To Team or Not to Team

     Throughout these past weeks I have made my decision to work as a group with Collin, Tanner and Aidan. Doing team building activities helped me decide how I wanted to do my project because it showed me that I like to work with people to share thoughts and boost creativity. If we work as a group, we can learn faster and get more work done faster. Working as a team will overall raise motivation and productivity.  

The social media peer account activity contributed towards my decision by allowing me to see my partners social media accounts and the ways they edit pictures and the creativity in their choice of pictures to post. This activity showed me that Aiden and Collin post more real, natural and unedited pictures not very often, but they all have a purpose. These commonalties are consistent through the social media platforms Snap Chat and Instagram. These two both give similar goals or stories with their posts because for example, Aiden has a picture posted on Instagram of Homecoming 2019. This shows that he wants to showcase events that he enjoyed. Tanner posts more often with a variety of pictures and videos, all being different activates, mostly baseball. His posts are consistent though social media platforms and his main story through his posts is accomplishments that he has made through doing things he enjoys. The article, “The effect of personality type on team performance” states that, “Effective leadership is an especially important factor in the success of an IS development team.” I believe that our group will have good leadership in making this project the best we can. Aidan and Collin have strengths of design and posting pictures based off events but could use a little more creativity. Tanner’s strengths are creativity but lack editing skills that could enhance the magazine. All our strengths and weaknesses work well together because it allows us to bounce ideas off each other and build a strong team that makes a project better.  

The lost at sea activity gave me a fun opportunity to work with a group and share ideas. By sharing and discussing different outcomes, this gives our group a good idea of what we will dealing with in the future and seeing that bouncing ideas off each other is very beneficial. Seeing the collaboration and putting all the points together to make one strong point really was interesting and proved to us that we wanted to work as a group to improve our work. I think with all our different strengths and weaknesses we can pull together a great piece of work. The article, “The effect of personality type on team performance” states, “In general, their research concludes that for complex problem solving, such as IS system development, teams made up of different types of individuals with a variety of skills, knowledge, abilities and perspectives are more effective than groups that are more homogeneous.” Working with a team will also improve our team building skills so we can learn from our mistakes and take with us whatever we learn from it. I think working with a team only has benefits and as stated in the article, “Team building and group dynamics: creating and fostering a culture of teamwork requires trust, collaboration, and accountability” the author states, “Working as a group establishes a common language for the team to communicate, standardize expectations to improve accountability, strengthen leadership abilities, and create an emotionally intelligent culture. These statements pertain to my decision because they helped my realize what I need to do and work to do in order to be successful working in a group. These references helped me remember that working with a team is going to take a lot of work but in the end will be worth it. 

All these reasons above have contributed as to why I would like to work as a group on this year's AICE Media Studies portfolio. I believe working as a group will only benefit everyone by boosting motivation, creativity and productivity as well as putting together all our strengths and weaknesses to make a strong portfolio.  

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