Weekly Blog Post 6

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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

Approach Evolution Skills Developed Lessons Learned
We started with a very individualistic approach to research We now spend our time researching more similar topics that we can discuss more closely Teamwork Having two people research similar things allows for deeper understanding
Last semester we pretty much only met once a week Now, we meet 2-3 times a week Better Time Management It’s much better for our team to meet multiple times a week
In our meetings, Professor Jedlicka used to do a lot of the talking Usually our weekly meetings with Jedlicka are now driven by us Leadership and group communication We learned that Prof. Jedlicka isn’t going to just blindly lead us, that we have to do it ourselves
Everything we used to do as a team was in person With the pandemic, everything is virtual Adaptability / Flexibility Especially in today’s world we have to be sympathetic to everyone’s personal circumstances. Everyone is handling the pandemic differently, and as a team member I have to respect that
We started with five engineers Now our team has eight members, four of whom are not engineers (Ami switched to the business school) Collaborating on work that is not in my area of expertise Having members of our team that aren’t engineers has really helped us not focus solely on an engineering solution
We planned to work closely with our partners at UPD We’ve had to reach out to other organizations to try and get valuable in-country knowledge Professionalism We’ve had to correspond with larger corporations, which is a bit more daunting than collaborating with students our age, so learning how to conduct and present ourselves in a professional manner was essential
Last semester we didn’t do any designing This semester, we’ve been working in Fusion to design drying chambers for testing Designing Three of our members are in the engineering capstone course, so this semester we really needed to kickstart the design process. We’re in the process of learning that designing and testing can give us valuable knowledge that you can not get from literature review
We started with one leader Now we rotate every three weeks Teamwork, Empathy We learned that having one person doing all the organizing is quite stressful, so we try to bear the load by rotating the leader position
We did a lot of work outside of our area of expertise Now with the designing process, we’re doing more “engineering” Adaptability I actually thought it was extremely helpful to have all of us working with concepts that we weren’t comfortable with, it developed my critical thinking.
Our approach last semester toward the problem in general was quite aimless Now we know what we’re working towards Organization Last semester we had a tough time figuring out what the best approach is for the problem we’re looking to solve, we learned that instead of being afraid to have the wrong approach, that we should just try something and see how it goes.

 

Provide an updated Collaboration Plan, clearly articulating your Goals (Small g and Big G), Roles,Procedures, and Relationships.

Team Name: COPRA                                                                          Date: 09/29/2020
Goals Personal goals:

Brianna: 

Make as much useful contribution as possible, positively influence the group, create strong relationships,Improve my group work skills, ask more critical questions. 

Then I hope to use all these personal improvements to make a social impact that matters.

Tri:

Learn more about coconuts processing and get hand-on experience on making coconuts dryers!

Build life-long friendship with peers at Lehigh and those in the Philippines

Jake:

Provide hands on help with computer aided designing, fabrication (if at all possible), and testing of our drying chambers. Provide next year’s team with the necessary information to build off of and move toward getting our venture going.

Sammy:

Gain experience in conducting meaningful research and working on an interdisciplinary team. Make valuable contributions to move the project forward and create sustainable impact. Improve my interpersonal skills and develop a new mindset 

Ami: 

Contribute to the project in a meaningful way, understanding my own strengths and weaknesses , and learning how I can efficiently and effectively work within a diverse team. Help to better enforce communications within the team and outside the team, and become a better researcher and writer. Improve my own hard and soft skill sets including communications, and better understanding design thinking, engineering design, and supply chain.

Rozhin:

Complete experiments and write results in a lab report

Publish a paper about the experiments and their relationship to the overall copra industry and how the result is an asset to copra farmers.

Michelle: 

Publish a paper about the different antioxidants we have researched on

Pinpoint one antioxidant we can use for the copra processing 

Continue with our research and see if there are other things we can improve on

Brianna C:

Help team with adding background information to paper to provide readers with a deeper framework and history of its problems and clarity on why proposed solution are innovative and helpful

Project Goal:

The project aims to improve copra processing and process streamlining for elevating the livelihoods of copra farmers by generating additional income.

Is our Project Goal scaled to our resources (dreams, materials, skills, differences, etc.) and constraints (assignment, time, skills, etc.)?

As a team, we have the given resources and knowledge needed to design and prototype a device that can better process copra. Unfortunately, due to given circumstances, our access to both each other and the tools required are constraining the timetable for which this project will operate on.  

Since COPRA is a multi-year project, we as a team will lay up a strong foundation so that we can transfer the knowledge to other teams. The hope is that future teams will be able to scale upon the ideas and designs we come up with throughout this year.

 

Metrics for Success

    • Design, energy efficiency, and sustainability of the processing technique
    • Amount of high-quality copra that can be produced using new methods
    • Amount of additional income that can be generated for copra farmers
    • Scalability and Sustainability of the business model (can we actually get people to use this)
Roles Who is responsible for which deliverables?

  • Rozhin, Michelle, and Brianna C. will be responsible for the antioxidant testing and the deliverables that come from this.
  • Jake, Tri, Brianna W, Sammy, and Ami will be responsible for the engineering components and the corresponding deliverables that arise from this.

Which deliverables that require collaboration, subgroups & individual work? Who does each person depend upon to succeed?

Deliverables 

  • Presentation – Collaboration
  • Preliminary Design Concepts – Sub group/Collaboration
  • Prototype – Sub group/Individual
  • Testing Data – Sub group/Individual
  • Final report – Collaboration

Do we need a project manager to coordinate? 

  • Yes, we do need one. However, specific to our group, we rotate our project manager once every three weeks so that everyone has a chance to step up and take responsible for the group’s success
  • We realize the importance of having a manager to help organize and coordinate group work and research, but believe that having a rotating leadership position helps alleviate the stress from one individual
Procedures Decision-making 

  • Consensus, our group has had very few disagreements
    • If consensus can’t be achieved we will default to majority rules/the advice of our project advisor

Effective meetings

  • We’ve conducting weekly meetings (along with multiple weekly sub meetings) to keep everyone on track and updated with all the key information regarding our project
    • Before each meeting we lay out an agenda to increase efficiency of meetings and help steer the conversation in the right direction
    • We write weekly briefs (in accordance with our TE 211 course work) to keep documented records on what work and research we do each week
  • We plan to continue holding these weekly meetings over Zoom at the same time and in the same fashion
  • Keep track of time during meetings
  • At the end of every meeting we make sure to assign weekly work to each group member to ensure that we can hold each other accountable

Meeting roles

  • During meetings the leader will facilitate the meeting and assign a different scribe for each meeting.
  • The leader role will be rotated every 3 weeks

Communication

  • Up until this week we had planned Zoom meetings once a week on Fridays from 2:00 – 3:00 PM
    • Bi-weekly meeting with two sub-groups, Prof. Jedlicka, and Prof. Haden
Relationships Teamwork

  • Our team has been very agreeable up to this point – we’ve had few disagreements if any
    • Our assumption is that transitioning to video chatting as our primary form of communication will not be a problem
  • For the Engineering team:
    • We have backgrounds in Materials Science Engineering, Mechanical Engineerings, Industrial Systems Engineering and Product Design
    • The team also consists of different backgrounds such as athletics, international, cultural, and greek life.
    • We have different interests outside of engineering: make-up and sports, band music, music composition, nature, and chess.
  • The Science Research and Business teams have been added to the to Copra team
    • The Science Research team have backgrounds in biology and are working on developing antioxidant research and experiments to help further the project
    • The business has background in economics and international relations which will help further the project in terms of working on the business background of the project 

Listening – As a team we enter group meetings with an open mindset and are ready listen to each other 

Team Name– Copra

 

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