Shishapangma 6000m expedition

Trips & Expeditions

Our ability to successfully run the complex logistics needed for multi-day wilderness expeditions is at the heart of our philosophy as a provider of experiential education in the outdoors. Our experience ranges from two night training programs on Nanao Island to 5 week long Himalayan expeditions at over 5000m. The University Shantou Shishapangma expedition run in Autumn 2011 was one such expedition done in conjunction with the Li Ka Shing Foundation and several local providers from China and Nepal.

Horse, trekking Yunnan, Lashihai

Measuring Experiential Learning

Experiential education puts the student at the centre of learning and marks a shift in the traditional dynamics between students and teachers. The role of the experiential educator is to facilitate the transfer of learning from the experiential activity to the real world, structure the reflection process for the students so as to affect maximum learning from the experience, and ensure that learning outcomes are reached.

 

In assessing the effectiveness of our experiential programs, our focus is thus student centered. We view student assessment as a matter of making objective yet independent judgments about the level and quality of learning which has been reached by a student. Here, we are mindful to draw a balance between objective assessment tools that will allow us to compile data for further analysis; and the independent judgements of teachers and trainers in observing the changes in each individual student.

Objective assessment tools

During the initial consultation phase, we work closely with clients in devising the specific learning outcomes of each program.

Some of the main areas we examine include: social, psychological, attitudinal and intellectual. We have chosen the most applicable questionnaires in each field to help us construct a holistic picture of student development. To give an example of this approach, we would employ a modified version of the Rosenberg self esteem scale (psychological) and the Semantic Differential scale (attitudinal) at the beginning and the end of the program. From this data we could assess whether the students have improved throughout the course of the program. The data collected from these surveys are then neatly catalogued and we conduct quarterly meta-analysis to help us design more effective programs. Continuous improvement is something that we strive for. 

We combine the above with the independent observations from accompanying staff, teachers and our team. These observations are sometimes obtained through surveys and questionnaires and sometimes via reviews and discussions. We conduct periodic reviews of these surveys to fine tune the operational and facilitatory aspect of our programs. Examples of our evaluation and measurement tools can be provided upon request. Contact us for more information.

Catapult testing, team building, China

Management Development

Training for success using development in the outdoor

We offer a range of programmes to suit both your company and your career needs. Our team of dedicated professionals combine top academic knowledge, real life managerial experience and deep expertise in the outdoors to construct individualised programmes to suit the specific needs of your company or career aspirations through our unique modular Outdoor MBA (TM) courses that teach real life business functions in an amazing outdoor setting.

Modules include:

Information management, risk management, decision making, crisis control, product development, supply chain management, enterprise resource planning, and other business-relevant modules for all levels in the team.

Leadership training, team building, alliance structuring and development, and competition management courses.

Strategy and tactics at each level of implementation for each function.
 

Each module combines classroom instruction with problem-solving based casework to be executed in a challenging but safe outdoor environment for a learning experience that quickly turns theory into an unforgettable and tangible memory and experience that you and your teams can use throughout your organisation and careers. Outdoor MBA TM fills the gap between the hands off, risk free dreamy abstraction of the ivory tower and the hands on, survive or go under reality of modern business by immediately linking each learning with exercises that mirror the real world and provide invaluable feedback. Please check out our sample case study and activity "Who will eat the Apple?"

We have a wide range of venues around China and Hong Kong, ranging from expedition environments in Yunnan to Shenzhen’s Lianhua shan and Maluan shan. We can even design programmes to deliver in your office or work place.

Board game, team building

Field Studies in China

Geography teachers and graduates worldwide know the many varied struggles of conducting research. Our field studies in China are a great way for students of science to get hands on experience with the reality of data collection and analysis. We offer a range of Geography field studies programs in a variety of locations across China, Hong Kong and the Asia Pacific. Each program is tailored to your specific needs, with consideration taken for: classroom integration, program aims, and curriculum.

Currently our programs include: 

Field studies programs can also work as a micro campusing setup where the class carries on out of school for an extended period of time. Keep reading for more information on our range of field studies programmes.

 

River studies, Yangshuo, education outside

River studies in China

Join us and bring your river studies fieldwork to life with our river studies programs in locations around China, from Yangshuo and Danxia mountain in the south to Lin'An and Moganshan in the Shanghai area.

Student doing a soil MPK test in Moganshan China

ESS - Environmental Systems & Societies Studies

Our China ESS fieldwork programs are carefully made together with teachers and advisors from schools to create the best field and classroom links possible. We will do site visits for you, sharing photos, videos, and detailed location data which is perfect for use in a variety of coursework or review once you get back to the classroom. This includes: geo data files for google earth/gaia GPS, pins for open street map, and other critical information for effective data analysis.

An open source 3d printed flow meter for geography river studies

Open source DIY flow meter

At Zen Quest Adventures, we want everyone to have access to the tools they need in order to get the most possible out of our programmes. Thus, we designed, prototyped and built an open source flow meter to measure water speed in rivers. The current build shows water speed in Km/h and costs about 60USD for all the parts (a typical off the shelf unit will cost about USD1000). Flow meters are great tools for river surveys but are often prohibitively expensive, especially for secondary schools and field studies centres. LabQuest has somewhat of a monopoly on these sensors for use in schools and we think its high time there is an easy to make, low cost and hackable solution for these tools.
Students and teacher on a beach doing coastal studies data collection

Coastal studies

Join us for your coastal studies programs in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, we can help you get the data you need in the best locations possible. As with everything at Zen Quest, our coastal studies programs are highly customisable, down to the smallest details. We will work with you to create the perfect trip. Get in touch today and let us know your group size, age group, and desired learning outcomes, and we can create your trip!

Youth Development

Mind, Body and Youth Development


The mind and body is intricately connected and this relationship governs our entire behaviour and outlook in life. Our job as outdoor educator is to train both components to cultivate all rounded individuals capable of dealing with the many challenges they will face in life.

 

This is especially true for young adult, who needs to build up their character in preparing themselves to enter a highly competitive world. Participants in our programmes can expect to gain leadership qualities that range from: the ability to effectively work in teams; to construct realistic goals, to find a strategy in attaining such goals; to develop interpersonal and communication skills necessary in implementing the strategy, and most importantly the will and perseverance to attain their goals.

All too often outdoor programmes are hastily put together with various components. However, it is our belief that diversity without convergence is meaningless, programmes that aim to be too multifarious without synergy only serves to diffuse student learning. Our programmes operate according to our client’s specific need, we design modular components to synergistically meet the overarching objectives of our clients. 

Zen Quest is proud to announce its support as a sponsor of the 2014 ACAMIS (The Association of China and Mongolia International Schools) spring conference. We will be happy to answer questions and give advice on educational delivery in the outdoors. Click here for more information about the conference.

Group photo, Shaxi old theatre, China

Personal Development & Leadership

Leadership training is an experiential process necessary in preparing students
to lead. However, much of the existing leadership framework are aimed primarily at educated adults who are in an institutional position vested with power. As such, it has limited application to the budding adolescent mind.

Early adolescence is a developmental stage marked by hormonal and physical changes in the body.  As teens are dealing with the transition between childhood to early adulthood, this period is characterised by dramatic changes in identity, self consciousness and cognitive dexterity. Although many students are able to move beyond black and white thinking and begin to think in abstract terms, research have repeatedly demonstrated that students are more keen to learn about topics they can apply to real life, and some may reject the study of what they consider “academic subjects”. They prefer active over passive learning experiences, and value opportunities for interaction with peers during class.

Our 5-7 day program in Shaxi is specifically designed to cultivate the leadership qualities latent in all our students of this age. This is where the theory of servant leadership comes in.

“The servant leader is a servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. This is in sharp contrast to the person who is a leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions.” (Greenleaf, 1970)

Accordingly the focus of our leadership program lies in cultivating our students’ intrinsic need and passion in serving others. What we mean by serving others is not the narrowly defined, rudimentary and trite “service learning methodology" prevalent in other service providers from our industry. Service is an umbrella term that encapsulates the very essence of passion, of initiating an idea and have the confidence and ability to carry the idea out into fruition. The motivation for so doing is to better the lives of others, the methodology in achieving so will require vision, communication, investment and above all camaraderie and shared passion. In the following we will seek to demonstrate how this could be done.

Group photo, KGV, 2016, Yangshuo, Moon Hill

Schools

Empower your schools reach beyond the classroom

Experience

Change

Explore

Travel

 

 

 

China School Programs

Getting ready for the fall? Take your schools outdoor education, service learning, microcampus setup, expeditions and experiential education to the next level with Zen Quest’s tailor made, thematically designed programs. We set out to prove that outdoor education works, come and take part in this endeavour with us, as we use every program to further research, in the effectiveness of adventure education and service learning.

teaching, river studies, Lin'An, China, field sketch, people river
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Field Studies

Bringing students learning to life, with innovative programs, real world experiences and expert facilitators.

Trekking, river jump, two students, China
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Outdoor Education

Understanding outdoor education, and how we use it to improve lives through experience.

Problem Solving

Plan, Do, Review

Service Learning

Remote Classrooms

Immersion

Outdoor Education

River Studies, KGV, 17, field work, Yangshuo
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IB, GCSE & A Levels

Curriculum-based outdoor education and field studies

 

Shaxi rice field, with one student

Week without Walls

Education outside the classroom.

Porter ledge setup and photoshoot in Liming, China

Contact Us

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Danxia Mountain drone image, waterfall and temple

Dansha Mountain

Guangdong, China

Danxia Mountain 丹霞山, little known outside of China, is a geo-park in Guangdong province which has gained UNESCO recognition for its geology and natural habitats. The mountain is situated in Renhua County, about 45 kilometres (28 miles) from Shaoguan City. Covering an area of more than 280 square kilometres (69,190 acres), the mountain is composed primarily of red sandstone rocks.

 

The scenic area contains more than 680 various stone peaks, stone fortresses, walls, pillars and stone bridges. The stones have been formed over the eons by nature, many of them have likenesses to parts of the human body, birds and even animals.
Some activities include:

Trekking

Canoeing(homemade bamboo raft)

Abseiling

Community service (cleaning farmhouses or fixing the roads) and conducting research (on average personal income, population, number of people working out of town, number of staying people, daily life, transportation, local environmental protection and others).

Making moon cakes
Danxia flower image, raining
Antartica, photo by Ed Lau, Shantou student expedition

Global Issues

Taken by Ed Lau in Antarctica with Shantou University 2013

Global issues

Global scale, local action

Global issues; how to create leaders equipped with both a global vision and a willingness to work with others, the groundwork begins with education.

Issues such as global poverty, climate change and international disputes require solutions based on sacrifice, courage and integrity. Our programmes provide a great platform for developing the above qualities. Our Servant Leadership program focuses on shared decision making based on moral fortitude.

 

Real Yangshuo 2020

Local scale, global issue

14 square km of destruction in Yangshuo, China

The "Global Issues Network" has been around for a while now and many schools, educational establishments and companies actively take part in their conferences and educational workshops. The book Global Issues by John L. Seitz is now in its 5th addition revised in 2016 and serves as the backbone to the global issues network. Networks and discussions are all very well, however to have real learning and progress on global issues requires action. Thats where Zen Quest comes in, we can help your organisation arrange community outreach programmes, educational exchanges and logistics in many far flung areas across China.

Furthermore, engaging in local issues provides a platform for real life involvement where teams and individuals can see the immediate impact of their actions. Our job as educators is to tie those local issues with the larger concerns that are happening around the globe. Through activities such as building sustainable greenhouses in Shaxi and understanding the roots of poverty through active engagement with underprivileged locals, our multinational staff are especially adept at analysing local issues and applying it in a global context.

Also see: www.globalissues.org for more information on GI.

River Studies in China, students walking by a river with equipment

River Studies in China

Geography River Studies

Our field work programs bring learning to life, with innovative program design, real world experience and expert staff.
We take our knowledge of the outdoors and education, fusing them together to create the best facilitated learning experiences ever.

Contact us for more information on your next: coastal studies, river studies, or environmental science program in China.

River studies data collection, students checking the bed load

Experiential learning

We make good use of the experiential learning cycle, as working on a river environment can be challenging. We spend a good amount of time to conduct a comprehensive briefing, which allows river studies students to conduct themselves independently once they reach the test site. After each data collection is complete we review in small groups or as a whole, allowing students to share their findings with each other, reinforcing learning and helping to better prepare for following stages. This also creates a great teaching environment as many rivers are very noisy, so making use of some outdoor and indoor space away from the river creates a winning combination.

River studies, girl in river with fishing waders and poll

Safety

There is plenty of objective risk to manage in, on and around any small river environment. Our team carry out site inspections, written risk assessments and dynamic risk assessments for every venue we use. Not only that, we also bring safety to the forefront of the student learning experience by facilitating a session on risk assessment and risk management at the beginning of each course. In this way students become much more aware of the risks and hazards in and on the river which they are investigating and we encourage and facilitate them as they plan their own risk management on the river. This not only serves to make our programs safer but will help students plan for future geography river studies trips and apply simple risk management to their everyday lives.

Data collection River Studies

Data Collection

Depending on requirements we can adapt your geography river studies program to a wide range of environments, age groups and curriculums. We can include everything from chemical tests and measurements, to creative science projects building river strainers and clinometers.

River studies, technology speed test

Technology

Outdoor education has been largely unchanged since the 1960s, where experiential education and outward bound research pointed the industry to use the outdoors as a personal and social development platform. Now as then, our activities are run, our reviews are done and we move on. But where outdoor education has been running along largely unchanged the modern classroom has undergone a technological transformation with projectors, multi media systems, one laptop per child, networked learning, and even virtual classrooms. So we thought its high time that we brought some of these classroom technologies into the field and integrated them into ‘new outdoor education’. We have micro laser projectors that can be used inside a tent, tablet computers, and action cameras. These technologies help everyone collect and share information and bring data to life. We have developed in house an open source flow meter showing river velocity that can be built with off the shelf parts, giving your students a competitive edge in data collection.

Girl Rock Climbing in Yangshuo

Activities

Its not all work, we recognise that students learn best when they have time to play and relax on program. We build in plenty of structured team building, games and outdoor activities throughout their geography river studies program. These activities can include everything from country dancing, to rock climbing and raft building.

Velocimetry in River Studies

Recently we have been studding Velocimetry for geography river studies. Read our blog on this to find out more.
Houwu river studies, IB
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