The department of MSc. Counselling conducted an orientation program on group dynamics for the first-year students on the 16th of July, 2024, which was on a Tuesday. The program was attended by 25 students. The program was conducted from 9:30 to 12:30, with the resource persons being, Assistant professors Thani Anwar and Akshaya Nikhil Bhandary.
The program was divided into two sessions and the first session was taken by Assistant Prof. Thani Anwar at 9:30am by asking each student to introduce themselves with an interesting detail that one could remember them by. To keep it more interesting, they were also requested to utilize no more than 10 words in their introduction. Following the introduction, one volunteer was asked to step up from the group. The remaining students had to closely encircle the volunteer and were tasked with the responsibility of catching the volunteer if she 'trust fell' towards their direction. Then everyone else in the group was asked to do the same one after the other.
Then, all the students were separated into two groups. One person from each group was asked to leave the room during which their respective teams would hide 5 objects for them to find. While navigating the object, the two students were blindfolded and had to solely depend on the words of their teammates for direction. The motive of the activity was to share that each member had a vital role in the team. In the next activity, each team took turns standing together on a large blanket. The game required them to flip the large blanket over and stand on the other side without any of the teammates falling out of the blanket square that they were standing on. The game highlighted importance of dealing with conflict and encouraging coordination in strategic planning.
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The next session by Assistant Prof. Akshaya Nikhil Bhandary at 11:00 am. She initiated a brief rapport-building task where each student was asked to introduce the person seated next to them, their favourite hobby and their favourite food to eat. This was followed by an activity wherein the students were divided into two groups where each group had to stand in a straight line and had to follow an action that was shown to them by the person preceding them. It was always lead to the last person in the line doing actions that were very different from the first person that tried to pass on the sequence of actions. This illustrated how information could be misinterpreted, lost or even exaggerated as it passes through multiple individuals.
After this, the two groups had their listening skills put to the test in an activity called Red and Green. In this the scholars were expected to jump to their left if the word red was mentioned and jump to their left if green was mentioned. The instructions were altered every now and then to make it challenging. The students were then asked to anonymously write their secrets on chits of paper. The chits were collected and placed on a table. At Ms. Akshaya Bhandary’s signal, all students were to run to the table and read aloud as many secrets as they could. After most of the students did as instructed, they were asked a few questions to reflect on the exercise and the importance of professionalism, confidentiality, and consent were explained in order to build an ethical and strong team.
In the next activity each team was given a set of chits but the task was to leave their chits behind and to go steal the other team's chits. Both teams succeed in doing so. However, in the following task they were asked to place their chits at a table and collect more chits than the others. While there was a clear winner, it was noticed that not all the members in the group participated in the task and that the responsibility of collecting chits were taken up by two or three students. The orientation concluded at 12:30 and proved to be both a fun time and an effective learning experience. The report of this capacity enhancement session was written by Joan Bobby, 1st year MSc. Counselling.
