Reflection

Good communication is crucial to the success of any teamwork task.

The exchange between groups was refreshing and motivating. It was exciting to see what other groups came up with, and the opportunity to provide and receive feedback helped in the process.

Discussions should be about opening up topics and not shutting them down, which can prevent people from making what could be valuable contributions towards the success of the project.

Tasks should be defined, and roles assigned, in the first meeting to prevent unbalanced input.

Tasks and roles should be allocated according to each team member’s strengths and skills to maximize the team effectiveness and productivity.

We should insist on specific guidelines being followed.

Focusing on specific tasks would have allowed people to be more effectively used, but this was constrained by the assignment marking guidance.

The workload was uneven over the weeks which could cause conflict.

Spend more time at the start narrowing down the goals and challenge of the project.

Different schedules could be tricky to manage.

The task didn’t relate to how this project would be done in the “real world” which could be frustrating.

Marking guidelines focus on adding interactivity, but this may result in ‘style over substance’ and divert the focus of the project.

The focus should be on function, rather than adding ‘nice to have’ features.

The website has interesting functionality and looks good!

Listening to different perspectives is essential for self-development.

It was great to learn about the different applications and software that others used in their tasks – this was a really useful part of the process.

“I think we ALL did a grand job!”

Everyone working on everything (or most tasks) helped us get all learn about the topic rather than just mastering one part.

Slack could be hard to keep up with and time-consuming, but did help to clarify and complete the tasks, going forward with next steps and also acted as a network of support.

I really learned a lot; not least to manage your own workload and make sure it's not affecting your core aim - a cohesive and bonding group experience.