The fourth Monday trip took place at the 20th of January and it was the first trip to be organised by a group of international students. The whole group met in front of the Spciheren building on the campus and walked to Ovre Jegersbergvann. Unfortunately none of the norwegians students showed up for the trip. The topic of todays lesson was again orienteering. Arrived at the starting point we were seperated into three groups. My group contained of Florence, Elouise, Eliska and me. We were handed a map of Jegersberg with 12 Checkpoints on it. However the map was changed from the usual orienteering map. It less symbols on it. There were no tracks or any vegetation on the map. It basically only displayed the contourlines and cliffs. Starting of our group stood close to another group in front of us. Our task was to find all of the Checkpoint and find the solutions to six hidden riddles. For the beginning everybody took turns in reading the map and making suggestions on where to go. However it was quite difficult to find the checkpoints. The group in front of us did not seem to know where to go either. After we came to one point on our way which we could easily identify on our map, we realized that we that we already missed the first checkpoint. I suggested to start with checkpoint twelve since there was a track leading in the direction of it right next to us and we could finish with checkpoint one without going back. Furthermore it seperated us from the other group and we would have to focus on our own navigation skills. Soon after takinf the track we found the twelth checkpoint. Unfortunately there was none of the hidden riddles at this checkpoint. Nevertheless it gave our group a motivation boost because it felt quite difficult navigating with this map. We moved on and quickly found ourselfes on the spot where the map suggested the eleventh checkpoint should be. But even after 15 minutes of searching we were not able to find it. We followed the track and discovered the tenth checkpoint. It contained one riddle which we could solve. Alsot proved that we were still on the right track. Content with our selfes we aimed in the direction of the next checkpoint. It had to be located on the top of a hill. However after we checked several hills we started roaming around in a much larger area. We had already spent at least half an hour to find the next checkpoint but did not have any luck with it. The motivation and focus on the task was decreasing. I was still searching the area while the girls where discussing on what to do when Florence received a text that informed us that all the other groups had already returned without finding anything. We then also returned to the starting point meeting up with the other groups. Although we were not really successful I felt that we still accomplished something. We were the only group to find a checkpoint and the last group to return. Eventough we did not fullfil the task we learned a lot in our group about our dynamics. One could already distiguish between the roles in our group. For instance one  could say that there people acted as Shaper, Implementer and Teamworker ind our group, referring to Belbin’s roles in a team. Due to the short time it was just a brief impression and the team roles and it would have been intresting to see the further development after a longer time.

References
R. Meredith Belbin 1981 Management Teams: Why they succeed or fail, Butterworth-Heinemann