The first half of the lecture this week we had a guest lecturer speaking about the importance of collaboration, both in our degrees, but also in terms of our future careers.
The lecture was focused around the key characteristics of collaborative work, and why it is valuable to employers in the media industry. There are barely any jobs that don’t involve a large amount of collaboration within the media world, so it is important to cultivate that skill while at university, in order to be appealing to future employers.
The characteristics stressed throughout the lecture (of good collaborative work) where;
- Respect
- Consistency
- Support
- Responsibility
- Equity
These 5 components are all vital for effective collaboration. I think that the two most important of these attributes are respect and equity. While all the skills are valuable, those two, in my opinion, need to come first. If everyone respects each other, and everyone shares the workload evenly, then there will at least be no cause of finger pointing once the assignment has been completed, and everyone will feel as though the contributions made were of equal importance.
The lecture also moved on to talk about group conflict resolution. The main point to be taken from that part was to use a consensus, rather than a majority rule. Using a majority will alienate one of the members, whereas finding compromise and coming to a consensus is the best way to keep everyone involved and satisfied with the end product.
The rest of the Lectorial was focused on Researching and Academic Referencing. I had already covered most of this in my first degree, but it was still nice to get a refresher in how to reference.