Project 2

So this project went off to a bit of a rocky start which, this time, wasn't actually entirely my fault. Let me explain.

So the majority of the project time was spent working on project 1, which was because of poor time and priority management, but I did eventually get it done and was able to move onto project 2. I wish I had of been able to get project 1 done sooner as that would have given me more time to get to work on project 2 so I don't stress as much to get it done by the deadline. However, the issue here was that, after getting in contact with my group and attempting to initialize the project, it turned out that the project had already been initialized, and that according to my teammate Ethan, the team attempted to reach out to me via email, and when no response was yielded, they decided to begin the project without me. 

Thing is, I never actually received the notification to say I got an email from my team at all, and I immediately checked my inbox after being told this and didn't find any email from them at all. On top of this, my team didn't seem to think to send a message in the Discord group I made for this project at any point. After asking for proof that they sent the email, they did provide a screenshot to show that they did include my email in the conversation, so there must have been some kind of error with the inbox or my mailing app (Windows 10 Mail) failed to notify me of the email.

When I got access to the project files, the group had already begun with the Google Jamboard and Google Slides. To begin with my contributions, I set up my Brief Information & Delivery Document or the group to access all the brief information from the Axis site and the unit guide in one place, as well as to plan and write out step 1 of the project process, creative ideation and prototyping, and prepare for step 2, the pitch (creating the slides). I did this because, as I have seen with my other projects for my other modules, creating a central document for all the information helps keep things relatively easier to deal with as things are more organized and tidier, and all the information is in one place.

Let's talk about the "not entirely my fault" part. You see, I do believe some of this is my fault, and some of it isn't. I think that, even though I was working on project 1 at the time, I should have reached out to my group during those few weeks and given an update as to what was going on, and I think by doing this, I would have found out about the email issue earlier and we would have been able to resolve it earlier. In saying this, however, I was hyperfocusing on my project 1, so doing this never actually crossed my mind, which brings us into the part where it also wasn't my fault.

I think that if the group had of thought about messaging me via Discord, which now that I remember is something that we actually planned to do in class when we set up the Discord group, I would have become aware of the communication issue and would have been able to rectify it, as well as give the group an update as to what was going on with my lack of contribution. I understand the point about how I should try to remember to remain in contact with my group, but it gets to a point where if nobody is doing that correctly, the teamwork falls apart and it ends up with two people finishing the project without the third person even knowing what's going on.

Seeing that my group started the project without me did make me stress a little bit, as I began worrying about how this, my lack of contribution, will affect my grading and whether or not I'd fail this class because of this. However, now that I'm all up to speed with the project, it should be relatively manageable from here, and since then, my group has been keeping in frequent contact through the Discord group.

Now that I have gotten back in contact with my group, I will need to do the following from here:

• Help the group brainstorm how we will tackle the first step of our creative ideation and prototyping in the Brief Information & Delivery Document, as well as help out the group write out our bit for step 1;

• Begin my work on the slides after step 1 is complete, as I need to try and pick up the slack and try and contribute to this project as much as I can;

• Continue to organize regular call sessions with the group to ensure we are regularly working on the project together;

• Make sure that I am managing my time more effectively by prioritizing this project over anything else, until it is done; and, lastly,

• Remember to come back to this page and complete the final reflection for this project (very important!).

One issue that has arisen during our time of working is the fact that the deadline is approaching very quickly, and we only have a short amount of time left to complete everything. We might have to bite the bullet and submit our project late, but just as long as we actually complete every part of the project and get it in, I think it's a sacrifice of grades that we will have to make. The consequences of this will probably not only be a deduction from my group's overall grades for this project, but also the extra time spent working on this project will probably cut into class time (which will affect the time I have to complete the pre-class activities) and maybe even time in preparation for project 3, if that starts as soon as next week's class.

Even through all the hardships the group experienced in this project, we finally managed to get the project done and out the door. We did get the project done later than expected, but it's better late than never, especially after recovering from the large amount of time spent in oblivion because of the communication issue.

We got the remaining part of the project finished the day before CIE class on Tuesday and had the Google Slides set ready to go to present to the class. On the day, we printed out the script guide and got the pitch slides up ready to go. When we presented the class, I found that it was a bit hard to find points to talk about for each point on the slides, but I did manage to pull it off sufficiently enough, in my opinion. Each member of the group had their own set of slides in the presentation that I assigned to beforehand (Micaela had slide 2, 3 and 9; Ethan had slide 6 and 7; and I had slide 4, 5 and 8). After the presentation, we had a few genuine questions that I think we were able to handle pretty well, and each of us backed each other up whenever we stumbled with the points we were making.

Something I noticed about the lecturer on the day of presenting, Edwin, was that he seemed to be very quite passive aggressive with my group specifically, and was overly critical in our presentation, to the point where he was making points that made virtually no sense. The first sign of this behaviour that I noticed was when I got Ethan to quickly run out to the library and print off the script guide so we could read off that, and it was only a five minute process, but when Edwin asked me about where Ethan went, and I told him what was up, he called out my group for being a week late, which I guess I can understand, but also "delaying the introduction of project 3", which I think was a bit of an overstep considering that Edwin literally had the time to make a few quick points about project 3, let us present, and then go into further detail about project 3.

This kind of behaviour from Edwin continued in the questions part of our presentation, which is where the "overly critical" part comes into it. There were one or two points Edwin made which I can kind of understand (not entirely but kind of), such as the point he made of including more visuals in the presentation like stock photos and such, but one point that really stood out to me as being rather hogwash was the point Edwin made about how we should have already included and covered the questions asked by the other students during question time. Edwin's behaviour didn't bother me too much (although it did bother me), it really seemed to make Micaela quite unhappy, as she was countering Edwin's points in a rather defensive tone.

Honestly, despite all this, I was just glad it was over and done with.

There are some things I can take away from this experience, which I would like to talk about.

Firstly, the way our presentation went—I think me struggling a bit with finding points to talk about during the presentation had to do with us not writing enough information on the script. I said to Ethan to write up a script of dot-points to talk about, and I should have been more specific by saying "go into a bit more detail about each point". The script guide didn't really seem to help all that much apart from when I marked who was doing which slides in class, so I just ended up reading the points from the board instead of the script. We also should have included some examples of how the program would have worked exactly, as that seemed to be a thing people were asking about. That being said, it definitely could have gone better, and I think we did at least an okay job. One positive thing about this group was that after we got back in contact, we managed to do frequent calls to continue working on the project, which is something that hasn't always happened with my previous groups.

On the part about Edwin's response to my group's performance and pitch—maybe he was just having a bad day? I mean sure, some of the points he gave were valid (how valid each point was varies), but he seemed to be overly critical about our presentation, which I think was just uncalled for. The one point about how we should have already included the questions into our presentation was completely hogwash, in my opinion, as I think it was not only impossible unless we had some fortune teller that could predict what questions people would ask, but it also completely defeats the purpose of having a questions time, that of which allows the audience to engage with the presenters and the idea being presented. Even one of the people who were asking the questions noticed that Edwin was being overly critical, and tried to tell Edwin that they were just wondering about the things they said and that we were able to answer their questions, but it seemed like Edwin continued.

I'm not really sure what could have been done differently here, as we couldn't print out the script until class already started because Ethan turned up a minute late, and some of the things like including stock images in our presentation, we weren't really all that worried about that because, while the visuals of a presentation is a good point in making it look good, it wasn't a key thing we were focused on during the production of the pitch; we were more focused on actually getting the information on there. I was also told by another student that when they presented their presentation and they also didn't have a lot of visuals, Edwin apparently told them that he wasn't entirely concerned about that, which is almost the polar opposite of what we were told.

Looking back on this project, I think there's some things I should keep in mind for next time.

Firstly, about working with my teammates and the communication issue—the communication issue was definitely something that could have been avoided. I will make sure that this doesn't happen next time by making sure I get in contact with my group early instead of leaving it for three weeks to focus on my previous project. I understand now that it doesn't have to be up to my group members to try and hunt me down to get in contact with me, but I will also make sure I am more clear in my request to use something like Discord which I don't have an inbox problem with, unlike my emails. I also realize now that sometimes I have to take leadership of the group into my own hands to get the job done, which is something I realized with this group when I was the main one organizing call sessions within the group.

With Edwin—I think next time I'm bothered by his response, I should sit down with him and talk about it, because I think that's a good approach to things. I understand now that it can be more easily brought to his attention that that's the tone I picked up during our presentation, and that will help me get an understanding of the true intention of what he said. I will also do this for future lecturers in my future classes as well