Reflection 2

So today, we had a peer review of our project plan and process with the other class. We had the opportunity to look at other group's work and review them. The other group also reviewed ours and we had mostly positive feedback, so we were glad that our plan and process made sense to others.

I think we have done pretty good in our project so far, and we are almost done with our first outcome which is to raise awareness among the Nexus community by selling t-shirts. Our write up of our project is also pretty detailed and I am not afraid to say that it is much better than the example one. However I think we over analyse situations and so take a long time to come to a decision. So far we are up to date to our gantt chart, but then again our gantt chart has been altered many times to fit with our progress, so I'm not sure if we are actually progressing as well as we should. Plus the upcoming mock exams and other activities, time will be another issue, and we will have to find ways to meet up and continue our project.

Therefore, due to pressing deadline ever nearing, we have decided that we cannot continue with our 2nd outcome, presenting a proposal to the school BOD to install solar panels, as it is right now. We agreed to forgo the meeting with BOD, as their BOD meeting times are unsuitable anyway. We initially wanted to prepare a detailed documentation of our proposal along with a powerpoint when we present our proposal, but we think that the documentation would require too much effort, and there would be no point doing it if we were not going to meet with the BOD. So currently we would be focusing on doing more research on solar panels and creating the presentation as best as we can.

Reflection 1

After a term of group work, including the holidays, we have managed to progress in our project. We have completed our project plan, although there are still a few ammendments to be made. For our T-shirt sales, we've successfully design 5 t-shirts and we've sent out surveys and obtained statistics from the secondary student body. We are currently trying to get reasonable t-shirt printing services, so we are all doing research and contacting as many people as possible.
We are also at the same time working on the proposal for renewable energy. A lot of research has been done into the different type of solar panels, and it is rather complicated research and we are still compiling information.
Based on the Gantt Chart, we have completed quite an amount of work but we still have a lot more to do.

Throughout the time we are working on the group project, it is my responsibility to update the gantt chart in accordance to our progress. I was also responsible for the T-shirt surveys, and have helped out with the designs. We have yet to allocate specific tasks for the upcoming plan of our project and although I did not have any specific jobs in the past, I have usually helped out wherever I can. I expect I will continue to do that in the future.

Team Roles

Just to remind myself of my Belbin roles:
1. Implementer
2. Monitor Evaluator
3. Plant

For the past few lessons, we have been assessing our roles in our groups. To create the ideal team, it would be best to have every one of the proposed Belbin roles in our group.

So.. for Younicorns.. All of us are monitor evaluators. This would explain why we have such long discussions. Because we are all so meticulous over every small detail and consider every opportunity, but sometimes they go abit far. Which is why we have decided that we should put a time limit to our discussions.

We also have 3 plants (Jia Yi, Mia and I), which bring creative, imaginative ideas to the group. However  plants may lack attention to detail, which is funny because we are also monitor evaluators which pay great attention to detail, so this two roles which we possess would even us out.

We have our shaper, Jacelyn, whom usually takes the lead, and is the driving force in the group. Shapers may tend to be over pushy so luckily we have Mia who is a team worker to tone Jacelyn down. Mia is also flexible and seems to be like the glue that brings us together as a group, but can be indecisive at times.

Then we have, me, who is an implementor along with Jia Yi. Implementors are generally organised and not afraid of hard work but are dull and inflexible. Well, I do not think that I am dull, but I agree that I am rather inflexible and do not really like changes that might interfere with our plans.

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We have no specialists! But we do not mind it so much as they only contribute to their area of expertise and we would prefer someone who could contribute all roundedly.

We seem to have a strong focus on the thinking roles which we consider to be a very good thing. This is because much of our marks are graded based on our thinking skills than our actions and the success of our outcomes.

Peak Oil - Self Reflection

The Group Work
1. What have I contributed to the group project?
I felt that in terms of group contribution, I have contributed many various ideas. I offered my opinions on all the issues discussed and reasons to back it up. I weighed out the pros and cons of each of the options laid out our for our group project to and voiced out my concerns regarding these options so as to ensure that the best suited decision was made as a group. I also carried out the task designated to me in the project which was to edit the video script and find suitable pictures and videos to be put into our video, but as we decided not to continue on with our project I wasn’t able to actually complete my task.

2. What would I do differently next time? Why?
The next time when I do a group project, I will try my very best to procrastinate less and not do my tasks last minute. I also tend to drift off topic and get distracted easily during discussions, so I will be more focused the next time.

3. What have I learnt about working together?
I learned that while working together we have to consider everybody’s opinions while making decisions. I also learned that we could complete work faster by allocating tasks to the group members or split ourselves into smaller groups eg. pairs to better focus on the task rather than having too many people working on a task at a time as “too many cooks spoil the broth”.

4. What has been good/challenging about working as part of a group?
One of the challenging things was getting together for discussions and planning. We had our own activities so it was hard to find a time that would suit all of us. Working as part of a group would also require lots of compromising with other group members so I would not always get things the way I want. As a group of “critical eyes”, we tend to fuss over small details and this costs us a lot of time, so we would have to try and keep our discussions and planning time shorter and more to the point.

What have I learnt doing the project?
1. What have I learnt about;
a. deciding on and planning a project?
I learned that our group would have to be very organised and include everybody in the planning. We would brainstorm and get all our ideas down. Then as a group we would filter out the best ideas while still taking into consideration all the members’ interests before deciding in order to satisfy everybody. Our group would have to be very cooperative and be willing to compromise.

b. planning and producing research?
While conducting research, I learned to allocate different areas of research to each of the group members. We would place all our research together in a shared document as we go so other group members are able to view and edit it. So we could help other members out in the research if need me.

c. reading and presenting my ideas?
We shared our ideas in a shared document so I was able to present my ideas and findings to everybody in our group. I also presented my ideas during group discussions and I learned to give feedback to other ideas too.

d. time management?
I learned how to create a gantt chart to more effectively manage my time and our tasks as a group. I now know that I should spread out my work evenly across the time given for me to complete my task and not do it all last minute so I would not produce sub standard work and disappoint my group members.

2. What would you do differently to develop these skills?
I would have to be more focused and generally try not to procrastinate.

3. How did I approach my individual contribution?
I tried to contribute as much as I could and whenever possible.

4. What are the most valuable points I have learnt? Why?
Throughout the project I have managed to identify my weakness which is basically lack of focus and procrastination. This has been an obstacle for me not only when working in a group but also in individual work.

Peak Oil - Group Evaluation

The project
1. What area of study did you choose?  Why?

"What would happen if oil ran out today?" The future worst-case scenario. This topic was appealing to all of us especially Jacelyn because she watched a documentary about it. She then intrigued the rest of us by introducing the same documentary to all of us, and we all just agreed to do it. We also decided to do it because we wanted to do something that did not involve money and a lot of time.

2. What did your groups hope to achieve?  What was your proposed outcome?

We hoped to discourage the citizens of Nexus from living excessively, and instead encourage them to live sustainably with a main focus on oil-based products which we further narrowed down to plastic bags. We attempted to achieve this by creating a video followed by a presentation to be shown to secondary learners during an assembly.

3. How could you critically evaluate the success of your outcome?

We would have conducted discussions. We could also send out surveys and use the feedback to consolidate our evaluation.

4. What were your specific group roles and responsibilities?  How did you organise this?  Was the allocation effective?

Jacelyn - Shaper. Wrote video script.

Jia Yi - Secretary, technical person. Create video.

Wen Wen - Helped out wherever she could. Found videos, pictures, and edited script.

Mia - Taking down notes, summarised notes. Wrote and edited script.

5. Did your project have enough scope for every group member to play an active, full time part in the group work?  How could you improve this?

We had enough scope for everyone to play an active role in the group work as we allocated the tasks according to each of our capabilities. We all contributed ideas equally. It was pretty ideal so there weren't much room for improvements.

6. Was the workload manageable in the time frame given?

Some work was finished ahead of time, but there were some delays as well. 

Improvements: Set a timer to help us keep track of our time as we take a very long time to make decisions as we tried to consider everybody's opinion and it often lead to debates. 

7. How effective were your minutes and agendas?  How did they help you?  How could you improve them?

Our agendas were not very helpful, except to know what we did in the previous lesson. Our notes we found were more useful as it contained more details of what we had done the decisions we made.

Improvements: make our agendas like our notes.

The Perspectives

1. How did you gather information and opinions/viewpoints from a personal, national/local and global perspective?

We mostly researched on the internet. We used personal experiences to know what our target audience (our age group) wanted in the video.

2. How did/could you ensure you consider all these perspectives in your project?

We used a fish bone diagram to display all the perspectives being considered.

Improvement: Create a checklist of perspectives.

3. Would your outcome need to be accompanied by some additional explanation or elaboration?

Quite a bit. We needed to explain how our final product would produce our desired outcome and how our research relates to it.

4. How could you make sure you include cross-cultural views?

Compare our target audience (secondary learners) in different schools in Malaysia (National, Chinese, Tamil, International) and possibly other countries as well.

Peak Oil - The End

So, today, we made them important decision to move on with our real project. We have decided to leave our mock project behind start anew. It was a rather difficult decision to make because we had already spent so much time and effort on our mock project, we didn't want to see it go to waste. We also thought that so far for our mock project, we had only planned and made preparations, we had yet to take an active part in actually doing our possible outcome ie. presenting it during an assembly. It would be an incomplete experience to just stop right there, but we would probably not get much more out of doing it anyway. Plus, we realised that time is not on our side, as our final project is due next January/February which gives us very little time to actually prepare our real project. Therefore, we thought it would be best if we started with our actual project and concentrate all our efforts into it.
So I guess this is where we say goodbye to peak oil and part our separate ways.

Gantt Chart

A gantt chart is a horizontal bar chart which illustrates the project schedule based on a timeline. It shows the duration of every task and also the dependency relationship between the tasks eg: one task must be completed before moving on to the next. But there are also tasks where it can begin before the completion of another or it can be done in parallel, the gantt chart allows the timing of these tasks efficiently. Large projects can be broken down into sub subjects which enables better planning.

Gantt charts are easy to create and allows us to manage our time effectively. We would be able to plan accordingly to the time requirements of each task in which a few tasks could be conducted at the same, saving time. Gantt charts also good in the sense that it provides a visual of our time management, and so we will have something solid to look up in case we do not remember. Gantt charts can be used to show current schedule status of the tasks so we would know the progress of each of the team members and provide them help if required.

Top tips:
- Identify and break down all the tasks and into sub tasks if need be
- Specify clearly what the tasks are 
- Assign tasks to the right team member
- Colour code the tasks of every individual team member to ensure that they don't clash
- Continuously monitor the progress of every team member to make sure that all the tasks are completed according to plan