Welcome back, and I hope that everyone had an exciting christmas with friends and family. This week I have decided to write about what I am learning from my topic for Assignment Two.
This is a very broad concept, as I feel I am learning more from this paper than any others I have taken so far. I am not sure if this because we have a team to keep in contact with. My team is great, and full of ideas and praise for each other. I have found that we can suggest new ideas easily, and ideas are formed through emails to each other.
We have a unique team in the fact that two members live in Dubai, and the other two are in New Zealand, but too far away to have face to face contact. We rely heavily on email contact. I have learnt that this way we really have to watch each others time zones, and help each other out where possible. I try to send through any data, drafts, questions etc by 8pm at the latest in NZ time, as this seems to be a good time of morning in Dubai for the other two members to pick it up. Then they have the day to work with that information, and I normally hear back from them by the time I wake up in the morning.
I am also learning that while working in a team, we have to stick to what we have said in our work and deadlines. I have chosen to do two of the three questions in Set C: Healthy Communities. As the immunisation question was from my position paper, I already had a wealth of information. With the second question, I have used a teams members position paper, along with some extra information. I was fearful that I would not adequately be able to answer the question. But finishing the draft today, I feel I accomplished all the questions asked within the objectives.
So apart from learning about immunisations and nutrition guidelines in a scientific context, I feel learning to work in a team has been a lot more beneficial to me. I have learnt to trust that my team mates will get their own work out on time, as well as realising that they also depend on me to do the same. I have also learnt to check my emails regularly. I think that the prompt feedback we give to each other helps, not only in our work but in how we feel about the progress the report is heading in.
This time next week, we will have a finished report!
Hi Jaimi,
ReplyDeleteI agree with a lot of what you have said here in regards to working within a team. We are in quite a unique situation with two people in Dubai and then two people in NZ. And the way things are there hasn't really been the possibility of utilising Skype with the time difference and other commitments, so email has been heavily relied on. Sometimes it would have been easier to be able to talk face to face so to combat that we have had to be diligent on checking emails and responding in a timely manner. I think we have done pretty well!