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 Challenge Course
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Description |
The University of Iowa’s High Adventure Challenge Course is a unique way to experience the intricacies of communication, cooperation, and trust. The program isn’t complicated: groups join us at the new High Adventure Challenge Course located in the West Campus area for a day of games and challenges. It is a chance to enjoy the natural world, and an opportunity to find out more about yourself and your fellow group members. As people work through the day, they discover their individual and group resources, and most importantly, they learn through experience—and fun.
There are clear purposes behind the fun: participants focus on improving interpersonal skills, on discovering the many benefits of play and problem solving. Typically, they speak of putting their discoveries into action long after their challenge course experience: past participants tell us that their group dynamics improved, that their solutions to real-world problems became more creative, that the transformative moments they had during their Challenge Course experience became a kind of touchstone.
What happens during a day on the Course? The experience is different for each group. Our staff custom-designs a series of activities to help get your group going: simple games involve our plentiful stash of hula hoops, beach balls, and the occasional rubber chicken. As your day progresses, you may find yourselves working together to solve imaginary problems ranging from simple to sublime, always involving our favorite resources: brain power, ridiculous props, and a sense of play. The group discovers and enhances its own abilities, with guidance from our facilitators when appropriate, and to a large extent the group itself determines the day’s focus.
Our two ropes courses, constructed with beams, cables, ropes, and platforms on poles, give participants the opportunity to face challenges with controlled risk. On both the high and low ropes course, participants discover more about their resources, and can choose whether to challenge their physical and psychological limits in an environment of safety and support. The experiences are sequenced to create and build trust among participants, and to encourage involvement of the entire group, regardless of age, ability, or physical condition.
The High Adventure Challenge Course is an effective tool in helping student leaders, University departments, public school groups and agencies, and business enterprises become effective leaders and teams. Fun is what brings the experience to life: it helps keep people focused, engaged, and connected to each other. And that kind of active involvement helps participants benefit long after their day ends.
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Objectives |
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Most of the participants enjoy the fast-paced action, the trust and bonding between people, the intriguing challenges, and the atmosphere of taking risks within a safe environment. Though our approach has fun at its center, it also has important learning objectives at heart:
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Developing physical, motor, mental, and social skills
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Learning more about personal and group strengths and weaknesses
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Developing communication skills and trust among group members
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Improving cooperation, decision-making, and teamwork skills
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Encouraging creative problem-solving
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Awakening people’s curiosity about each other
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Encouraging skillful leadership, in the best and most subtle sense of the word
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We encourage your group to use the same skills that can be taught more didactically in schools, seminars, and training programs. The educational outcomes may be similar. But our approach is purposefully different, and frequently has outstanding results.
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Format |
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Before you arrive, we work with your group’s coordinator to familiarize ourselves with your specific goals and challenges. On the day of your event, we welcome you to the course with a series of games, initiatives, and challenges.
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The games are designed to familiarize everyone with each other: we begin to get to know you, and your group begins to loosen up with games designed to get their bodies moving and their imaginations sparking.
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Initiatives present your group with imaginary scenarios: you may find yourselves charged with transporting an endangered “egg” thirty feet without touching it, or rescuing part of your group when they become stuck in an imaginary spill of Grade B of toxic waste.
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Events on the low course can involve balancing your entire group on a giant teeter-totter, helping everybody through an oversized spider’s web, or helping each other traverse wires just a few inches above the ground.
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High course events allow participants to challenge themselves with ladders, platforms, and ropes and cables ranging up to forty feet above the ground.
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Processing is the key ingredient in helping your group obtain its objectives. Although the ropes course events often receive the most attention, the processing that occurs after each game, initiative, or event is what coalesces the experience for your group. The processing, directed by trained instructors and group consultants, focuses on personal growth and group development, becoming the program’s most important ingredient.
We offer half-day, day-long, and two-day events.
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Participation |
- Participation is open to anyone, though you must be part of a group with a minimum of 12 people. If your group wants to participate on the high course, our maximum load is 20 people. If your program does not include the high course, we can accommodate up to 60 participants. Participants must be at least 12 years old, and physical conditioning is not a limiting factor or requirement.
- Group participation must be scheduled through the University of Iowa Department of Recreational Services. All participants must complete and sign a Health Statement Form and a Release of Liability and Assumption of Risk Form prior to participating in the program.
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