This week we were led by the Norwegian students on a short, 3-hour hiking trip into Jegersberg, ending up at Holmenkollen. It was good to have seen everyone on the Norwegian friluftsliv course, however I think that the trip could have been modified slightly to encourage more interaction and get people to know each other. I noticed that on the walk, people, including myself, tended to interact with those they already knew. For instance, I myself only talked to only a few Norwegian students compared to those I already knew (obviously this is predominantly my own fault as opposed to others). On the first part of the walk to Holmenkollen, I feel that this wasn’t an issue as there was still plenty of time left for the other activities we were supposed to do.
Once we got to the top of the hill, a fire was made by a few individuals, before half an hour for lunch and a ‘team dynamic’ activity was done. It was obvious that most people appeared to be cold by the time the activity started – people had been waiting around for instruction for some time after lunch. The activity involved one person performing an action in front of everyone, before the rest of the group repeated that action, and the actions that the people before them did, to test memory. Everyone also had to say their names to the rest of the group, but with 40 participants it was unlikely that many names would be remembered in this way, I myself didn’t remember any other than one or two people who I spoke to later on. One reason the activity was done with the intention of warming people up again, however this didn’t appear to work particularly well as it involved predominantly standing around. Furthermore, there was no real interaction between people, as the activity didn’t require people to speak to each other, only to say their name, and to my mind, didn’t seem to be a particularly effective icebreaker activity in this regard.
I feel that splitting people up into smaller groups may have encouraged more interaction, especially given was an icebreaker activity. Perhaps if it involved an element of problem solving then people may have felt more of an incentive to speak up, as the group may have been more focused on completing the activity than thinking about their interactions with others. In a larger group, I think people are less likely to speak to each other as a whole, and that being in smaller groups would have resulted in more people speaking to each other. Doing an activity such as the human knot, cat and mouse or the tightrope walk (involving everyone holding part of a rope at waist height in a circle, then one person walking on said rope around the circle) would arguably have been a more effective icebreaker. It would also have prevented people getting cold, and thus quickly becoming fed up of the activity.