How did we make it happen...

Team Reflection and Evaluation

The project (this handbook) was well planned in a proactive way. The first meeting was conducted in a timely manner. An initial plan was made efficiently in the first meeting. For example, the group members made the general outlines of the handbook, distributed literature work and planned interviews. Even there were group members who could not attend the first meeting; communication was done well through emails. Moreover, we had two other group meetings; those were also the milestones in the project. One is giving feedback for completed literature on the topics; another one is to plan the empirical study after finishing the interviews. Furthermore, frequent communication through emails and Moodle has been done to edit and complete the handbook.

We made this happen by good teamwork and mutual respect as a team. We created an atmosphere of freedom of expression. We had the willingness to learn from each other besides contributing to the team. There is also a group member taking great initiative and responsibility for the handbook, which has been greatly appreciated by the rest of the group members. Deadlines and work distribution were made clearly and everyone knew the importance of finishing the distributed work on time. On the other hand, even when communicating through e-mails and Moodle had some time delay, we planned the project so proactively that it did not affect the completion of the project on time. The only problem arose during the project was the length of the written work. Everyone did such a detailed and deep investigation and analysis of their part of the work that we had to deal with a text overload and had to decide which part of the text should be left out of the handbook in order to provide a good quality work. This raised some problems within the group, but with effective and respectful communication the problem was eliminated by the end of the project work.

We learned the importance of being on task and keeping the deadline in the project. Communication is truly important to the success of the project. Thus all the project members need to be well-informed. The diverse nationalities of the group also help us to learn how to manage diversity and respect different opinions.