Group dynamics

From this week on, it is supposed to be the internationals turn to organise the monday trips with the norwegian class. The focus was still on group dynamic task. While going on a hike to Stitjønn we got to perform the Crazy 22. This game intended to give us group tasks when walking around the forest. We were supposed to perform different things, for example “making a street performance”, “reconstruct a famous movie scene”, “encourage a runner”, etc. as a group, trying to involve every group member. We got 60 minutes to that. In our case, we managed to do every task, but we arrived slightly late, while other groups didn’t manage to do every task and didn’t arrive on time either. As all our ideas for the tasks had been carried out quite a bit stressful and we usually split up into pairs to take different pictures or videos at the same time, we could implement everything, but I’d say it didn’t always fulfil the idea behind it. So basically, one of us was leading the way, while the others were trying to figure out how to realize the given tasks, but in the end not everyone knew how their own group fulfilled each idea. We still had fun, even though I could observe that not everyone enjoyed it all the time and to me, the time limitation only caused a stressful reaction in some of us, which could have been avoided I guess, if we would have had a bit more time. This way, probably every group could have had at least fulfilled all the tasks.

We played a similar game before, where we were supposed to take pictures and send them to the instructors, which were essential to evaluate our group performance. But neither this monday, nor the last time, we were able to see all the pictures of every group just after we did it. The instruction group only sees them and decides who wins. The winner usually gets a cholocate and they would put the pictures on facebook for everyone to see. At least. So far, all the games, and trips and tasks had been nice and mostly funny, but eventually the essence of the respective group dynamic of every group on mondays is getting lost.

So on the one hand, the small groups itself wouldn’t reflect on their group dynamic and on the other hand, it doesn’t contribute to the chemistry of the whole group. Everyone can watch the pictures back home, for themselves, but I think, it’d be nicer to have a collective evaluation involving every international and norwegian student. This might be more satisfying for every group, to show their ideas and also see how the others performed.

For sure, this is not realizable in the middle of the forest, but maybe it is possible to get back to Spicheren and put them on the screen in a classroom. Otherwise, I’d recommend doing other group dynamic task, focusing closer on the group dynamic itself while doing it.

That is why I prefered the second task, we were supposed to do after that. Staying within the small groups we were given the task to master a small way of about 50 m while every single person was given a special handicap. Two members couldn’t move, two others couldn’t speak and the last two couldn’t see. We had 2 minutes to discuss how we were gonna master this challenge and after that immediately start doing it.

Our team got into a messy discussion and we didn’t really manage to make a final decision. When we had to start and everyone needed to perform his or her handicap, my group managed to go for about 2 metres and then stopped. I got the impression, that no one knew what to do at all. One of the blindfolded members was scared, those who could speak, didn’t talk a lot, even though I, for instance, was trying to encourage them to speak. The blindfolded kept asking what to do, but those capable of speaking didn’t answer. In the end, I guess I was commanding most of us, but as soon as I did, we managed to make it to the end.

Our instructors then encouraged us to talk about our group behavior, our problems. To me, this task was more about a group dynamic itself and even talking about it was necessary and caused an impuls to think about what just happened instead of just finishing it and (perhaps) forgetting it the next moment.