As a Chemistry student, I hardly have any opportunity to work with others in a group as the syllabus trains us to be independent learners. This module (ES2007S) has provided me with a very good chance to experience and learn to work with others as a team.
Chen Xin, Dai Jing, Edwin and I started off as strangers and we were grouped together by chance. There was a short awkward period at the beginning when we were still trying to get to know each other. However, it was soon overcome by our frankness and open-mindedness with each other. These few weeks of working together not only brought us closer as a group, but also as friends.
At our first meeting, we appointed Edwin as our group leader. It was essential that someone takes charge of the group so that decision making is made simpler. Edwin took charge of co-ordinating the group as a whole and split the job accordingly. Without the leader, the group might lose its direction and work would have been completed less efficiently and effectively.
Time was clearly an issue for this project. The 4 of us, all from different majors and commitments, often faced difficulties in finding a common time slot for meetings. Hence, every face-to-face meeting that we had was precious and efficiency was extremely important. For the meetings to be efficient, we had to be prepared beforehand and listen actively to the contributions of other group members. It was also important that we remain open-minded to new ideas at all time.
Most of the time, we split the job as there were too many clashes in our timetables. Hence, we tried our best to maintain effective communication through MSN, SMSes and Emails. It was not possible to observe non-verbal cues through these communication channels, hence we tried to be clear and concise in order to avoid miscommunication and loss of information that could be crucial to the project.
Now that the report is almost completed, we will have to fret over the oral presentation. Public speaking is one of human's greatest fear. It is tough to present ideas effectively across to the audience, as well as to ensure that the audience do not get bored. Honestly, these are also my greatest fear. I will have to be clear with my articulation of words and speak at an appropriate speed and volume. At the same time, I will have to constantly look out for non-verbal cues from the audience that might give me a hint that they are bored. My other team mates might have the same fears as me in terms of oral presentation. Hence, we can help each other by practicing our parts together and commenting on our flaws.
Overall, working with my group mates had been very enjoyable. The little talks before commencing our meetings and on MSN were fun and had definitely brought us closer. This is a priceless experience, both academically and non-academically. ((:
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5 comments:
Hi Jia Hwa, I applaud your group's effort to split the work and finish the project well despite all the difficulties. At first Gary told me that he thought your group's approach to splitting the work and each person doing one part on his/her own was not good because there would be no link between your respective sections.
For our group initially, we got together and 3 of us worked on 1 section to ensure that all our ideas would be presented objectively and all the parts of the report would be properly linked. However, that only worked for the initial first draft because as the workload increased to editing the report based on Ms Kim's comments, we decided that such an approach was inefficient time-wise and we split up the work individually.
Anyway I thought your survey report was pretty well done. Kudos!
Hey JiaHwa, I totally agree on MSN and E-mails being the least effective communication channels. Believe me, I've went through a 4 hours project discussion on MSN and it didnt get me anywhere. Everyone was giving all their opinions all over the place and no one was actually listening. I couldn't identify who was really bringing out important points and at the same time, everyone kept running off track with the agenda.
Plus, I find it SUPERBLY irritating when some of my them used all those big and over-the-top icon or image. I know its cute and all but seriously in a meeting?!?! And I tend to pay less attention to the MSN meeting than face-to-face meeting because I will be distracted with my surrounding. Sometimes, i find myself surfing Facebook during a meeting because everyone kept blabbering and there wasn't any focus on the meeting!
Hi Jia Hwa! I had both my hands up in the air to agree with you on your point of the issue of time. My team also comprises of members from different faculties and we often find it very difficult to have a common time that we can meet to discuss our report. Luckily, our team members were really understanding and accommodating to meet during the weekend to get things done. MSN conversations and Emails are definitely not as effective as having meetings face to face.
Hi JiaHwa, I think it is true that doing a project with people of different majors is quite difficult due to timetable clashes. I think it is a common problem that each of us faced. However, we managed to complete the project.Yeah! By doing with people that are not from our blog group allow us to get to work with other people in the class and it relates to our working life as well. In the workplace, our employers will also assign us to people in different departments to do projects. Thus, the module prepares us for it.
Thanks Jia Hwa, for the detailed post. Am glad that you found this process "a priceless experience, both academically and non-academically". Am happy that besides getting to work with others in a team, you have also cultivated new friendships so that your project mates are now no longer just your classmates but your friends as well.
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