The second topic brought up this week is collaboration. It is something very important which I have expected before I came here to study media. I understand perfectly that it is a skill needed for all media workers, which is precisely the reason why I choose it so that I can push myself, challenge myself. In the anticipation of collaborating with other students, I noticed that I’ve been writing blog posts everyday. I’m not sure if the problem lies with the amount assigned or my procrastination habit, but I simply cannot finish every blog post with neat content and critical thinking, especially after the first submission.
Back to the topic, I’m glad we’ve finally started some collaboration. During the lecture, we shared our good and bad experiences with teamwork. To me, my feelings towards it is neutral. I’ve been collaborating to make short videos in high school Media Arts course; and the experiences were sometimes frustrating, sometimes beneficial. I’ve always enjoyed working alone and finish the task perfectly all by myself, so when I encountered students who were not motivated enough to do the work, I would just do all the thinking and preparation on my own. Then we just filmed the footages together and me editing in the end. It would have wasted a lot of time if I had waited him or her to speak of ideas and plan together. Although it was feasible back then, it won’t be now. That kind of experiences were unfair to me even though I really didn’t mind doing all the work. It is still tiring to have to work with people like them. Another type is optimistic. When all of our members are equal in “strength”, our ideas will collide and come up with something really good. One of our best works were made out of that group—a music video of “Magic-Coldplay”—and it was the best memory in media class. I also remembered another great collaboration I had in my Planning class. I worked with one other guy who was really direct and went straight to work. I liked this type of working mode when we both aim high and work efficiently together.
Now, to sum up, the traits found in my best collaboration experiences: equal skills among members, same group goal, equal participation in the work, familiarity of each other’s working mode, concentration on the task. Writing this blog post really got me thinking about efficiency both in group work and task for a single person. I might have been too inefficient lately.
Last but not the least, the summary of the knowledge learned from the lecture and reading:
- Four phases of evolving into a high-performance team: forming—storming—norming—performing.
- Dynamics of team: remove a member // add a member // change of the team’s goal
- DISC personality
- Group “flow” is essential for creativity; 10 conditions: the group goal, close listening, being in control, blending egos, equal participation, familiarity, communication, moving it forward, the potential for failure.
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Criteria for assessing the strength of a collaboration: (questions of) intention, goals, (self-)governance, coordination mechanism, property, knowledge transfer, identity, network technology, accessibility, equality.
