Exciting news for the UPLOADS Research Team who are based at the University of the Sunshine Coast:

In A Queensland first a new degree in outdoor education will be offered at the University of the Sunshine Coast from next year.

The double degree, Bachelor of Education (Secondary)/Bachelor of Recreation and Outdoor Environmental Studies will prepare students to teach health and physical education (HPE) in secondary schools, in addition to opening up career pathways in outdoor education centres, adventure tourism and ecotourism.

Senior Lecturer in Outdoor Environmental Education Dr Glyn Thomas said the four-year double degree offered a career pathway unique in Queensland.

“The health and physical education teacher that emerges has two teaching areas, but also the capacity to teach outdoor education or environmental education,” he said.

Click here to read the full article in the Sunshine Coast Daily

Click here for more information on the new Bachelor of Education (Secondary) / Bachelor of Recreation and Outdoor Environmental Studies

A key member of the UPLOADS Research Team, Professor Caroline Finch, has been awarded the 2015 International Distinguished Career Award by the American Public Health Association’s (APHA) Injury Control and Emergency Health Services (ICEHS) Section.

The award recognises Caroline’s “outstanding dedication and leadership in injury/violence prevention and control and emergency health services internationally with contributions and achievements that have a significant and long term impact on the field”.

Click here to read the full article from Federation University Australia.

Paul Salmon and I have just published an new article in The Conversation which argues that safety critical sectors such as road, rail and aviation can learn a lot from the UPLOADS Project when it comes to learning from accidents.

Since the launch of the UPLOADS National Trial, the outdoor sector in Australia has had an standardised, national approach to incident reporting underpinned by a systems approach. This approach supports the identification of the complex web of factors which contribute to accident causation.  Moreover, by contributing data to the UPLOADS National Incident Dataset, organisations are supporting sector-wide learning and accident prevention.

Click here to read the article in full.

Paul Salmon, Clare Dallat and I recently conducted a workshop for the Outdoor Recreation department at TAFE Western – Lithgow.

The aim of the workshop was to develop critical reflection skills for better understanding why accidents happen and developing appropriate countermeasures from a systems perspective.

We presented an overview of how the systems approach can help you to understand why accidents happen, using examples from other safety-critical domains such as aviation and emergency response. You can download the slides here: UPLOADS Lithgow TAFE Feb 2015.

We then ran a series of activities designed to develop the skills required to gather more information about accidents, and design more appropriate countermeasures. We’ve developed a series of interview questions for this purpose, and a criteria for evaluating countermeasure development.

Mic Rofe, the Course Coordinator, just sent us this amazing feedback:

“I wanted to thank the team at University of Sunshine Coast Accident Research for running a workshop on Adopting a Systems-Based Approach to Accident Analysis and Prevention.

Following the workshop I have noticed a cultural shift in the way we look at and talk about  incidents.  Because most of our team were present we are now talking a common language.  Rather than looking for blame, we have been looking up and out to better understand the many factors that have contributed to the incident.  This has then helped us to better focus our efforts on improving our systems.

Some of the scenarios during the workshop were based on actual near misses and incidents from our workplace.  It was enlightening  to see how much more we learnt about the contributing factors by using the Accident Reaearch team’s interviewing/analysis tools.

 A number of our teachers commented that it had been one of the most valuable training sessions that they had attended.” 13th March 2015

Paul, Clare and I had an amazing day hearing from some of the most experienced outdoor educators in the field – so it was fantastic to get this feedback.

We’re running a similar session, which also covers risk management with ORIC at the end of March. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to run similar workshops in other States later in the year.