Collaboration

Challenges

Time and work management are two great challenges to collaborative work. Since every team member has her own time schedule, devising the time for regular meeting proved to be a challenge. Furthermore, since collaboration require the cooperation of various people, it was hard to divide group work fairly, decide on an appropriate deadline, and keep group discussions in a supportive and effective manner.

Improvements

Through multiple group projects, I was able to learn to become a better team member and group leader. As a team member, I was able to confidently contribute to group's discussion while making sure that my way of expressions would not offend anyone or obstinately defend myself. As a group leader, I learned how to be more patient and accommodative to my members without giving up the quality and timeliness of our product.

Lessons

There are many lessons that I learned thanks to group work:

• Always plan ahead and clearly assign members' duty and deadline as soon as possible
• During the project, plan to meet as a group at least once a week and gradually increase the frequency as the deadline comes close
• There are always members who are less responsible in a group, detect the problem soon, watch out and support them, or report to the professor early if attempts to support are to no prevail
• Work and aim to be the most responsible group member (come to all meetings on time with finished assigned works) to earn and maintain other members' trust