Embedded Files
What We Do Well
What We Do Well
Our team does a great job completing assignments on time and going above and beyond with the work that we do on our ePortfolio. Not only do we give recommendations and solutions based on the theories learned in class, we have created mock-ups of ideas given in our recommendations. For Artifact 1, our team created a mock newsletter based on the recommendation for American SteelCo to create weekly newsletters to inform employees about company events and policy changes and to create an informed and transparent environment. For Artifact 2, our team created a mock-up One-on-One sheet that could be used to help guide the conversations between Suzy and Collin and to help combat the issue of emotional disconnect.
What We Would Improve
What We Would Improve
While we complete assignments on time, we do not begin or finish the grunt work of an assignment until a few days before it is due. We need to improve our task time completion rate. Our team also needs to improve our level of communication. A lack of participation resulted from the messaging platform we were using during the first half of the semester. Some team members would receive messages from the Canvas inbox while others would not. Another issue that led to a lack of participation was granting editing access for all team members to our Google Documents and our Google Site.
How We Can Improve
How We Can Improve
In order to combat our procrastination issue, we should identify upcoming tasks during our weekly calls and distribute assignments in advance. If the assignments are given in advance and the documents are created, then team members can work on their assignments on their own timeline during the week. Our team is currently working to improve our level of communication as well. We are now using text messaging as a more efficient way to communicate. We still post updates on the group Canvas inbox, but we are also posting updates in a group text message. All editing access rights have been granted to all members of our team. The team member who had ownership rights of our Google Site had dropped the class; we have since had ownership transferred to an active team member. We will continue to work on having all team members present for weekly Google Hangout meetings, but are now in constant communication during the week as well.
Applied Course Concepts
Applied Course Concepts
Our team can apply Active Listening and Team Design Characteristics to improve our level of communication and cohesion. Our team needs to eliminate communication barriers and work to improve our active listening skills. By paraphrasing what we have heard and discussed in team meetings, we can ensure that we are all on the same page and understand our assignments.
We currently fall under the “low group cohesion” and “high task commitment” categories. We could increase our group cohesion by strengthening our level of communication. As a result of increasing our level of communication we can build a stronger team and have better support and satisfaction (two of the fundamental factors for cohesion). We work as a group—a collection of individuals—and not as a team—a cohesive coalition of people working together (Understanding Team Design Characteristics).
Changes to Our Charter
Changes to Our Charter
Changes that we need to make to our charter include updating the team member list, changing the attendance meeting time, rearranging roles, updating our method of communication, and adding expectations. We have been working together as a team for half a semester now and have come to understand our strengths and weaknesses. Changing the roles of team members will allow us to diversify our skills and take on assignments that we can individually tackle.
Future Goals
Future Goals
We have a few goals to finish the semester strong. Our first goal is to stay on top of assignments because the rest of our time in this class is limited and if one team member does not finish their task it can halt the progress of other team members. Our second goal is to finish the steps of our semester consultation project within the parameters that we set in our proposal, allowing us to complete future tutor review assignments on time. Our third goal is to continue to strengthen our communication by having all team members present at the rest of the Google Hangout meetings.
What Our Team Has Learned
What Our Team Has Learned
As a team we have learned that it can be challenging to work as a group online. We have learned that communication tools are vital to the group’s productivity and that there are learning curves associated with using new tools and programs.
As we were deciding which organization to do the consultation project with we applied what we learned from the trainings on Motivating Work Environments and determined that we would not be empowering the group as a whole if we did not all feel like we had input in the decision of choosing an organization. Part of the group decided to wait and allowed time for the rest of the group to give input: we then did a qualtrics survey based off of the organizations that were suggested to determine which organization we would study.
We have learned the importance of trust. Each week we assign tasks to each individual member to complete before the assignment is due. These tasks are interdependent of one another, in that, if one is not done, the rest will fail. For example, one person creates the ePortfolio, another writes the summary, a third reviews and edits the summary, the fourth reviews the summary and provides relevant pictures for the ePortfolio; if one of these is missing, it has a detrimental effect on the rest.
We anticipate that we will be learning more about behavioral theories and how they can apply to our projects and our life.
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