Reflection on Teamwork

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When working in groups, you are faced with certain challenges. Usually, you work individually. You have gotten used to a certain “routine” which works for you. What we realized within this group assignment was, how challenging it is to combine all of our different studying and preparation mentalities in order to become an efficient, well working group. This took some time in the beginning but after two or three meetings we had it figured out and were able to even use these different mentalities to our advantage. 

One of the main problems we faced was the pandemic. Since we had a case of Covid in our group, we were not able to meet in person for quite some time and had to meet via zoom. This obviously complicated things and communication was more difficult.

Another problem was the combination of all of our topics of the literature review into one fitting topic for the blog. We found that all of our topics had little common ground which we could further build on. Therefore, we were uncertain which topic to decide on in the beginning. However, we managed to find somewhat of a common ground and were able to decide on a topic that we all liked. 

Additionally, because we were all quite busy with deadlines from other courses, it was also challenging for us to each get our part of the workload done in time. This was especially challenging in the beginning when we also had not really figured out our group dynamics. Some group members took on a more active role, while others were more passive. Once we had understood each other’s studying mentality as mentioned above, we were also able to organize ourselves a lot better. 

 Lastly, we struggled with technology. As students, you are expected to be familiar with technology. However, none of us had any experience with writing blogs. We really had to get together and try, and error, in order to make the website work and figure everything out . 

This also leads us to the positive experiences of writing a blog in a group.

As mentioned above, we struggled with our group organization in the beginning. Over time, we learned to trust each other with our different mentalities and approaches. It became visible throughout the assignment how we started to trust each other more and also became a lot more efficient during our meetings. As mentioned in before, we had a lot of try and error situations which helped us in the long run. 

All in all, everyone in our group worked and submitted everything in a way that left the other members of the group satisfied. Objectively speaking the group work therefore worked out well. We are aware of the fact that there are some things we can do better next time however, we all enjoyed working together. We had a good working climate, we were efficient and also enjoyed each other’s company. Therefore, the group assignment was a very positive experience for us from which we also have the possibility to learn something for the next group assignment we will have.