5. Team dynamics and final projet#

This week I learned how group dynamics work and what is the best way to guide your group to find good problems/solutions.

Project Analysis and Design#

For this part, we had to select an existing project and make a problem tree and a solution tree from it. The project I chose was done by students 2 years ago. This is an electronic device designed to be manufactured by students with the aim of raising their awareness of environmental issues.

(You can check their documentation and their final result)
Problem Tree Solution Tree

The experts related to this problem are the professors and the engineers in electronics, the field is the schools in poor countries and the community are the students.

Group formation and brainstorming on project problems#

Personal object and problematic#

The theme was “something that creates connections,” so the object I chose was a physics book to represent the connection between teacher and student through learning.

The problem that I linked to this object is “the inequalities of educational level in the world”. This inequality does not allow certain communities to do major research to improve their living conditions. Better education or awareness allows ingenious research to be done to solve community problems, this research improves their standard of living and with a better standard of living, they will be able to have better schools. It is a virtuous circle.

Teams problematics#

To determine the issue we want to focus on, we brainstormed to determine the points that seem most important to us.

Our team has identified 5 problematics:

  • Inequalities of success for homeworks
  • Common homework for different abilities
  • Differences in education levels around the world
  • Educational system that evaluates students according to their social background
  • Inequalities in medical research around the world

Group dynamics#

We have seen several tools for group dynamics, here are 3 of them:

  • Motivated fingers : This technique is used to know to what extent the members of the group are motivated by an idea/decision.

  • Task distribution : Giving each member a role and a specific task makes the work more fluid. We get used to our tasks more easily and are therefore we are faster to work. This also allows us to adapt to the strengths/weaknesses of the group members.

  • Feedback sessions : Take the time at the end of a meeting to talk about our feelings about the project to the other member of the group in order to be able to clarify certain fears (of feasibility).