1. What are the common personal goals within the members of your team, and how can you leverage those goals to build collaboration? 

The common personal goals within our team is to build research experience as this project is the first ever research project for most of us, or at least our first experience of working on the project focusing on environmental issues. Therefore, we are focusing on strengthening our hard and soft skills while getting involved in the project in as many ways as possible. This gives us an opportunity and a courage to try many different activities to achieve the project goals. One instance is we are building air monitors as part of the project even though our majors are not directly related to this type of activity and we do not have soldering experiences. Also, fieldwork definitely exemplifies how much we are willing to get involved in the project and ultimately build our research experience. 

2. What are the common project goals within the members of your team, and how can you leverage those goals to make progress? 

The common project goal within our team is to publish a research paper, or at least have a draft. As part of our project, we are conducting a quasi-experimental study which we are planning to use as an incentive for behavioral change to help people to prevent themselves from the pollution. We are working to finish the study before the end of the year and apply for conferences and journals to share the result. Again, it is our first research experience, and we are focusing on making the most out of it. Therefore, we see a research paper as a great way to advance our academic and professional experiences and skills. This common goal might help us to stay on track to finish the study before the year ends. 

3. What are some biases that might become a barrier to your project goals? 

The planning fallacy might become a barrier for our project. It is a “underestimation of time, effort, and money required to complete a project” (Sokolovski, 2018). We think it is a barrier because we are already running behind our original schedule and keep changing our schedule a little. We were supposed to begin collecting data on our study by now, but we still have not started on that yet and pushed it back to the April. At this rate, we would need to work more rigorously during the summer to catch up on our original plan and finish our projects before the year ends. 

4. What type of decision-making system will you use and why?

Our group often uses the consensus and deference to expert decision making systems. We all focus on different aspects of the project, so we just figure out how to bring all our ideas together during the meetings. Professor Duvanova and the students at AlmaU are the experts that we are able to use for references and to share our ideas with.