The 4th Monday trip was organised by the international students. The focus was on group dynamics and we were divided into groups of six randomly by using cut up pictures and people with pieces from the same photo were in a group together. I ended up in a group with only me and five Norwegians. Our task was to complete a list of different challenges called ‘the crazy 22’. We were doing them while hiking to our final location. It was nice to get to know more Norwegians and I was quite lucky to get in this group. The challenges we had were more focused of having fun than group dynamics, though group effort was needed to organise for example a flash mob or a dance. Part of the task was to take pictures and videos of all the challenges and send them to the organisers. We would be given points for all the tasks we completed, and they would count towards our final score. The winners would get a surprise price.
All the groups had to navigate their way to the final site by themselves. We were given a time limit of 1 hour. Our group started off well and we managed to do many of the challenges but as we were getting closer to the site, we started to lose interest. It seemed like the price itself was not good enough motivator, and as there was nobody else than our own group seeing our performance, we did not really try that hard. In future I would have fewer challenges to make sure participants stay focused. To have the groups perform some of the challenges for each other might also ensure they try their best.
After getting to the final location we were waiting for the others to arrive. The organising group told us to start a fire, so we were looking for firewood together. To my opinion it was a good way to fill in a gap between the activities and made sure the first ones did not get bored whilst waiting.
When everyone had arrived, each group had a team building exercise whilst the others were having lunch. The idea was to get to the goal as fast as you can whilst two from the team cannot walk, another two cannot speak and the last two are blind. We were given a minute before the timer started to discuss how we are going to accomplish the task. This exercise was really good as it forced us to think fast and work as a team. On the downside, the activity took a very short time and it would have been worth of having a few similar type of activities.
After the organising team had judged all the videos and photos and added extra points for the fastest team, they announced the winners. They also gathered us all together to discuss about the activities, which was great as they could get the feedback straight and know what worked and what did not. One common feedback was that everyone would have wanted to see what other teams had done for the ‘crazy 22’ challenges so all the pictures and videos were sent to the facebook group. The organisers had also planned a game of capturing the flag, but as we had the self-organised skiing trip coming, we decided as a group to skip that and focus on planning.
The Monday trip was well planned but to my opinion it was not really focused on group dynamics. This could be because we had just had many different types of team building games while camping in jegersberg and they wanted to try something different. With small changes the day would be really great for learning group dynamics.