Marketing 461 Relay Fun!

On October 22, my Consumer Behavior class had a unique opportunity to take part in team-building exercises that would ultimately help us grow stronger as teams and prepare ourselves to get ready for the toughest part of the course, our semester-long project: a final paper and presentation.

One probably does not expect experiential activities to happen every day in your average classroom–so this day was even more special for the students in Professor Chaplin’s Consumer Behavior Class. After taking an extremely challenging midterm, being able to just have fun with our team was a great way to reconnect, cheer each other on, and work together so that we can be prepared to tackle the rest of the semester. According to Professor Chaplin, the objective of the relay races was to “have fun” and “cheer each other on for the final deliverables which are team-based.”

“Ideas flow better and we become more productive as well as efficient as a team when we like our team and we have fun with our team. So, for the final push this semester on the tough project, I need all team members to start this final push by having fun and cheering each other on for an entire class period–win or lose” (Professor Lan Chaplin).

The activities that we took part in today involved introducing a problem (our relay tasks) that team members had to solve together. Each team was to assign a captain, and it was the captain’s duty to listen to the instructions so that they could communicate to the rest of the team what task they were to do. Some of our relay tasks involved teams to run, skip, and hop, then tag the next person who completes the same task.  The relay would continue until all the team members have completed the task, and the first team finished wins.

The goal of the relays was to improve productivity, increase motivation, and work on our problem-solving skills which would all transfer to our final project.  Through the activities, all team members gained important skills that let them identify barriers to accomplishing goals and come up with ways to overcome those barriers. Some skills we learned were to effectively communicate amongst our peers, encourage our teammates to do better when one fell short, and have fun.

After the relays my team, Team Blue, was energized, motivated, and ready to take on the rest of the semester.