This research is on "Europ's Largest exercise" (?), a collaboration exercise runned by an unversity involving the miltarys and civil rescue forces, which was held in the spring of 2016. Results is based on 28 questions found in two developed instruments; CLU-scale (Berlin & Carlstrøm 2009) and Collaboration theory (Torgersen & Steiro 2009). 74 exercise participants responded to the web-based survey. The total participant number included the exercise design group, which participated in the actual exercise. The designers also participated in the survey. However, the design group` s answers were removed from the dataset before an SPSS analysis was conducted. The results were sorted by descending means. Sorting was done as an effort to highlight and point out the "extremities." The highest and lowest found means will be further discussed.
Without an exposure of something new or unfamiliar, an actor can feel competent and in charge of the situation. From a learning perspective dealing with "the unforeseen", or even making mistakes during an exercise can be perceived as meaningful and even welcomed, as it poses a definite challenge and gives room for personal development. It can also involve what Kahneman (2011) refers to as system two thinking.
The response to the "I had known tasks/roles during the exercise" question came out as the material result with the highest mean (4,46). Second-ranked was the outcome to the question "They from my organization who needs to train collaboration participated in the exercise." Such a result order indicated that the right people attended the exercise. Found exercise insufficiencies were so forth interpreted to be more related to the actual exercise model, learning content, framework, defined learning goals, complexity, timing, and evaluation processes. The third highest found mean relates to the question "Collaboration is a clear concept to me."
There was, in this "classical" exercise, little focus on collaboration in the initiation phase. The three lowest means were identified related to the questions "We got clear instructions on how collaboration should happen during the exercise" (mean 3,27), "I learned how collaborating organizations work/function" (mean 3,27), and "Personally, I think that the people in the front line had the most use of this exercise." (mean 3,18). These findings support a notion that collaboration did not get emphasize in the exercise, and that the exercise was not of useful in actual crisis work. We propose an interpretation of this event in a symbolic framework; it was all about putting up a good show and performing a prewritten theatrical ritual and with little emphasis on learning.