Reflection on Team Based Research Project Proposal

With the proposal all done and submitted, here I am to reflect on working on it. Having worked on it for the past about half a semester (I think), I do have quite a few things to say about it.

Let me first admit that I am not a group-work person and I have never really looked forward to doing group projects. Having people of different personalities isn't a big issue, really. It can get difficult because you are be required to work with the really difficult, uncooperative types. I've had bad experiences and in one, my group-mates literally disappeared.

That's me, but let me get back to the project for this module, which is what this post is going to be about. By fate, I was placed in a grouping with two exchange students. At first, I thought things would be really difficult because the project was based on a problem in Singapore, but it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.

I had cooperative team-mates, and in the first discussion we had, I was impressed that Kwangyoung, an exchange student from Korea who only came to Singapore at the beginning of the semester suggested something quite Singapore-specific for us to work on. His suggestion had to do with the rich-poor divide, or rather the mega-rich vs the average the Singapore. Singapore is just a playground for the super-rich. The mega-rich were often expats taking all the top positions in the work place making it hard for Singaporeans to get to the top. I thought it was pretty smart.

I didn't have it too bad in terms of communication either. My team-mate from China could communicate well in English. Kwangyoung's English was quite limited, but I am happy to say that despite this, there was almost no problem in communication!

I worked with Kwangyoung in peer teaching and I remember then, that I had quite a hard time communicating with him. I remember our other group-mate, Edmund, doing most of the explaining,re-explaining things I said. This time round, I didn't need Edmund nor did I need the help of my other team-mate. Yay, maybe I did get better at this communicating thing!

Since the project was based on Singapore, and both my team-mates were exchange students, I didn't really expect them to know or understand the issue. The issue we worked on, I feel, was also quite specific. It wasn't, for example, a general issue such as an increasing aging population etc. We worked on the controversial 3am ruling implemented in Clarke Quay only last month, on 1st October. On top of being specific, it is a recent issue too. I had to explain it to them, but I was happy to. I'm glad I played a part in giving them a little more insight into a Singaporean issue.

Having non-Singaporeans in the group also has its benefits. Being foreigners, they could provide insight from their point of view. This gave a broader, expanded view of the issue at hand. Singaporeans working on a Singaporean issue might have limited this. On top of that,I learned a thing or two about how things are done outside Singapore. This was indeed helpful, and even helped form part of the proposed solution.

Of course I faced my share of problems. One was that I had to initiate a lot of things. To be honest that was quite frustrating. But I guess sometimes it has to be that way. I initially thought people in a group would just come together and things would just get done. I don't really believe in having a dominant 'leader' type with the others just being 'followers' in a group. That's the traditional group. I believe in everyone working together on an equal level. I guess this cannot always happen and sometimes people just have to take charge. I used to think people leading projects were just really bossy, pushy, unlike-able people. I understand now that sometimes somebody just has boss and push to get the job done. If I had to, I would boss and push again. I wouldn't do things any different, because what is more important here is getting the job done. I had friends who suggested letting go instead of taking charge and just 'seeing what would happen then', but I think that would be really childish and detrimental to the project.

Another thing I learnt was that not everybody would be as committed to the project. This was a small group, so it was quite obvious. It also meant significantly more contribution by others more involved in the project. It sounds terrible, but realistically, could happen in any other project, whether it is a school or work project. There would always be people more involved and people less involved. It was something I should have expected. It was more stark and bothering probably because it was a small group, but in a larger group, maybe like around 10 or 20 people, it wouldn't have been as bothering. I took part in many CIP projects and of course, some people did more, some did less, but it never bothered me partly because the group was often large.

Mainly, I learnt to have more realistic expectations. Maybe my expectations were too ideal. For this project, I was stern when I had to be stern, however, it did not really change things. I probably have to learn how to better and effectively deal with team-mates who are a little more difficult to work with. At the same time it has to be a way which would encourage them to be more active. This would be especially important in situations where I have to charge. If I learned how to do this, it would benefit the whole team as people would only have to contribute their share and not more to make up for the lack of contribution of some others. It would be fair to everyone working on the project.

As of now, I don't really know how to go about doing this. I thought being stern would help, but it didn't. Have you experienced something similar? I'd love to know how you handled it. Let me know in the comments!

Diana