rain_drops
2010-11-12 05:28:40 UTC
Dear Professor Johnson,
Thank you first of all for your email. I think I could have done better completing the evaluation form of our group as I filled the form after our day-long work on our project at about 11 pm when we all were tired. However, at the end I was glad to see everyone reflected their ideas and were happy about the results of the teamwork in our AT project.
You are right. Yes, I would not either expect to be evaluated in every category of our project as A+. I learned (or re-learned) as my part in our teamwork that, I could have done much better toward the attitude I could have in helping team members with different potentials promote the quality of their contribution in the team.
However, like all the other groups, we all were also very worried to be in time-lines and our schedules for each part of our project.
We certainly, went through that process completely at the end though, when each of us read the whole AT report again, and explained the reasons of our suggestions step-by-step and line-by-line to each other thoroughly. It was at times tiring, but finally it made me glad to see that the patience and hard work finally resulted in a report that all members were happy and satisfied about.
I, however, found our team work to be probably more challenging than the other groups as our group had two freshmen members and we had no native English speakers in our group either, so convincing each other about our suggestions, at times took rather a longer time.
To answer the questions:
1. What you did that you thought worked well for the team dynamic?
- Planned on sharing thoughts and ideas on each step of our projec, through a collaborative online Wiki which was viewable and editable for all memebers of the team.
- Contacted security staff and made appropriate interview times that worked well both for all members of the team and the interviewees.
- Asked team members to freely choose to write any part of the report that they were more interested in working on.
- Was regularly in contact with each member of the group via email/phone and updated the group members about our meetings and interview times.
- Exchanged thoughts and ideas in each step of our project through the word documents and the Wiki with other members of the group.
- Reviewed all the reports several times, highlighted, and made suggestions as notes for improvements of the parts that needed to be revised.
2. What did not work as well?
We were worried about being in the time-line in each part of our project, and as we were in a team, we needed to proceed together in each step of our work to to be on time schedule before going to the next step. Therefore, collaborating efficiently seemed to be a necessity in our work.
However, considering the quantity of assigned contribution portions, I might have expected better quality of reports from each member of the team.
On a scheduled due date of our project reports, it probably made me a bit disappointed once, when I just received an incomplete draft from a member of the team, but I think that instead of telling the team member that "I would use the good points in your report but as the time is limited, I would rather try to re-write it", I should have put more time aside to make exact suggestions, explained the reasons and reviewed the draft reports yet more then.
3. What you might do differently in the future?
In the future from first I would try to focus and reflect on any positive points and potentials of all received reports one-by-one to each member of the team separately, and if the team needs more time for all members to collaborate efficiently, I would probably talk about it with the instructor (director of the groups/teams), and then would try to set more time aside to guide, explain the reasons, help, and review the reports so that all members feel contributed equally and efficiently.
I apologize for any confusion or misunderstanding I may have caused, and thank you again for your email.
Best,
Mariah