Assignment 8 – Tangen Project 23.4. – 27.4.

In April another practical week took place which was different to all the other trips we went on. It was a project in cooperation with a school where we were supposed to organize outdoor activities for school students in their last year. The area called Paulen Gard was a scouting facility with an open field, two huts and some shelters with a fireplace. It is located in Vennesla and connected with Tommerrenna, which is a hiking trail in former log flumes along the Steinsfossen. With the forest, open grass area, rocks and river it was ideal for various outdoor activities. Moreover, the natural boundaries (train tracks, river, flumes) made it easy to keep the activities in an accurate frame of distance.

Time-wise the students stayed one night arriving in the afternoon and leaving after lunch the next day so that we had four different groups in total. Each group was divided in smaller groups (max 8) and going through 8 different activities which were organised as stations around the area. In class we had discussed different activities and also decided to make it a competition to keep the motivation high. The activities had to fulfil some criteria as they had to be challenging, team-building, fun, not longer than 25 minutes and scored out of 10.

The 8 different activities were:

1. Shelter building
   • Material: tarp, rope, logs
   • Focus: water/wind protection, size, stability
2. River crossing
   • Team-building Game
   • Strategy
   • Problem solving
3. Night-line
   • Team-building + Trust
   • Strategy + Communication
4. Jungle Swing
   • Team-building + Strategy
   • Problem solving
5. Slackline
   • Cooperation
   • Team-building
6. Orienteering
7. Fire building
   • Material: branches, hand sanitizer, vasiline, cotton pads
8. Barefoot path
   • Awareness

When we did the organisation the activities where allocated to two or three people of our group who were in charge of detailed preparation. The plan was to rotate through the different stations but in the end we were just sticking to our activity as we also gained more experience and could improve the implementation. In addition, two people of our class (Sam + Frankie) were figuring out the group rotations and dealing with organisational issues. It turned out that they did a good job as the whole system worked out fairly well. They also explained the competition to the kids and introduced some rules such as that English was the common language.

My station was the ‘Night-line’ which I was running together with Maike and Janna. The task was to go through an obstacle course and hold on to a rope whilst being blindfolded and vocally guided by a partner. The partner was not allowed to touch the other person and lead him/her safely over the obstacles. We did two rounds:

1. Practice round
2. Rated (time, safety, creativity)
   • Changed rules: no words allowed for guiding but any kind of noises

We followed a certain procedure as we were first explaining the basic rules, observing the first round, explaining the changes, observing and rating the second round. The group decided independently how to split up and if they wanted to change roles in the second round or not. We told them we would stop the time of the whole group although safety and creativity had priority for the rating. When building the obstacles, we had tried to make them challenging but doable and used mostly natural material as well as rope and some pallets.

Group dynamics

In that week we could not only observe our own group behaviour but especially the dynamic in the school groups. The four big groups we had over the week as well as the small groups were partly very different concerning motivation, team-work, understanding of the task and communication.  In general, their motivation to participate was higher than expected which might has been caused by the effect that those students, who really didn’t want to be there, haven’t come as the groups were smaller then announced before. Interesting to see was, that some of the pupils didn’t seem to know each other that well which influenced their behaviour and performance as a group. Another noticeable point was that the group members mostly paired up divided by gender. The ‘night line’ especially required well-working communication and was one of the most influencing factors on the group’s performances. This aspect was also partly limited by the rule that everyone had to talk English and some students were unsure about that.

The interaction between us as a group and the group of students increased within the week which could have been caused by the fact that we first had to get used to our role and the process of implementing the activities. We naturally got better and more confident in moderating and implementing our task which might have had an impact on the student’s reaction as well.

Generally, our relation to them was fairly positive and we seemed to have a good approach to them also because the age gap was rather small. We showed real interest in them and their plans and studies and had good conversations about differences and similarities in countries.

Overall, we got a commending feedback form both teachers and students not least because of creative and fun activities, smooth organisation and a great cohesion in our own group.

I experienced the cooperation with Maike and Janna at our station as well-working and relaxed. We alternated with explaining the task and provided different ideas in how to improve the activity. Moreover, we supported each other and tried to split up along the obstacle course.

We as the Outdoor Education Students implemented despite the short organisation beforehand a successful project. The choice of activities was a collaboration and the distribution happened without any complications. When we visited the area in the week before there was still snow but everyone found a place for their station and luckily the snow melted. Also, everyone stuck to the time frame, which made the whole rotation really pleasant and efficient. The mindset of our group was mostly positive and ambitious from the beginning and we even got more motivated by the fact that the students had fun. In addition to the project and work with the students we as a group developed through living with each other in the forest for a week and spending the afternoons with various activities (hiking, sports games, reading, swimming in the river).

Learning outcomes

In that week the learning outcomes differed from all the other trips we did. It was less about techniques and knowledge but more about basic skills (meta, hard, soft) and the experience of instructing and guiding a group. For most of us standing in front of a group and implementing activities was not new but practicing interaction with students and organising a project was still a good practice. We had the chance of experiencing different groups and situations and practice interaction and instruction. Personally, it was a good testing of running an activity in English with   students from another country. Moreover, it was interesting to see how the way of Explanation of the task can influence the strategy of the group. Maybe it would have been useful to rotate to get to know some other activities as well and experience more various situations although it was good to see an improvement at the same task.

The Tangen project was in total a good opportunity to train our organisational and didactical abilities as a group as well as to experience requirements for the success of outdoor activities. We got a practical insight in group dynamics whilst observing the students and their interactions plus we developed ourselves, both as a group and individual. I personally have to criticize, that the aspect of reflection with the students was not included at all and that there was nearly no time for a conversation about the activity afterwards. We tried to at least ask them how they experienced their performance and the task to let them think about what went well and what they could have done different. I was taught that this is an important fraction of outdoor education so maybe this would be a point worth to think about for the next project.

We as a group had a great week outside and as it seemed the students did as well, which in the end is the most important point.