List ten specific ways in which your teaming approach has changed/evolved since you started, teamwork skills you have developed, and lessons you have learned.
- A) Teaming Approach: All of us had individual roles and areas of expertise
- B) How it has changed: We still have areas of expertise, but we have since expanded outside of our roles and have been working on various projects together outside of our expertise
- C) Skills Developed: Allowed us to learn multiple skills outside of our comfort zone
- D) Lessons Learned: Flexibility, adaptability
- A) Teaming Approach: We met once a week with our faculty advisor
- B) How it has changed: We still meet with our faculty advisor but now we also often meet just as a team throughout the week and frequently text each other about the work instead of waiting for the next meeting to bring something up
- C) Skills Developed: Learned independence in regards to managing our work on our own as well as are more comfortable asking each other questions on the fly
- D) Lessons Learned: How to be responsible and take more initiative, teamwork
- A) Teaming Approach: We all met in person
- B) How it has changed: We are now meeting remotely only
- C) Skills Developed: Zoom efficiency
- D) Lessons Learned: Adapting to new circumstances
- A) Teaming Approach: We were not communicating as frequently as we should have
- B) How it has changed: We have a group chat and often CC each other on emails
- C) Skills Developed: We developed our communication skills
- D) Lessons Learned: Communication is key
- A) Teaming Approach: Our faculty advisor led our team meetings
- B) How it has changed: Students now mainly lead the meetings
- C) Skills Developed: Flexibility and independence
- D) Lessons Learned: We work a lot better if we are primarily involved
- A) Teaming Approach: Member with expertise would teach concepts in a lecture type way
- B) How it has changed: We try to have a kind of group discussion about things and everyone tries to learn and solve certain things themselves first, then ask expert for help and we discuss it as a group
- C) Skills Developed: Troubleshooting, teamwork
- D) Lessons Learned: Try to solve problems independently and then discussing it is a much better way to learn than just regurgitating information
- A) Teaming Approach: Hesitation to ask for help, especially from advisor
- B) How it has changed: I am a lot more comfortable with my group and especially my advisor. I was scared to ask questions in case I missed the answer before or it was a “stupid question”
- C) Skills Developed: Self-confidence
- D) Lessons Learned: There is no such thing as stupid questions
- A) Teaming Approach: Since I was the qualitative expert, I focused very heavily on doing a literature search but I was blindly googling and it was very disorganized
- B) How it has changed: Everyone is training to be a qualitative expert now since we are working on a meta-synthesis! It is much more organized when multiple hands are on deck
- C) Skills Developed: Teamwork
- D) Lessons Learned: Working as a team reaps better results than working alone!
- A) Teaming Approach: We had contact with our partners on the ground in Sierra Leone
- B) How it has changed: COVID and remote working has made it hard to keep in touch
- C) Skills Developed: Adaptability and consideration
- D) Lessons Learned: we must be adaptable to new situations and should not heavily rely on partners on the ground
- A) Teaming Approach: We were mostly focused on our screener
- B) How it has changed: We realized that our venture needs work in other areas such as building connections, funding, just adding to the general body of work on disabilities in LMIC
- C) Skills Developed: Critical thinking, research design
- D) Lessons Learned: Our venture does not end after we develop our screener!
Updated Collaboration Plan
What are my personal goals (small g) on this team? Pull those goals from the dreams on your individual profiles. Capture them by person in your collaborative plan. e.g., get an A, learn laser cutting, start something I can continue after the semester
My personal goals on this team are to keep learning from my teammates. I learn so much from each and every one of them and I would love to continue this! I want to grow in my research skills as my career heavily relies on it and doing so from people I am comfortable and enjoy interacting with is really the biggest personal goal I have.
What is the Project GOAL (big G) we’re all committed to achieve together?
The project GOAL for our team is to develop a culturally appropriate, highly effective Autism diagnostic screener. Throughout this process we must also be committed to finding a way to disseminate the screener, bring awareness and education on the nature of Autism, as well as providing training for community health workers throughout Sierra Leone. We also want to add the scant body of work surrounding disabilities in LMIC and are already doing this by having multiple different papers in the works.
Establish Roles – How will you leverage the assets each member brings to the team? How will you leverage the experiences each member brings to the team? How will you ensure that the team’s work gets done on time and with high quality?
- Qualitative Expert (Emily): Responsible for the study design & approach. For example, which approach (e.g., case study, ethnography, etc), what types of data should we collect, develop protocol, how to synthesize and write up the data, develop focus group and interview questions/format. Experience in working on psychological/sociological research–both quantitative and qualitative. Collaborating on the meta-synthesis.
- IRB Expert (Alyssa): Responsible for anything & everything related to the IRB. She is the point of contact with the University, she will write, submit, revise, and resubmit IRB, develop consents (verbal only), and work with the qualitative expert to create data collection forms, etc. Experience in working on psychological/sociological research–both quantitative and qualitative. Alyssa also leads the meta-synthesis that our team is collaboratively working on.
- Assessment Expert (Kathleen): Responsible for main analyses on current Western assessments and screeners and will work with SPED & cultural experts to decide what questions/tasks our assessment should have, learn how to validate the assessment.Knowledge of available western screeners and experience using, scoring, and reporting these tools. Previous experience developing and validating a new measure. Psychometric expertise. Kathleen is also responsible for the psychometrics paper that our team has been working on. Collaborating on the meta-synthesis.
- SPED/ASD/Education/Healthcare Expert (Lindsey): Responsible for understandinding these facets in order to inform the team on how best to approach our goal. Will seek to answer questions like: how did we get from where we started in the US in terms of level of knowledge, awareness, and services, to where we are now? What can we do in SL to make progress in this area? What is the education structure of SL? What trainings do teachers need to be qualified to teach? What is the healthcare system like? Collaborating on the meta-synthesis.
- Cultural Expert (Grace): Responsible for thoroughly understanding the culture of Sierra Leone: its history, language, values, beliefs, geography, different districts, etc., the strengths and challenges of the people and country, and will report on current events weekly which are impacting and shaping the country. Collaborating on the meta-synthesis.
- Ted: Collaborating on the meta-synthesis.Providing collaborative help with Kathleen on the psychometric paper.
By assigning roles in this format, we can ensure that every facet of our broad and ambitious project goal is covered in depth so that we can gather data as comprehensively as possible–to form a firm foundation for our screener and education dissemination.
Establish Team Procedures Decision Making – What process shall we use: consensus, majority rules, deference to expert, default to the loudest, or? Effective Meetings – Focus on key, timely decisions together vs. status/update (offline); meeting roles: scribe, facilitator, time keeper Communication – FTF: frequency, time, location; type of technology: (Google docs, Hangout, etc.); expectations for responsiveness; ‘best time to work’ (AM, PM, weekends?)
- So far, we have not had an issue with disagreements and finding a consensus on important decisions. Thus, we will continue with our usual approach where someone proposes a question or suggestion on a problem and all are given a chance to input their own thoughts, stance, and comments so that we may discuss the most viable decision based on all the cards put forth on the table. If there is still a strong disagreement, we may consult our various experts (both team members and professional contacts) depending on the area of which the disagreement stands. We are currently meeting weekly with our teams on ZOOM to discuss the outcomes of screening abstracts for a publication. This is another example of how we work well together to resolve conflicts. If two team members disagree on an abstract or article, a professional discussion where we explain our reasoning is held. We have collaborative conversations and come to a final consensus.
- Each week we set a goal as a team. We have individual responsibilities of managing our time wisely to ensure these goals are attained by our next team meeting. We follow a pretty explicit format set forth by team leaders on how to mark items as done, your status on screening through a color coded system and open communication throughout the process. We always have a due date to have work completed by 5PM the day before our weekly team meetings so that team leaders have time to review the work to give meaningful feedback at the meeting.
Prior PlanIf fieldwork were canceled, how would we advance the dream forward? |
New PlanWhat we have accomplished and our focus |
- Work with our contacts in the Sierra Leone Autistic Society to have them review the questions we identified for our screener and talk through phrasing and cultural appropriateness.
- See if they would be willing to and able to have some families complete the screener so we can use some initial pilot data to further refine the screener
- We will be able to continue our work and submit at least one manuscript for publication regarding an older paper we are working on and one on the process of how we created a screener.
- We would be able to continue refining our screener and focus group questions in order to make sure they are ready to be implemented for future fieldwork
- Mountain Top/CEC .
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- Continued extensive research for the development of the screener
- Acquired donations for our stakeholder in Sierra Leone at the Sierra Leone Autistic Society
- We have finished re-coding an older field work paper and are nearing publication
- We are submitting this week the psychometric property paper
- We are working on the meta-synthesis
- We had two presentations accepted to CEC 2021 Conference
- Continue refining screener, qualitative protocol, and IRB.
- Kathleen and Alyssa have attended workshops hosted by AERA on qualitative research
- Alyssa and Dr. Morin attended research meetings with other academics who work in Africa on disability research and are continuing on a bi-monthly basis
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