How was working in a team?
Generally, working in a team environment is a good skill to have and it is highly requested in the job market. For this reason, when we first heard about the course we were excited to learn more about what it’s like to work in a team. We chose to work with each other because we already knew one another from the previous course and we knew that our already researched topics had a red line connecting them. After some brainstorming, we quickly found a subject to work on together. Even though it is usually advised against to work with your friends as it can be rather unproductive, we believed that it would have been a waste to disregard the connection between our literature reviews.
What was the group dynamic?
Regarding the group dynamics, we tried to divide the workload equally, always taking into account the different skills and weaknesses of the members. From the beginning we decided to separate group-work and individual work, so that in the meetings we could focus on common parts such as the ‘About Us’ section or the comments on other posts. Even though we all agreed to use this method, we do recognise that it didn’t maximise the time-efficiency, but we preferred to spend more time on it as a group to accomplish a more coherent result. Thus, ensuring that we could hold each other accountable for meeting all the deadlines and that we would participate actively throughout the period.
What challenges did we face?
Indeed, we also faced some challenges. For most of us this was the first group project, which meant that we had to get accustomed to a new working environment and approach. We had to be more flexible and compromise timewise, meaning respecting the obligations of each member, such as university work, tutorial and leisure time. The most unexpected challenge we faced was Valentina falling ill. This meant that, when meeting, we were missing a person’s perspective and contributions. Luckily, she was present for the first group meeting so that we could work together on the ‘About Us’ part. The main consequence of her illness was the delay in her individual part. Nevertheless, we still managed to communicate and catch up with all the work when she recovered.
What were the learning outcomes?
On a positive note we learnt and improved various skills. Communication was one of them: as mentioned above, we stayed in contact and updated each other on our individual work to ensure no one was falling behind. Additionally, we constantly shared peer-feedback on our individual parts, trying to improve our critical sense and giving constructive advice. Moreover, time-managing was a core aspect of group work, pushing us to improve our flexibility and organization skills. Most importantly, we experienced working in a group, which will aid us in the future when we’ll have to work with colleagues.