all over the world in these digital formats to retain community, spread education, and see smiling faces.

Worth a special mention are two donors who have funded NOLS’ expansion into digital content and hybridized products. Without generous philanthropic support, this project would have been harder to achieve during a time of financial stress.

You’ll likely see more digital presence from NOLS. Many lessons still need to be learned, but we’re excited to integrate this style of education into the broad suite of methods NOLS has developed to be “the leading source of outdoor skills and leadership that serve people and the environment.”

Travis Welch, NOLS’ Alumni Programs Coordinator, hails from Austin, Texas. His spirit animal is a sea otter, which makes sense considering the weeks he has accrued on the water for NOLS.

The NOLS Hybrid Wilderness First Responder course blends online and in-person learning. Kirk Rasmussen