Blog 5: Team Reflection

I felt as if everyone in our group was equally invested in the success of the project. I didn’t feel as if any one person overtook the project or that anyone didn’t pull their weight. We were able to keep each other informed by way of our Capstone Facebook Page. Any ideas we had while we weren’t in the same physical location was shared via social networking. One issue with utilizing Facebook was it was easy to miss a group member’s post or sometimes comments required additional clarification that could have been avoided if we had met in person. However, it was beneficial to coordinate meeting times and share documents.

One thing I felt our group did very well was brainstorming ideas for the project. Each meeting we expanded on existing ideas until we finally came to our finished product of SoCo.

A bit of constructive criticism for our group would be that while we had great brainstorming sessions, I would have liked to have had our ducks in a row sooner than we did. Things really began to come together the week before Thanksgiving break and the week following. Being the planner that I am, I would have liked to have had things more secure before leaving for break. I felt it came together nicely in the end but with little time to spare.

Another aspect I felt our group did well was play to each others strengths. Nate and Lindsay were our creative minds of the group. Lindsay designed the mock flyer and Nate used his Photoshop skills in modeling our SoCo Website. I felt Sarah really emerged as a team leader and motivator. I prefer writing to presenting so I collaborated all of our Facebook Page notes and group ideas into one portfolio. Each of our strengths had a hand in the finished product.

For the presentation aspect my group members and myself wished we each had more time to speak. The 15-20 minute presentation did not cover every aspect of our proposal. The intricate details that were not included in the presentation can be found in our portfolio but we wish time had permitted us to present these as well.

As a group we also had the concern that other groups were going to have the same proposal idea. Fortunately we were pleasantly surprised by the uniqueness of each proposal.

Overall our group enjoyed the project more than anticipated. The open ended-ness of assignment was overwhelming to begin with. In the end we enjoyed using creativity to address community concerns and brainstorming on problem solving techniques for our Columbia community. Our equal contribution and specialized thinking resulted in a product we are all very proud of.