Duration: 30 minutes
Group Size: Platoon Level
Resources: Newspaper, toggle rope & masking tape, in an open area
Purpose: To strengthen teamwork, with emphasis on coordination & cooperation.
Overview: To get all members of each team ashore before their ship sinks.
Conduct:
- Set–up. Mark out an area that can accommodate the whole group. Use masking tape to demarcate this area in the shape of a ship (Titanic). From where the ship is, demarcate the shoreline (with a stretched out toggle rope). This should be about 10 meters away from the ship. Place the newspapers (folded into half its size and secured with masking tape to give it an appearance of a life boat) in the ship area. Prepare 3 sets of life boats for each group.
- Divide the whole group into 3 smaller groups, section level is best even if the numbers are not exactly even. Have the entire group formed in their teams in the ship area.
- Create the setting by giving the following instructions:
“You are on board the Titanic, a reputedly unsinkable ship. While travelling across the Atlantic Ocean, you strike an iceberg. The ship is sinking and taking in water. Your job is to launch your lifeboats to get to the shore (demarcated by the toggle rope) as quickly as you can before the ship sinks. It is estimated that you have about 10 minutes before the entire ship sinks. Unfortunately, the builders had assumed that the ship was unsinkable and therefore made provisions for only a few (3) lifeboats. Each lifeboat can take a maximum of 2 persons at any one time (or it will sink and you will lose it) and you have to use them as stepping stones to get from the Titanic to the shore. The sea is very cold and anyone falling into it will suffer from hypothermia. This means, the individual (and the boat included) will be unable to move for 10 seconds. Note the markings within the ship. It indicates the separate compartments of the ship. You can move only within the marked area of your part of the ship and can’t physically cross (i.e. walk from one compartment) to the next.”
4. Try to create some competitive feelings before setting the teams off. Monitor the movements of the team and penalise participants where infringements are made.
5. You may want to declare a winning team when the first team has all its members reach the shore. Alternatively, you may want to end the activity before any team completes the activity. Announce that the Titanic has sunk and ask each team to count their survivors and casualties. Ask the group to decide who they think the winners/losers are. Get some responses and say you will ask this question again at the end of the activity and will give your response. Have everyone back in the ship area, in their respective ship compartment areas.
Debrief Questions:
- Which team did the best and why?
- What do you think is the best strategy to employ?
- Allow groups to brainstorm and discuss possible strategies before offering the “model answer”, which is for all the 3 groups to pool their ‘lifeboats’ together to form a long chain to the shore.
Notes: Activity challenges the team to look beyond the group to work cooperatively with other groups. Sometimes, being put into groups (compartments) creates artificial barriers that affect our instinct for cooperation. The opposite usually happens – i.e. competitive feelings arise. The rules however did not prevent members from communicating and cooperating by pooling resources (lifeboats) together. If all the lifeboats had been placed in a straight line from ship to shore, everyone would have completed the task faster. Our competitive instincts however tend to get the better of us and we tend to think in a competitive mode.