When Kilvington Grammar brought their Year 9 cohort to Melbourne’s CBD for an Urban Quest school excursion, they got something most excursions don’t deliver: a winning team who called it the best excursion they’d had, and a teacher who noticed things about his students he’d never seen in a classroom.
What follows is drawn from two separate interviews recorded on the day — Michael Schmidt, Science and Geography teacher and Year 9 Impact Program coordinator, and the winning student team who claimed the top spot on the Urban Quest Leaderboard. Between them, they paint a clear picture of what actually happens when secondary students are put into a competitive, city-based team challenge with no teacher hand-holding required.
Why Kilvington Chose Urban Quest for Year 9
Michael Schmidt teaches science and geography and works closely with the Year 9 Impact Program. This cohort-based structure places teamwork and collaboration at the centre of the year level’s development. When asked what the school was hoping students would take away from the day, his answer was direct:
“A bit of team bonding. We’ve done a few scavenger hunts of our own, but just something that’s a bit more engaging and also just gets them working, collaborating as a team — because teamwork is a big part of the program that we’re trying to work on.”
Urban Quest’s format — competing teams of students navigating Melbourne’s CBD using smartphones and Augmented Reality clues, with no teachers required to manage the gameplay — mapped directly onto what the Year 9 Impact Program needed. Not a passive excursion. Not a guest speaker. Something that forces the skills the curriculum is already building.
What the Teacher Noticed on the Day
Michael spent part of the event working alongside one of the student groups, which gave him a close view of how the cohort was engaging. What he observed was different from what he sees in his regular classes:
“The students seemed really engaged. There was a bit of downtime where they were trying to solve the problems, but they were always actively working towards it and trying to predict ahead what the answers might be before we actually got there.”
That proactive problem-solving — students thinking ahead rather than waiting to be told what to do — is exactly the kind of independent learning that structured excursions aim to produce but rarely deliver as consistently.
When asked how this compared to how students normally work, Michael was candid:
“Certainly a lot more engaged than in my science class. A lot more collaborative and very much on task compared to when they’re sitting there doing their normal work in class.”
This is one of the most frequently cited observations from teachers who bring students to Urban Quest — and it matters for a specific reason. The competitive team format means students have an intrinsic motivation that a classroom rarely replicates. They’re not doing this for a mark. They’re doing it to win.
How Urban Quest Fits the Year 9 Impact Program
The Year 9 Impact Program’s emphasis on teamwork and real-world application makes it a natural fit for an experience structured around collaboration under time pressure. Urban Quest’s challenges are not designed to be completed individually — every stage requires communication, shared decision-making, and the kind of trust that develops only when students rely on each other in an unfamiliar environment.
For students who don’t regularly work together, the city context adds another dimension. As Michael noted, navigating Melbourne’s CBD — learning to read the environment, manage time, and make decisions on the move — is a real-world skill that most traditional excursions can’t replicate. For year 9 students beginning to think about independence beyond school, it’s a meaningful rehearsal.
The Winning Team’s Perspective
The student reel tells the other half of the story. The winning team — who finished ahead of every other group in their cohort — were asked a series of questions about their experience on camera, and their answers are worth hearing directly.
On what roles they each played within the team:
“We didn’t have specific roles. We all worked together and all shared input to come together to get the correct answers. Some of us did the maps and how to get to different places.”
On the hardest moment of the day:
“The word scramble with different colours — it had a lot of words and a lot of different combinations and we spent some time trying to sort out all the combinations to get to the final answer.”
And on the Augmented Reality element:
“The augmented reality stuff was pretty cool and the answers were pretty specific to the location — you had to look around and think ‘that’s it’ — that was fun.”
What stands out in the student responses is the balance between the competitive drive and the genuine learning. These students weren’t passive participants. They were navigating, problem-solving, splitting up to cover ground faster, and coming back together when a challenge proved difficult:
“The second one where we had to do the Augmented Reality superheroes — we all struggled a fair bit with that, but we came together and got it in the end.”
What Made This Different From Other Excursions
When asked directly how this compared to other activities they’d done before, the students were specific about what set Urban Quest apart:
“I like how you couldn’t cheat. You had to do all the steps one by one and that really helped.”
“I thought it was very fun and competitive.”
“I like how the answers are like really common knowledge. So we had to really dive deep to get the answers. We also learn a lot of different new fun facts along the way.”
Michael’s comparison was equally direct. The Year 9 program had previously run activities focused on guest speakers addressing social issues — worthwhile, but passive:
“This could be put in more of a fun category compared to some of those. A lot more interactive. It was really good, just quite different.”
Would They Recommend It?
Michael was measured but clear in his recommendation, placing Urban Quest specifically in the context of schools that run city programs:
“For any year level that has some sort of city program, it could be really good because it does get the kids accustomed to navigating — but also learning some of the key locations in the city. Year 9 and above would work really well.”
The students’ verdict was less measured and more direct. Asked whether teachers had made the right choice booking Urban Quest:
“It’s the most fun one we’ve had so far.”
“It’s a really good experience because along the way we learn a lot of different skills — navigating, exploring new ideas, and teamwork.”
“It’s good for team building with people we don’t normally work with.”
For teachers planning a Year 9 excursion in Melbourne and weighing up whether a competitive, city-based team challenge is right for their cohort, that last line carries more weight than any brochure claim. Students who “don’t normally work with” each other, building genuine connections under time pressure in a real urban environment — that’s the outcome Urban Quest is designed to produce, and it’s what Kilvington Grammar’s cohort delivered.
If you’re planning excursions for schools that serve similar outcomes to the Year 9 Impact Program, see how other teachers have approached it in our article on what teachers look for in a school incursion — many of the same principles apply to excursions.
