5. Teamwork — Who is driving the car?
We are living in a time of uncertainty, fear, but above all, hope.
If anyone had asked me about teamwork two years ago, I might have answered something like “People that you work within your office, with similar objectives at the end”. Sure, it is pure speculation, but there are things that I am definitely sure after recent experiences: Teamwork never relied so much on organisation and specialised tools to support decisions.
We had to find ways to optimise our online meetings, fill in gaps of communication, and respect realities heretofore ignored. By that I mean, connection issues, digital exhaustion, misinterpretation of behaviours (this one not so strict to our present time, though), tools illiteracy, and sometimes demotivation, since many of us are worried about beloved ones, and life.
Our teamwork started with the definition of the ethics pillars of our conduct. It was essential to establish limits, desirable behaviours, and work commitment. It can be checked in Figure 1.
Figure 1
During the whole project, I felt that I had the freedom to express my opinions. It was extremely encouraging. As an international student myself, communication is always an area of close attention to me. However, my team colleagues were helpful, supportive, and made me comfortable.
While working in a group, I aim to make sure that I offer as much help as I can. I believe that we can learn much from the difficulties and helping people. And it can be fun as well.
I learned from each team member, and backgrounds (personal and professional).
Tools such as the diary that we created were very effective, although sometimes we did not make the best use of its potential. We would be benefited from a reminder to complete the diary, for example. Also, better planning of topics to be discussed, and communication would have avoided insecurity and endless meetings.
It is a requirement to keep everything organised and do it at the very first beginning in remote collaboration. Preferably within a few channels, or you might lose track of what is happening and the next steps.
I enjoyed much having one of the apps that I researched and presented to my team, being further explored in this project. The functionality of the chatbot was something that I had in mind, and that had proved to be as interesting as I thought. It was well-received by my colleagues and encouraged. Another great plus was the experience I had with Figma, which allowed me to help my teammates and do a decent job with the tool.
We had many tools to explore and use, such as Figma, Trello, Folders within Microsoft Teams, Chatting in different channels, Zoom, Paper, Mural, Powerpoint, Word, Botsociety, Blackboard, Plugins, OneDrive, Emails… Tons of sources of information to digest quickly. Sometimes, you feel really overwhelmed, being organisation, respect, and ethics all you have to keep going and work on.
I am glad to say that: despite the adversities, my team and I succeed, not because of marks, but as people. We worked hard and followed ethical guidelines during our learning process.
