As soon as our stream site started up my hunt for a group began because the early bird gets the worm right, and what worms I got!! Our group was based in Bay of Plenty and formed easily before the paper had even officially started. While we worked autonomously on our first assignment we still communicated throughout that period and quickly set a date for our first Skype session a couple of days after our first assignment's due date.As a novice Skype user I felt a tad awkward at first but we all quickly settled into a discussion about our group and the first assignment. It was clear from the first moment we wouldn't have much trouble communicating throughout this experience!
As recommended we elected our roles quickly in the first meeting.
Nicole was elected as our scribe in charge of taking notes during the meetings and posting the meeting minutes afterwards. This role suited Nicole as she is a very clear and concise writer and also worked quickly posting up meeting minutes which acted as an important guideline for what we should each be completing individually. Nicole's strengths reflected her Belbin role of Co-ordinator, although I feel her team role didn't. She had a lot of skills that could have been utilised more had she not been gun shy due to her last terrible group experience.
Ana bravely took on the role of editor (a job I was avoiding) and flourished in it. She was able to work quickly with a clear concept of her directions and was able to adapt our individual writing into a cohesive report. This is clearly indicative of her Belbin role: the Implementer. She was able to take our assignment objectives and apply them practically during her editing.
Melinda offered to be in charge of the primary research that needed to be conducted as she had a large contact base of both education professionals and medical professionals and therefore also took the role of our Belbin Resource Investigator. We did have trouble with accurately perceiving what was required for this primary research and how to use it in the report so this wasn't the easiest role for Melinda to take over. But her ability to utilise contacts and unrelenting optimism that we would work it out eventually was a great strength to our group and enabled us to persevere with this research.
And of course the lucky last role fell into my lap and I became the group's leader which was a daunting prospect. I am generally the Belbin Plant of any group I am involved with and my communication skills reflect this as I am an extroverted talker, meaning I tend to get too caught up in the idea to be able to explain it succinctly.
Our strong organisational skills were apparent with our weekly Skype meetings and our ability to create our own deadlines in order to ensure the assignment writing process went smoothly. In addition to our weekly Skype meetings we also meet up in person 3 times during the assignment two process. Those meetings weren't as well organised and productive as our Skype sessions and it showed. But this wasn't a terrible setback though as we all had a strong sense of responsibility towards completing our individual tasks and also it gave us an opportunity to spend time with fellow students, something distance students often miss out on.
Our group dynamic worked well and we all had confidence in our objectives until we completed the final report and noticed the ethical reasoning wasn't very strong throughout it. We faced two options. Firstly, we could individually rewrite our sections to reflect a more ethical approach or secondly, we could leave it as is (it was pretty much finished after all) and be happy with the grade we received. We voted and it was decided that we should leave it so I asked the group for permission to rewrite certain parts and they allowed it. I feel that motivated some of the group to take matters in their own hands and change what they could. In the end our group effort resulted with an A grade report and we hope to repeat that with the seminar assignment (hint hint Lucy :-) ).
I believe our team assignment was successful due to good organisation, strong communication, innovative ideas, diverse skills and shared work ethic. Another group strength was that we appreciated each other and more importantly verbalised our appreciation to each other. Although this group characteristic somewhat undermined our ability to have blunt honest conversations and I feel a bit more conflict would of ended strengthening our ethical arguments. But I am not complaining!! Mainly because we had no "bad apple" in the group, all got along well and received a great grade for it. Now the wait begins for the seminar grade......
