The evolution of our team

Set with the task of finding a team, I hunted through stream for anyone who might happen to live somewhere near me, when I came across a post from someone in my home town! How lucky was that!? I immediately contacted Ana to find out she had formed a team with two other people an hour away from where we live! Our team had quickly been formed before we had even started the course, lucky for us!

Initially we decided which set of questions we wanted to work from in our group assignment and then picked appropriate topics for our own position papers. We kept in contact throughout the first few weeks via a Facebook page we had set up and gave each other help when needed. Then it was time to start on the group assignment. We set up a meeting on Skype where we introduced ourselves and discussed where we wanted to go with the assignment, our goals and aims. We also decided our group roles; Nadine would be the leader, Ana was the editor, Melinda would be in charge of conducting the surveys and I was the editor. We choose our questions and began our week’s works.

In terms of Belbin roles, I don’t believe any of us fit in to specific roles however we did have characteristics of some.  I feel that Melinda fit in best as the Resource Investigator as she was in charge of contacting people for interviews as well as conducting them. She would also find information that she believed the rest of us could use for our research which was highly helpful, especially an article she found on compulsory vaccinations for me. Ana may have been an implementer; she was quite whilst doing work but often got a lot done. She had to put a lot of time into the group report, first with writing her own parts of the research and secondly with editing everyone else’s work as we went along. Ana sought everyone’s ideas before making a final decision and worked hard to produce a final compilation of everyone’s work. Nadine was the plant, as the team leader she was always supplying us with ideas to consider as well as new information. Decisions with the layout for our report came from her ideas as did a lot of our goals and aims for the assignment. I believe my role was the co-ordinator, I feel that I was able to help the group set deadlines for our work and helped delegate out our own roles at the beginning of the set up process.

Our different roles meant our group functioned well and had the main aspects covered. This meant the process of creating and completing the report went very smoothly. We all got along well with each other and were happy to help should someone be struggling with their task. I feel that we all worked well as a team and were highly successful. At the beginning we said had that it would be great to get an A on our report, but that we would just do our best and see how it went. We definitely all did our best, working through the holiday break to have everything in on time and well written. All our hard work was rewarded with an A! Congratulations team!

Why I hate public speaking

Public speaking is a chore we are all forced to do at one stage or another. Many of us, especially myself, find this to be a very uncomfortable situation. It causes you to feel very vulnerable and conspicuous with nowhere to hide from everyone’s attention. All these people you don’t know, ready to judge your performance, thoughts and ideas. And of course every little mistake will be noticed.

Public speaking often involves talking or presenting something that you have little to no passion for. When you have no passion for a subject how can you be expected to affect an audience and leave an impression on them?

Dale Carnegie said “There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.”  I find this statement to be very accurate. You can spend days or weeks practising a speech, going over it again and again, just to reach presentation time and deliver something that sounds so different. In hindsight you wish you gave a presentation that thoroughly engaged the audience, had them leaning in and hanging on every word. Instead, they sit there in silence, barely moving and giving you an obligatory clap at the end. You have no idea what they are thinking or if they even took note of anything you said. You sit back down and beat yourself up about how it could have been different. If only you were a more confident speaking.

Public speaking is the number one fear in America and it is most definitely mine.

25 awesome public speaking quotes. (May 2012). Sourced from:

http://bigfishpresentations.com/

Lucky to have a great team!

Ah the dreaded team assignment! 

Team assignments are always a learning experience and people tend to love them or hate them. Just like the black and white feelings people have towards them, they also tend to go really well or very badly.

When you enrol in a summer school paper via distance, the last thing you expect to be in the paper is team assignments. Finding out that half of the paper relied on team work was not an exciting time. How was I meant to join a group when I didn't know anyone? I live in the middle of nowhere, how was I meant to meet my team mates and what were they going to be like? However as soon as I began the team assignment, my worries were put at ease. Everyone in my group was friendly and seemed to want to do well. 

We immediately started working through what needed to be done and what our roles, opinions and ideas were. As a team we worked well together, meeting our deadlines and keeping on track. We easily made decisions, luckily we agreed on almost everything. On the occasional time we had different ideas we would take a vote to ensure the majority of the group were happy. 

Unfortunately, even with our hard-work and efficiency as a team, in the last week we realized our report may not have been going in the direction it needed to. As a team we had to make the hard decision between doing a lot of extra work to change it or handing it in the way we had it and possibly lose marks. We decided to hand it in the way it was, hoping for the best. Luckily a member of our team had time to somewhat edit the assignment to incorporate the parts we were missing. 

This assignment has been a good experience for me as I have been able to work with people I wouldn't usually have the chance to and learn new things from them. To my group, thank you for being such a great team, I highly appreciate all the work you have done. Hopefully we get a grade we have worked hard for.

Who am I?

We have all asked ourselves this question at some point, but do we ever truly get an answer? What are my strengths, likes, weaknesses and dislikes? And what does this make me? I will try to explain who I am using Belbin Team Roles. Belbin Team Roles are a set of roles that people in teams seem to fall into, which was observed by Dr Meredith Belbin.

After analysing myself in previous teams I have come to the decision that I am...  THE COORDINATER.

But what does that mean?

As a COORDINATER, I am good at organising a group, setting deadlines and goals, and delegating tasks. However, my downfall is that I am not good at directing. This does not make me a great leader however if necessary I am able to fill this position. I tend to take charge but rebel from the idea of being a leader. This is a roll I am comfortable in but to become a great leader I need to work on myself and learn how to give direction.

In a previous group assignment, this is the position I fell into as we had little organization and did not determine roles. As the coordinator, I set our goals and objectives, as well as determine who should do what. However I also fell into the role of COMPLETER-FINISHER where I took charge of ensuring our report was well written and formatted. This caused me to put a lot of extra work into the assignment whereas, a well-organized group with appointed roles would have meant everyone had an equal work load.

I feel that the Belbin Team Role taken on by someone is heavily determined by the group dynamic and often changes between different groups. However it is a good tool for organising groups and ensuring that that important team roles have been met.

I have included the link to the Belbin Team Roles website if anyone wants further information on this topic.

Belbin team roles. (n.d.). retrieved from:
          http://www.belbin.com/rte.asp?id=8

Past experiences working in a team

This week my blog topic is about past experience in team assignments. Before I began this paper I had only ever worked in a team for an assignment once before, which did not give me a lot of excitement for this paper.

Last semester I was to perform a case report on a dog with bladder problems in a group of 5. We did not have any group roles and I found that everyone had different skill levels and ways they did things. This made the final parts of the assignment quite hard because a lot of time was spent editing and giving the assignment one voice.  Everyone also had different ideas on how much research they were required to do, this caused some topics to be very broad with a lot of information while some were lacking important details.

We also had a problem with one student who never turned up to our group meeting and submitted little research to the assignment, this left the rest of the group to make up for his work to ensure we still received a good grade which meant he would also unfairly get a good grade due to our work. Luckily the four other people in the group worked quite well together and had the same goals which meant we could get a lot of work done quickly and were able to get a great grade for ourselves.

Another good part about that team was the fact that we were all Veterinary Technology students and therefore knew each other to a degree which meant we didn’t have the awkward part of getting to know one another.  

Overall it was a good learning experience but did put me off future group work however the team I am in for this assignment is a lot more organised and everyone participates well so I feel that this will be a much better team assignment than what I have previously had. 

Why vaccine rates are important

I believe my topic (immunization rates) has huge importance to a very large amount of people if not everyone. If it weren’t for vaccines there would be a much larger proportion of people dying at younger ages due to disease. However due to the use of vaccines this does not occur very regularly. If everyone were to be vaccinated, eventually these diseases would be eliminated and no unnecessary deaths would occur.  

Yet I still feel that vaccination rates need to be increased to protect our entire population. Those who are unable to be vaccinated are forced to heavily rely on those who can be vaccinated, for protection from disease. If a percentage of people choose not to be vaccinated then these already ill people are put at an even higher risk of catching fatal diseases.

If vaccinations were to become mandatory it would obviously affect everyone, those who feel they don’t need to be vaccinated would be forced to do so and therefore be very unhappy about the process. Those who are unable to be vaccinated would welcome this choice as they are given more protection. The ethical implications with taking away the choice to be vaccinated is an issue however I believe that it is highly outweighed by the benefits to not just those around them but also themselves as the risk they were putting themselves at is also eliminated.

All of these points prove why vaccination rates are an important topic. Decreased mortality rates, protection of the weak and ethical implication all affect the choice by the government as to whether rates should be improved or not. Not everyone will agree with the decision made, however it is important to make the best choice for the largest amount of people, which I believe in this case would be compulsory vaccinations.

Summarising the Debate

With my research it has been hard to find specific papers or journal articles opposing vaccine use however a retracted study by Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues seems to still be the greatest debate when fighting against vaccine use. This makes little sense due to the fact the study has been retracted and therefore obviously flawed but a lack of knowledge and continued media attention continues to make this a common opposition view in this argument.

Andrew Wakefield’s’ study showed that there was a high correlation between vaccine usage and gastrointestinal disease as well as behavioural issues, mainly autism. He stated that after normal growth and mental development for 2-3 years, all children (12 participants in the study) who had recently had the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella vaccine) began to show signs of intestinal and behavioural abnormalities. After researching this study I feel that Andrew and his colleagues may have come across a chance situation and with the excitement of their findings, published the study rather than perform a fuller scientific study. This ultimately resulted in the loss of Wakefield’s medical license and a huge decrease in vaccination rates worldwide.

An argument promoting vaccine usage is that of, protecting the weak, who are unable to be vaccinated. Those with diseases causing immune suppression or taking drugs which inhibit the activity of the immune system are unable to receive live vaccines. These people are forced to rely on the majority of the population who are able to be vaccinated to do so. Herd immunity means that the majority of people, who are vaccinated, protect the weak who can’t be vaccinated as cases of these diseases are decreased, thus making the likeliness of catching the disease lower. People with a suppressed immune system cannot fight viruses as well as those with unimpaired immune systems which makes the virus is a lot more dangerous to the immunosuppressed. A healthy person has the chance to fight the virus and return to health while a sick person has a much higher chance of dying. I believe the authors of this article took this position as they are passionate about protecting the entire community from disease and care about the health and well-being of every person.

Novella, S. (2010). The Lancet Retracts Wakefield Article. Retrieved from: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/lancet-retracts-wakefield-article/

Cardetti, C., Zins, M., & Groskreutz, K. (2010). Herd Immunity and the Necessity of Vaccinations. Cornerstone Minnesota State University Journal of Undergraduate Research, Article 2. Retrieved from : http://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/jur/vol10/iss1/2/