EC SURVEY: A GROUP EXERCISE TO IMPROVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Day 1
Name of the exercise: Youth Survey
No. participants: 51
Age group: 18-19
Education: Completed Plus two
Present State: Going to do Engineering
Purpose of the exercise: A kind of ice breaking as they were all in the process of getting familiar with the new atmosphere. It was also meant to give them more awareness about themselves as a group/ other group participants/ the society in general.
Steps: 1. Divided the class into teams having ten members in each team. The teams had names. Gave a topic to each team to conduct a survey by asking questions. Only three members from a team could approach others while doing the survey and they should not do any writing while asking questions. They have to give the data thus got to their team for further discussions.
2. After getting the answers from their co-participants they wrote a report based on their findings.
3. After studying the report they tried to analyzed it ie., tried to make some sense out of it and discover any logical pattern which had to be communicated to the audience.
4. Presented the survey results and gave their opinions.


The topics given to the students were:

1. The common hobbies of the class.
2. The qualities of a good engineer.
3. The dreams of the students of a life ahead after completing the course.
4. The challenges/problems which they might face during their course.
5. Their expectations from parents/teachers/friends.

The skills practiced: Team Interaction(Team building and Leadership skills), Assigning roles to team members(delegating work), getting information through questions(oral communication), organizing information (data sorting), report writing, analytical and presentation skills.  

 

Day 2

Asked the students to close their eyes for a minute and think about the activities of the previous day during the same session. (Easy Meditation)
Then told them to sit in teams and gave them a sheet of paper. They were asked to write a one line comment about the previous class(Sentence Making Skill Test). Next they were asked to write a summary of their report in a single sentence having less than fifty words/2-3 lines. (Instant Feedback exercise)
Then each group had to come and read the one line summary before the class.(Voice of the people exercise)
Then a pair of students from each team shared their opinion about the speeches made by other teams.
After this the students were asked to write a four line poem based on their given theme. Then they had to compose a nice song by finding a good tune for their poem. It had to be sung by four students in their group. After the song presentation, those who didn't participate in singing have to share the secret behind the song ie., how the team got the creative spark/who wrote the lines/set the tune etc.
The exercise ended with a small speech by a member from each team on the singing performance of other teams.

TO BE CONTINUED...