What was learned/experienced? What should we work on?
What was learned/experienced? What should we work on? At the start of this project while discussing roles, I volunteered to become the project leader as no one had volunteered for its challenge. Personally, I didn’t mind since we needed to move on. From then, I tried my best to contribute to my team in ways like organizing and structuring our research, making it easier to understand, dividing tasks, motivate others, explain and update others and engage discussions.
I have learned a lot from this course. As an individual, I learned how to deliver a presentation in front of my group or groups of people, work together, and assign roles, basically learned about responsibilities and aspects of leadership. Especially a role like this contributes a lot to learning I find, since you develop your communication skills so much amongst each other. Besides all these, I also became aware of the disadvantages of this role; leader. It is a risk to take this role, since you could be easily disliked. I’m glad I didn’t face situations like this…I hope! Leadership requires so much responsibility and hard work, where in some cases you even have to sacrifice some of your personal time as your group relies on you. It is a brilliant learning experience for sure, and I think everyone should have a go at this role to develop. As a team, we learned how to collaborate in an effective way where each one of us was able to show their skills at the end; some in design, some content wise, where as the other structure. So, as a team we learned about each other’s strengths and weaknesses which could help all of us in the future (3 years together!), as we would know who to approach to assist in particulars. Other than developing skills, ‘communication wise’ we also experienced/worked with Basecamp (also a great advantage). As a whole class, we have generally gained knowledge about networks and tools. We have learned about the NGO’s and their problems. We learned about the advantages and disadvantages of Internet facilitations. We learned about different platforms and the tools they provide. We also learned about weaknesses of such platforms, and analyzed/thought about improvements and solutions for such problems. The meetings with Nancy provided us a learning experience where we could visualize the problems and experience. In addition, our class also became closer with each other due to the blog reflections. Blog reflections contributed on evaluating ourselves and others, which I consider plays a big role in the learning process. Coming towards the end of this course, I can conclude that this course provided the main branch to open innovators, which is NETWORKS. As an open innovator, it is essential for you to understand how networks work (including their limitations) for the future. At the beginning, the purpose of this class was not so clear but as you experience this course, you understand. Furthermore, I would also like to point out that as a class, I feel that we should work on self-esteem and confidence, which usually is the problem with many students.
For example, my group is fantastic when it comes to sharing opinions, ideas and discussing, but when it came to presenting many-lacked confidence (this is slowly changing). Eventually it was the leader presenting which I didn’t mind. But forgetting about the roles, as an individual student or friend I would want to motivate and encourage others to become confident and be able to perform since they need presenting skills for the future. So to help with that, I’m in!
PS: Remember the lecture about cultural differences, ‘Fake it until you make it!’?! What else should we work on? Any suggestions?