LLP008 COLLABORATIVE PROJECT

LLP008 COLLABORATIVE PROJECT Individual Reflective Essay

task brief
LLP008 COLLABORATIVE PROJECT Individual Reflective Essay

Essay Question

Write an individual reflective essay about your personal Belbin Team Role profile and the utility of Belbin considering your group work experiences:

Describe Belbin’s ‘Team Role’ Model and reflect on the outcomes of your own Belbin evaluations:

• Why is Belbin useful in relation to small group work?
• How does it relate to your industry?
• How could it be useful regarding your future career?
• critical reflection of your own Belbin outcomes
• team working theories and practice
• practical issues: collaboration, team dynamics, personal project role, leadership and communication issues, project outcomes

Individual Reflective Essay

• 40% of module assessment
• 2,000 words maximum (excluding appendices and references)
• Deadline: Tuesday 25 May
  • Make use of the weekly CP sessions and tweets: download all your reflections at the end of the module
  • Read the ‘Reflective Practice’ folder on Learn and Reflective Practice – A Guide for Students
  • Use the Reference list and online videos on the Learn module

Note: Marking criteria for the Individual Essay will be made available via Learn.

Common problems in reflective writing

• Too descriptive (lacks analysis and evaluation)
• Language is too informal
• No reflection about other people’s perspectives
• Connections are not made between the experience and the learning outcomes of the assignment
• Implications for future learning/personal development are not identified
• No links are made between experience/reflections (practice) and academic literature (theory)

Reflective writing

I can have good contact with my classmates. We all have a positive, determined and enthusiastic completion of the business plan. Because our team members have different learning backgrounds, we are lucky and based on our strengths, we can easily divide our work. We have identified how we can maximize our strengths to reduce our vulnerability. After that, we keep meeting to discuss our progress and consult with each other to improve our work. We have been in contact with mobiles and emails. I think teams are very important to us because everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses and if we can harness the strengths of each we are a very strong team. We did our best in group work and each team member made a big contribution to our group.

Note:  The above extract of student writing has previously been submitted via Turnitin. 

Reproduction of any part of this extract will be identified as unoriginal work upon submission.

Reflective writing

I can have good contact with my classmates. We all have a positive, determined and enthusiastic completion of the business plan. Because our team members have different learning backgrounds, we are lucky and based on our strengths, we can easily divide our work. We have identified how we can maximize our strengths to reduce our vulnerability.

Note:  The above extract of student writing has previously been submitted via Turnitin.

Reproduction of any part of this extract will be identified as unoriginal work upon submission.

After that, we keep meeting to discuss our progress and consult with each other to improve our work. We have been in contact with mobiles and emails. I think teams are very important to us because everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses and if we can harness the strengths of each we are a very strong team. We did our best in group work and each team member made a big contribution to our group

Note:  The above extract of student writing has previously been submitted via Turnitin.  

Reproduction of any part of this extract will be identified as unoriginal work upon submission.

After that, we keep meeting to discuss our progress and consult with each other to improve our work. We have been in contact with mobiles and emails. I think teams are very important to us because everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses and if we can harness the strengths of each we are a very strong team. We did our best in group work and each team member made a big contribution to our group.

Note:  The above extract of student writing has previously been submitted via Turnitin. 

Reproduction of any part of this extract will be identified as unoriginal work upon submission.

There were two members of the group, B and D, who had a little difficulty in expressing and listening. I found that language barriers made some members feel less interested in communicating, and they seemed unconfident even when speaking, which caused a lack of cohesion in our team…Besides, the difference of subject background led to the lack of understanding. Fewer meetings and more online communication resulted in the slow transmission of information. One of the results was our focus evolved from teamwork to our point of views.

Oral communication is one of the most vital means of communication in society (Crosling and Ward, 2002). In addition, misunderstandings and repeated communication failures can cause negative outcome (Mcgovern, 2002)…We may have missed some great ideas due to the inaccuracy of information transmission…

Note:  The above extract of student writing has previously been submitted via Turnitin. 

Reproduction of any part of this extract will be identified as unoriginal work upon submission.

There were two members of the group, B and D, who had a little difficulty in expressing and listening. I found that language barriers made some members feel less interested in communicating, and they seemed unconfident even when speaking, which caused a lack of cohesion in our team…Besides, the difference of subject background led to the lack of understanding. Fewer meetings and more online communication resulted in the slow transmission of information. One of the results was our focus evolved from teamwork to our point of views.

Oral communication is one of the most vital means of communication in society (Crosling and Ward, 2002). In addition, misunderstandings and repeated communication failures can cause negative outcome (Mcgovern, 2002)…We may have missed some great ideas due to the inaccuracy of information transmission…

What I need to introspect is that I didn’t encourage members who were not confident in their language, and I should have let them try to explain their ideas in front of the team. I used a more time-consuming approach, contact and communicate with team members one-by-one. I should not neglect the problems caused by communication. Instead, we should establish our common goals face-to-face, to conduct more in-depth investigations based on the backgrounds of each member. We might get a better result in less time by doing this way.

Next time, I will encourage some unconfident members to express their ideas as much as possible. Besides, I will suggest using some auxiliary means to help us communicate effectively to understand the advantages and disadvantages of the whole team, so that make better use of everyone strengths.

Note:  The above extract of student writing has previously been submitted via Turnitin. 

Reproduction of any part of this extract will be identified as unoriginal work upon submission.

What I need to introspect is that I didn’t encourage members who were not confident in their language, and I should have let them try to explain their ideas in front of the team. I used a more time-consuming approach, contact and communicate with team members oneby-one. I should not neglect the problems caused by communication. Instead, we should establish our common goals face-to-face, to conduct more in-depth investigations based on the backgrounds of each member. We might get a better result in less time by doing this way.

Note:  The above extract of student writing has previously been submitted via Turnitin. 

Reproduction of any part of this extract will be identified as unoriginal work upon submission.

Next time, I will encourage some unconfident members to express their ideas as much as possible. Besides, I will suggest using some auxiliary means to help us communicate effectively to understand the advantages and disadvantages of the whole team, so that make better use of everyone strengths.

Note:  The above extract of student writing has previously been submitted via Turnitin. 

Reproduction of any part of this extract will be identified as unoriginal work upon submission.

Remember: two elements of reflective writing

Reflective writing is a way of processing your experiences to produce learning. It has two key elements:

1. Integrates theory and practice. Identify important aspects of your reflections and write these using the appropriate theories and academic context to explain and interpret your reflections. Use your experiences to evaluate the theories – can the theories be adapted or modified to be more helpful for your situation?
2. Identifies the learning outcomes of your experience. So you might include a plan for next time identifying what you would do differently, your new understandings or values and unexpected things you have learnt about yourself.

Source: University of Reading