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Background: Experiential educators face difficulties assessing participants and programs because there are so many measurement tools to choose from, many measures have validity issues such as those based on self-reported data, objective tests may not adequately measure social or psychological outcomes, and tests in content disciplines often assess knowledge rather than skill in synthesis, analysis, or evaluation. Purpose: We hypothesized that an open-ended essay final would reliably measure individual growth, internalization of foundational threshold concepts in our disciplines, and the effectiveness of our outdoor, interdisciplinary program. Methodology/Approach: Student essays contained 36 student-generated concepts spread across our four disciplines (biology, writing, history, and recreation) which we compared with 20 threshold concepts from professional literature. Findings/Conclusions: Individual students identified about half of the concepts generated by the whole group, illustrating that their learning varied significantly. Our group identified 13 of the published threshold concepts. Students demonstrated comprehension of threshold concepts--foundational ways of seeing--as opposed to restatements of information from teachers' lectures. Implications: Writing essays aids permanent cognitive and behavioral learning; coding responses to open-ended essay questions for threshold concepts can be a valuable tool for both individual student and program assessment in experiential education.

Compassion fatigue (CF) is a well-researched topic in the fields of mental health and nursing. However, studies on CF in the fields of primary, secondary, and higher education are very recent and scant. Compassion fatigue (CF) can be defined as the empathic strain or general exhaustion experienced by helping professionals such as psychotherapists, nurses, social workers, healthcare workers, family caregivers, and elderly caregivers. In this paper, utilizing the Double ABC-X Stress Model, we explored the antecedents, experiences, and consequences of compassion fatigue among college students and professionals who have previous personal experiences with stress and trauma, work with children and families, and work in higher education to prepare professionals to work in such fields. This study uses an autoethnographic approach, where the five authors of the study were also the participants. Utilizing the lifespan and ecological perspectives, we examined the symptoms preceding compassion fatigue and preventative strategies, as well as risk factors and protective factors. This study covers a breadth of compassion fatigue, from predisposition to onset and recovery, and considers alternative strategies for coping, including creating meaning from difficult experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]