Process report in Experts in Teamwork
TBT4850 - Stem Cells Studies: Research and Ethical Aspects
Participants:
Jin Su
Line Syslak
Marit Carlsen Romfo
Martin Velje Andersen
Birgitte Hjelmeland McDonagh
Institute of Biotechnology (spring 2011)
NTNU
Content
0. Preface
1. Introduction
1.1 Presentation of the group members
1.2 What is Experts in Teamwork?
2. Group Work
2.2 Deciding on leadership: An example on how the team made a decision
3. Summary
Preface
In this process report we describe the ongoing group process of making an animated movie on stem cell applications; the challenges, frustrations and argumentations that arose during the making of this project. We aim to reflect over our own and the other group member’s contributions, both socially and practically, by using group psychology theory, group exercises and interventions from the learning assistants and village leader.
1. Introduction
1.1 Presentation of the group members
Birgitte Hjelmeland McDonagh is 25 years old and is in her fourth year in a five year master in biotechnology. Since she is studying science she can contribute to this project with knowledge in cell and molecular biology as well as reading and writing scientific reports. She has also studied psychology and thinks that this can be an advantage in the product. Regarding the course and the process she feels some reluctance due to the negative reputation of this course. She has had some bad experiences in team work before and hopes that she will not end up with all the responsibilities. She has an open mind and has decided to stay positive during the group work for several reasons; it is important with a good grade since this grade can influence her future prospects of a PhD, also it is important to have a good time since this course requires meeting every Wednesday. Regarding the learning goals, she expects to learn more about group dynamics and specially her role in a group. Learning about stem cells is not so important as she has some previous knowledge of this topic, but she is looking forward to discuss the ethical issues regarding the use of stem cells. She thinks that the biggest challenge of this course will be the reflections around the situations that will occur during the semester, and not the project in itself. She hopes that the feedbacks from the other group members are positive and constructive so she can learn more about her interactions with other group members.
Martin Vejle Andersen is 25 years old and in his first year of a two year master program in cell biology. He has taken his Biochemist (Bio engineer) bachelor degree at Høgskolen i Sør-Trøndelag. Between the bachelor and the master he has worked two years as a biochemist. His expectations to EiT is to learn to work and cooperate better with persons of different backgrounds, and hopefully learn something from the other members that he would not have learn from his “own” education. Since he has a background as a biochemist and is now taking a two year master in cell biology, he thinks his knowledge can be useful for the rest of the group. He has some basic knowledge about stem cells and thinks it is an interesting topic. He chose this village to learn more about the use of stem cells and what stem cell research can lead to in the future.
Line Syslak is 24 years old and is currently studying the civil engineering program Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, withbiotechnology as the program option. She is also a trained laboratorytechnician from the Department of Molecular Biology in Bergen. Her
expectations to experts in team were that it would be a relaxed, but interesting, subject with low workloads outside the village days. Before starting EiT she was anxious about working in a group with unfamiliar people, since earlier team work experience had not been that comfortable. But she was determined to make the best effort intomaking a good experience out of it. She expected that the group wouldconsist of members with quite different academic backgrounds, so shecould learn about working and communicating in interdisciplinary groups. Line did not chose Stem Cells as the first village choice, but she finds the subject very interesting and she was glad that she could learn more about what the fuzz was really about. She was satisfied with that the subject was related to her studies, and she thought that she could contribute more easily and in important ways since she hasbackground in biotechnology. During the Experts in Team course shewanted to learn more about herself, about how she works in groups and about her personal qualifications. She hopes to receive feedback fromthe group members about the good and bad things that she does, and how her behavior affects the other group members. She wanted to learn how to handle difficult matters concerning the social part in the group, since it is important for her that everybody around her is content.
Marit Romfo is 24 years old and currently in her 4th year of a master in cognitive and biological psychology. She is not sure who she can contribute to this project, but she finds it fairly interesting and has some basic knowledge about biology and a lot of experience reading and writing scientific reports. She also has a job where she translates and corrects English texts and since this is an international course she feels that she can contribute to the end result in that way.
When it comes to the expectations of the course, she does not really have too high expectations. The course has a negative reputation, and that is reflected in her willingness to go through with the course, but since she has to do it she is determined to make the best of it. She wants to have a good grade since it can affect her later plans. As all others she has had bad as well as good experiences with team work. On earlier occasions she has ended up being the person to pick up the slack and have a lot of responsibility.
As for the learning goals Marit expects to learn a bit more about how different people work together in a group. Personally she has had a lot of group work over the years and she feels that she knows her own role in different groups and situations. She hopes that the group can come to a point where they can be open and honest about each other without individuals getting offended. One of the points with this course is to learn more about yourself, and if no one can be honest that is going to prevent some of the feedback to be kept back.
1.2 What is Experts in teamwork?
· Teaching goals
· Name of village etc.
2. Group Work
This part of the report describes how our group made decisions and how it affected our group work.
2.1 Deciding on leadership: An example on how the team made a decision
In the beginning of the group work Line raised the question if we should have a group leader or not. Line asked each individual to state their opinion, yes or no. Line and Jin said yes, Martin said yes and also pointed out Birgitte as a candidate. Birgitte and Marit said no.
Line raised this question wanted to have a group leader because in her experience a group work is more efficient with a leader. In Lines opinion, a group leader is someone that is responsible for keeping order in a group discussion leading the group in the right direction. She also see the leader as a contact person, if a conflict arise, the leader could be addressed and they could discuss a possible solution to the problem and then the leader could put the issue on the meeting agenda. The leader is somewhat a social person that is efficient and takes care of the rest of the group. In Lines opinion the leader is not more responsible for the workload of the given tasks.
· Were your opinion somehow affected by the others?
Line stated her opinion and she thought the group saw the leader in different ways, that was why we established contact persons. She found it interesting to try without having a leader, since she was quite determined that the group work would be more efficient with a leader delegating work, meeting agenda and work plan for the village days prepared by the leader. But since the group seemed equally interested in taking responsibility, she thought it was worth a shot without a leader, to see how it goes. Marit stated that she was used to be a leader, and Birgitte was pointed out as a leader. Line also sees herself as a leader like person, with personal qualities like caring, controlling and pushing. She felt that it would just be stupid to say that she could be the leader and that she actually enjoy being the leader, since Marit and Birgitte were so used to being the leaders, and since Birgitte was already pointed out as the leader type.
· Not sharing her interests: write about theory here
According to Schwarz (2002) this way of attacking a problem is wrong. Schwarz has outlined 9 ground rules for effective groups and ground rule 5 states: “Focus on interests, not opinions”. In this decision the group did the opposite; focused on opinions before interests. After the voting the group went silent, but then Marit said: “I do not want to have a leader because I do not want one person that end up doing all the work. It is not in the group interests that one person controls the discussion since the leader is also group member and will participate in the discussions, it is more important that we are all equal and have equal influence.” Birgitte agreed with Marit because being pointed out by Martin as a candidate she was afraid to be pointed out as a leader. She said that she did not want to become a leader because her opinion of a leader is someone that has to drag each group member through the course and always to make sure that they do their job. Birgitte can be very convincing when talking and she does not always invite to a discussion. This way of communicating is described in ground rule 6 (Schwarz, 2002) as rhetorical inquiry. Jin argued that her idea of a leader is someone that makes the final decisions and that has the total overview. Marit argued back and said that the work load of each group member should be equal and that it was unfair to put more work on one person.
· What did Jin think about this argument? Why did Jin say yes to not having a group leader although she wanted one?
· Was Marit also afraid of being nominated as a group leader? Was Marit offensive? Body language?
· What was Martins idea of a group leader?
Martins opinion of a group leader was of a less dominant character and he stated that a group leader were more like a contact person. For example if somebody was sick and needed to let the group know, it would be favorable to have a contact person.
This is in accordance to ground rule two (Schwarz, 2002) and rule 5, were the former underlines the importance of sharing all relevant information in order to make a proper decision.
After this discussion the group did another voting and everybody voted for having a flat structure. And Martin suggested having one contact person while Birgitte suggested having two contact persons in case the contact person was sick. Birgitte volunteered for the role as a contact person and so did Martin. Line was somewhat hesitant to the flat structure and stated that she would like to try it out but that she wanted to bring this subject up for discussion if we encountered problems.
· Does Line want to have clear group roles in order to have more group structure?
Line found herself sort of naturally taking the leadership role, without the intentions of doing so. She felt that the group was unstructured, more like a complete mess and people didn’t know what to do the following village day. She felt that people (who) met unprepared and this was in her mind not efficient. She felt uncomfortable taking the leader role since she didn’t feel that she could act like a leader since she was not chosen and because the group stated that they didn’t want a leader. Line really felt the need of some structured and efficient village days. So she started setting a work plan for the village day, and she also ket everyone posted about the situation, sending out SMS and e-mails and calling the group members, since she know that it is really important that everybody knows every little detail. Line realize that she should have confronted the group about her inner conflict, but she see the cause and effect more easily now, than when she was in the situation. So I don’t know if I could actually have confronted the group with it before 16.03.11.
· What has the group learned from this situation? Birgitte: sharing relevant information changed the decision of the group.
Line states that she has learned that she needs to reflect more on my actions; why does she behave like this in the particular situation? Is the behavior needed and what does it lead to? Maybe she should have informed the others of the need of group structure so we could have made an action before it led to chaos? She sees herself as a very impulsive person, she speak her mind freely and she often act without thinking (I know I can often be cautious also, like earlier I said that I didn’t speak my mind concerning that I also have leaderlike qualities, not only Marit and Birgitte).
Based on this discussion we wrote the corporation agreement (See appendix A). Write about norms: are our norms formal or informal? What is our action?
· We have stated some norms in the beginning of the course, which are written in the corporation agreement. I really think we should review the agreement and rewrite it a bit, since we have included some few things, in particular workload if a group member is not present at the village day, and the fact that Marit is the leader.