This week’s practical session took place in Jegersberg, with some group dynamic activities and an overnight camp to test our kit. We split up into groups of two or three to deliver a teambuilding activity to the rest of the class. Some of these were familiar to me from my work and university study, however many were not.

I ran an activity called ‘the bomb’, alongside two other members of the group. This is an activity I have run a considerable number of times at my workplace. One of the benefits of the game is that it requires fairly little equipment and the underlying concept is fairly simple, which makes it easy for people to understand. Thus, it can be delivered to just about any group. Another good thing about this game is that it can be changed around very easily, to make it more challenging. This then requires greater communication skills and teamwork on behalf of the participants, which can be done, for instance, by blindfolding some people. When we ran the session, we kept everyone in the same group, so that there were roughly 15 people taking part in the activity. In hindsight, this was a poor decision. When in large groups, the chances of social loafing amongst participants becomes significantly higher than working in smaller groups, as we learnt from that week’s lecture. Indeed, all three of us noticed that some people contributed visibly less than others in the activity. This wasn’t simply down to social loafing alone however, as the limited amount of ropes and space dictated that not everyone was needed. In hindsight, it seemed fairly obvious to have use smaller groups, especially in light of that week’s lecture on social loafing, the observations we had made about overcrowding in teambuilding sessions prior to ours and the fact that I had never before ran this activity with so many people in one group. Two groups of 7-8 participants would have undoubtedly resulted in a more successful session.

What was particularly interesting were the methods that the group used to complete the task. Ordinarily, groups use two or more ropes which wrap around the ‘bomb’, then hoisting this above ground and out of the circle. This is roughly the way I have seen the activity completed whenever I have run the session, with no prompting or clues from me. However, we saw two methods which we had never seen before, involving only one rope out of the several we provided. The first method involved using a rope to lower someone who was gradually leaning forwards into the circle, who then picked up the bag before being brought back upright. This was planned and completed in under five minutes, which lead us to widening the circle, partially to increase the challenge but also to involve the whole group, as arguably, only 6 or 7 people were really involved in that round. The next method involved the rope being held at shoulder height by the whole group, with one person crawling along this to retrieve the ‘bomb’ in the middle of the circle. Again, this method only took around 5 minutes in terms of planning and carrying out. During this time, I don’t recall hearing any mention of using more than one rope, or seeing any sign of people attempting to complete the activity in the ‘normal’ way, of wrapping ropes around the bomb as I have seen previously on many occasions. This made me wonder if there is, by some small chance, a link between different nationalities/cultural backgrounds in a group and the way that the group solves problems. Back home, the task gets completed the same way. With a diverse group of international students, wildly different (yet effective) solutions were used instead. Because of this observation, I might have a look to see if there is any literature in the OE field on this topic.

After the group had completed this activity for a second time, we decided we would run the challenge in a different way, for a third round. This time, half the group members were blindfolded, but the objective of the game remained the same. Here, we were able to see very clearly the limitations of having a large group – many of the group became uninterested after a while, leading us to finish the activity there and then. It became clear that now, despite the team having worked together fairly well for the previous rounds of this activity, the teamwork we had hitherto seen appeared to have gone. Smaller groups emerged of 2-5 people, each trying to figure out their own solutions to the problem rather than communicating as a group. Because of the increased challenge and the lack of cohesiveness of the group, people seemed to quickly became bored. Aside from having smaller groups, one idea to counter this, that may have led to a more successful outcome, would have been to encourage the group to elect a leader, to take responsibility for the completion of the task. This may have prevented the group fragmenting as quickly as it did, provided a different experience and could have likely provided some interesting points for discussion in the subsequent review of the task. On another note, it would have been beneficial to have delivered a task which I hadn’t ran before, as it would have allowed me to gauge its effectiveness and allow me to use it in future bits of work – as with the ‘bomb’, I already knew this to be an effective game, if done properly.

It was useful to watch some of the other activities, partly because I have now learnt new ones which I can use when I’m working. For instance, I can see myself using the ‘high jump’ task ran by another student in near future (essentially a rope tied to two trees/posts at shoulder height for everyone to go over, without touching the rope), as well as features of other tasks. It was also beneficial to see the limitations of others, with factors such as group size, unclear instruction and lack of equipment hindering the success of the activity.

One other observation I made was during an activity called the ‘helium stick’. Lots of people tried to take charge of the group, which I considered may have been due to the amount of outdoor instructors/coaches and possibly aspiring teachers present. This may because these people are used to being placed in positions of responsibility for groups, and part of the reason they choose to work in their sector is because leadership is a trait that they believe they are good at, or at least enjoy practicing. This served to demonstrate to me that too many people attempting to lead is not a strategy which works very well, also emphasising to me the importance of planning and ideas sharing prior to starting a task, rather than hurriedly doing this on the go as part of a team. It seemed to me that it would be more effective to have the group arranged in a circle, before starting, so that people could take it in turns to present their ideas better. The way that the group was positioned during the ‘helium stick’ task, being stood in a line along the length of the stick, hindered discussion and made it harder to hear people at the other end of the line; frustration seemed to occur rather quickly. If an agreed upon plan was made, in a circle, after the first failed attempt, then the task would likely have been completed more effectively.

Overall, this was a useful session as I learnt several new games, how best to run certain tasks and improved my understanding of how groups work (or don’t necessarily work) and why this can be the case.