Week 11 marked the end of the beginning, and the beginning of the end. We received valuable comments from Dr. Naqaa on our first draft of the problem statement, and worked accordingly to complete the task of submitting the final draft. To be honest, I felt like our group lacked focus, and this was something mentioned in the comments, too. With a lack of underlying goal in the introduction, discussion on agriculture in the prehistoric, the current implementation of solutions anywhere but Qatar, and the mention of snow as a hazard to crops growing in Qatar, our group was simply not on the same page. As such, we redefined our goal and wrote a definitive sentence explaining the problem, and I took the initiative to meet each member individually to go over the minute details of their section in an effort to make it more focused and the overall text more cohesive. It seemed that the strategy of group comments and revised outlines failed us. To be honest, I felt overbearing, and it was unfortunate to have my concerns once again reaffirmed to me, but I felt like I had no other choice if our group wanted to submit quality work. I then went over the entire statement, making some changes for flow, but trying my hardest not to overshadow each member's individual voice. It was a role I wish I don't have to ever repeat. On a lighter note, Ms. Betsy once again visited our class, but this time to go over UX design how to make data visualisation effective. Some of the most glaring factors that your eye will catch and feel uncomfortable with, even if you aren't necessarily aware of it, are colour, whitespace, and size. There are also a multitude of other factors, such as alignment, margins, fonts, etc. Although the discussion gave me war flashbacks of the rainbow mess my ENGL-104 e-portfolio was (which you can see for yourself below), I was determined to do better in regard to my e-portfolio now, and go above and beyond for our group's presentation and poster, to make them as clear, concise, and cohesive as possible. Ms. Betsy also gave us a guideline on posters, a paper I keep to this day in my folder of precious documents.
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In addition to the submission of our completed first draft of the problem statement, and my first individual memo reflecting on select chapters from the book, this week featured a guest lecturer: Khalid Albaih, a Sudanese political cartoonist with a focus on civil rights activism and freelance journalism. While I can't say I've directly encountered any of his caricatures or articles, I do know about Doha Fashion Fridays from my friends' constant mention of it. His talk to us revolved around the combination of engineering and art, and how each of them supplements the other and elevates it to another level. I liked this outlook on engineering, as most stereotypes around my major tend to label me as a socially awkward nerd at best and apathetic robot at worst. He displayed a couple of his projects, of which was a swing that lights up beautifully when used, capturing the beauty of childhood innocence and playfulness, and passport tents displayed in the museum of contemporary art (MOCA). The latter art resonated with me with its message on immigration, where "a piece of paper determines our fate", a quote said by Khalid Albaih himself. Bringing such an important issue to the spotlight using engineering design principles showed me how creative engineering can be, breaking free from its stereotypical constraints of rigid maths or tedious physics. In class, we went over an article with the same topic, but focused more on the fields of engineering and arts themselves. The article delved more into the stereotypes imposed on the members and scholars of each field, and how that despite popular opinion, they are closer to two sides of the same coin than opposing domains, and collaboration here is an example of 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts', which is a notion I have always believed in, whether consciously or subconsciously. On a lighter notes, this is why I make sure my engineering presentations are always aesthetically pleasing.
If I were to be completely candid, this week felt like the eye before the storm. In class, we started discussing the great, looming, elephant in the room: the problem statement. I initially felt pretty confident, given that the first memo helped us identify our problem, and the research that went into it formed the basis for our research in the statement, but as the classes went on and we met with Dr. Naqaa to go over our memo, I became less sure of myself. Nevertheless, life goes on and the world keeps spinning, and the approach I decided on taking with my team was breaking everything down. Smaller tasks seemed intimidating, something I'm sure every elementary school teacher has said a million times. This meant revisiting our messy whiteboard notes that looked more like doodles than an actual plan. It was at this stage I started considering the efficiency of our collaboration as a team. Instead of having each member write their entire part, and then make changes to it, would it not be better to start with the outline? Leaving constructive criticism on each other's idea development before actually starting the laborious and time-consuming process of research and writing seemed like a great idea. As such, we set a meeting, a formal one on zoom with a set agenda that required taking meeting minutes (no more half-baked chaotic whiteboard plans). I made heavy use of our previous reading from the book, and also referred to our second memo to remind me of how agendas and minutes work. Our resulting agenda was short and sweet: And the subsequent meeting minutes even more so. Everything felt more in-focus and organised after this meeting, a feat which I applaud my team and I on. This week, we revisited our role-play skills and worked on our second team memo. Due to it being spring break, we swiftly finished our task of pretending to be a company advising new employees on the most effective strategies for starting any collaborative project. The only hiccup we had came to the division of labor, as it was difficult to sort the sequential ideas into 4 separate, rigid parts, especially purely over text, but we made it work. Below is one of the of the first attempts we made (as I'm sure is obvious, it needed a lot of work). We ended up with the following division:
Although the group part of the task went by quickly, it was not smooth. Writing a document like this with 4 different people meant 4 different tones, and it was highlighted by the nature of the content. As both team manager and writing tutor, the lines between my roles started to blur. Most of my time on the document was spent editing spelling and grammar, rephrasing some sentences here and there for more clarity and substituting some words for a stronger effect. Eventually, after our first draft (an internal deadline), I decided to automate the process and asked my group members to use Grammarly before uploading each of their parts. Although I personally do not like using it, as I feel like it takes away from the character of the writer and any individuality there might've been, I realised that the priority here was completing a cohesive piece of writing, focusing more on following the structure and task requirements rather than maintain the 'sanctity' of it. This conclusion changed my outlook on the way my group was working, and my role within that collaboration, and I was seeing our work and class objectives in a new light. |