Sunday 13 April 2014

Blog Post #3: Reflection on Team-Based Research Project Proposal


To be honest, completing a proposal amidst my other schoolwork in 7 weeks has been both a challenging and tiring task. Nevertheless, it was a worthwhile experience working together with Evelyn and Soon Siang. We started the proposal late but I’m glad we managed to pull through in collecting all our information and completing our proposal on time. In particular, I felt that the peer review of the proposal drafts was the tipping factor in improving our proposal. For example, we noted that our proposal lacked in statistics and this motivated us to source for more.

What worked for our group proposal was that we were able to come out with solutions to our problem within a short time. We did this by working on and developing unconventional teaching methods that were already popular in other countries but not yet in Singapore. Nonetheless, there were areas in which our group could have worked better in. For one, we did not have a mini-timeline set while doing the proposal. If we did, we might have had more time in improving the quality of our proposal. Additionally, we did not managed to interview any of the relevant parties regarding the feasibility of our proposal. Had we done so, perhaps our primary findings and even our proposed solutions might have become more credible.

One of the takeaways of this group project would be the experience of working with people of different working styles. Certainly, Evelyn, Soon Siang and I each have different ways of doing things. Most of the time, we did the proposal online through Google Drive/Dropbox but the timing in which each of us are working on it is usually different. Evelyn usually works on it during the day, Soon Siang at night and myself after midnight. Hence, we rarely had discussions together online. Instead, we leave messages and information for each other on the document itself or through WhatsApp. It eventually came down to whether all of us agreed on the ideas that were suggested. Thankfully, all three of us are able to get along well. I definitely feel that such an experience would be useful in the future workplace. This group project has also taught me the importance of planning beforehand and the importance of time-management. All these skills would undoubtedly come in handy in future.

Overall, I am satisfied with the finalized proposal as each of us had really spent time and effort in doing it up.
 

1 comment:

  1. Hahaha! Thank you Ashikin, it was really an unforgettable and unique experience working with you to complete our proposal within such a short timeframe.

    Yes, the peer review was really useful as it allows us to realise the need for our group to improve on the background research of our proposal. Even while I was doing the power point slides for our proposal presentation, I still feel that we could have done more for our background research. I believe, if given more time, better planning as well as time management, I'm sure we'll be able to do an even better job.

    Nevertheless, at least now we've learnt how to write a proposal and I believe this will certainly help us a lot in our future workplace. And hopefully till then, the professors would be already using the flipped classroom method to carry out their lectures! ^.^

    ReplyDelete