Course Design Thesis

[tahoe]

I recently completed my Masters thesis in Landscape Architecture at Cal Poly Pomona on Disc Golf Course Design for Underutilized landscapes of urban Southern California, including discussions on play, leisure and lifestyle sports.
Includes 44 interview transcriptions from 4 courses.

It is posted online:

http://issuu.com/subsurface_2012-13/docs/plansky_disc_golf_thesis_r3

any thoughts?

 

[Horsman]

Holy reading Batman

 

[tom12003]

Quickly browsed pages 9-35; good job. I look forward to reading more. There's a lot of useful info that I could have used while writing a course proposal several years ago.

 

[ElementZ]

Fantastic work!

 

[Colt]

Awesome, something for me to nerd out on late nights! Great work sir

 

[billtvshow]

I read a fair amount and skimmed other parts. Really sweet graphics work throughout. This has to be one of the more substantial single documents about disc golf that exists.

 

[Lewis]

Interesting stuff. How much time you spend on the research and writing?

 

[jeverett]

Hi Tahoe,

I was particularly pleased to see your review of the literature on 'play' (starting on pg. 43). It looks like you covered most of the usual authors (e.g. Roger Caillois and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) and gave a good overview of the topic.

The two areas that seemed a little light/glossed over were the topics of (the motivational value of) uncertainty/risk, and games as learning environments. For the former, I really like examples from folks like Ellen J. Langer (Stanford). Her study on the use of the phrase "some of what you are about to hear may or may not be true" to increase student engagement during lectures, for example, was in my opinion brilliant. Over on the learning side, the best overview/synopsis I've seen to date was written by game designer Raph Koster: A Theory of Fun for Game Design. One of his hallmark statements, for example, is "Fun is just another word for learning".

Anyway, the thesis was good reading, and I hope it was well-received!

 

[DiscgolfStu]

Just skimmed through it, but it looks extremely comprehensive and I can see it being an amazing resource for a lot of people. Nicely done!

 

[discgolfaholic]

Go Broncos! I did not discover disc golf until after I graduated but I wish we could set up a course on campus at CPP. I look forward to digging deeper into this.

 

[MacDaddy]

Great job! The sport of disc golf, city and parks & rec planners and their boards and budgets, can all benefit from this. We absolutely need more serious studies in academia of course design, construction and maintenance, sports physiology, sports and hospitality management and more to help legitimize and mainstream disc golf as an industry. It really is fertile ground right now due to the lack of many papers such as yours. This will also help parks & rec professionals and local disc golfers and disc golf clubs, understand why using or working with professional course designers is often in their best interest. :thmbup:

 

[tahoe]

Disc Golf Course Design Thesis now on Lulu.com

After receiving positive response and encouragement to publish from this and other forums on disc golf, landscape architecture and sustainable design I decided to format my thesis for 2-page printing, add a cover, add a foreword and correct grammatical, formatting errors. "Reads" on 5 continents and 23 countries were recorded, and nearly 4000 impressions in 2 mo. on issuu.com.
I have now removed the original manuscript from issuu.com

Disc Golf Course Design: Inscribing Lifestyle into Underutilized Landscapes
can now be found in its entirety on Amazon, Barnes&Noble, A Norwegian online bookseller among others, but a deep discount is available from my print-on-demand publisher/distributor Lulu.com by searching for "disc golf" from their bookstore or this link: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/disc_golf

A DISC GOLF REVOLUTION IS UPON US!