TEAM ASSESSMENT

Team Communication

Our group enjoyed working with each other as we worked on this project. We were able to combine different qualities and abilities including creative thinking, previous research experience, and analytic and time management skills for one purpose; completing this project. In order to do so, we met weekly to brain storm and work on the Personal Alert System project. To evenly distribute the work load, each member was assigned a specific task. Our biggest problem was managing our project time because as college students we lead very tedious lives. Fortunately, this was not a big enough problem to hinder this assignment, as we effectively synchronized our schedules to get it done.

Research and design

As this assignment unfolded we learned a lot of lessons. First of all, many people may simultaneously have similar ideas about a specific topic but how different people think and express these ideas bring about different results. As in the case of our PAS, many others have thought about solving the issue of dozing off while driving. Hence, one of our group’s goals was to assess the same issue by tweaking different components of the PAS. For example, the PAS system is designed for easy set up and monetarily convenient. We’ve also learned that compiling information from different group members can be a challenging task due to differences in schedules; patience is required.

 

 

Advice

Future student teams who will participate in the URDC should be aware of a few things. First of all, time management is necessary for any and every task. As we should all know, time management reduces stress and helps to effectively synchronize necessary events and meet deadlines. Secondly, adequate literature search time is needed, in the initial phases of a project, in order to efficiently raise the cognitive level of each member about a specific topic.  Last but not least, the group members must seek out an appropriate advisor or counselor during a project’s early phases. This is very important because the advisor can be a valuable source of reference especially in moments of doubt.

   Personal Alert System (PAS)