The Keeping of Experiences

(The Magic Box-A Keeper of Experiences)

There are times when I have been facilitating a group, either experiential or environmental, and I wished I had either written down the results or been able to video tape a specific experience for the learning that occurred. Years ago a ropes course training company I worked for used to video tape training sessions of new facilitators to be used as review material in the evenings. In many cases people would remark that they never remembered things that they saw on the video tapes. We got wonderful feedback from participants on how the video sessions helped them get more learning from the entire experience.

As many of you may experience when working with groups, either 1-day or multi-day, the retention of learning may not be as long lasting or impact-full as we want it to be. In the traditional days of an Outward Bound course where the group was together for up to 30 days, time for transference was much more available. In the shorter length programs that many of us run, debriefing and creating transference of the experience may not get a sizable amount of time.

I want to present a technique that I have used in both environmental and experiential programs. I call it the Keeper of Knowledge, or simply The Keeper. Before I get into describing the process, let me provide a little background. In working on my masters program in Environmental Studies along with my research on Indigenous Wilderness Skills I noticed that many indigenous cultures had members of their societies who held sacred positions within the community and were responsible for keeping certain knowledge alive. Examples are Storytellers, Fire Keepers, Medicine People, makers of certain tools, and Scouts. These positions were often handed down from generation to generation within a tribe or clan.

I began thinking about how indigenous cultures keep their traditions and how they teach their children. In many cases from the Kalahari to The Americas to Australia, indigenous people used non-verbal traditions to pass on culture and to teach place-based education. While we as facilitators and naturalists do use verbal skills for a large part of our facilitation process, I wanted to add an additional method to help participants retain more of the teachable moments of their programs that would also engage participants.

So what I began doing was creating a role for the group called The Keeper. The role has a very specific task. Wether you are facilitating a ropes course group or working with participants in an outdoor/environmental education program, the role of Keeper can be implemented rather easily. In general I have the position of Keeper be in charge of recording data and important actions. I do provide a note book, or in a few cases I have also provided a digital camera and once a video camera. And there is more to the position than simply recording data.

In teambuilding groups I have either given the Keeper a set of tasks to look for or a set of questions to answer. Some sample questions have been "Who was taking a leadership role?", "What ideas were the group ignoring?", "What are examples of efficient and inefficient communication that you noticed?", and  "How well did the group follow the plan they created?". You can really guide the learning if you want to go that way. And you can also go more towards a participant centered process. If you want to involve the group a little more, have the group create the items that the Keeper will be keeping track of during the activity. This way the group is more involved in their own outcomes and the learning they deem important.

In an outdoor or environmental education situation, I have had the Keeper record the learning points of the day, including items we found on our Discovery Hike. I have also found that the Keeper can record key questions that are asked and also help in getting the group together after an activity to record our findings. For example, I have used the Keeper role after a group has gone tide pooling and we didn't bring our journals down to the pools. But after we all finished exploring, the Keeper was able to help record all of the cool things we had found.

I have found that the role of Keeper can also be useful when you have participants that for any number of reasons, are not willing or able to take part in an activity. It can keep people engaged in the process, and help the group enhance their overall learning and retention levels. Be cautious about letting a single person use this role as a way to disengage from the group. I have found that in many cases withdrawn participants have become involved in the group by way of reporting back to the group on their performance and actually become very vital to the group.      

At the end of your program, make sure your group gets the notes and information collected by the Keeper. A corporate group can continue to review the notes if they are committed to group development, and a school group can use the information in numerous ways throughout the semester. I hope you enjoy exploring how to use Keepers in your programming. Let me know how it goes for you. I look forward to hearing feedback from you.

You can always send in comments, and feedback here on the blog, or email me at:

asinglefootstep@gmail.com