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
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Roles | Who is responsible for which deliverables?
Which deliverables that require collaboration, subgroups & individual work? Who does each person depend upon to succeed? Deliverables
Do we need a project manager to coordinate?
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Procedures | Decision-making
Effective meetings
Meeting roles
Communication
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Relationships | Teamwork
Listening – As a team we enter group meetings with an open mindset and are ready listen to each other Team Name– Copra |