Chapter 5 Summary
Jake Droessler and Josh Wentzel
Objectives and Outcomes:
1. To understand that writing in the workplace will involve collaboration.
2. Recognize situations that make collaboration appropriate, such as subject, process, product, and benefits. Also recognize situations that could cause conflict.
3. Develop skills to participate in different types of collaboration: coauthoring, working with colleagues, and team projects.
4. Learn to develop skills that are typical of a successful collaboration. Such as listening, asking questions, sharing ideas and thoughts, using technology effectively, and reflect.
5. Avoid interpersonal conflicts. Negotiate potential procedural conflicts, and encourage substantive conflicts.
The four main reasons that collaboration takes place:
· Subject of the project
· Process used in the project
· Product that collaborators create
· Benefits of collaboration
Subject of Project
When working on some projects, there needs to be collaboration to make the project a success. The subject matter of the project can require more than just one person researching and reporting. For example, the building of a bridge would require tons of collaboration. The engineer, drafter, contractor, and right down to the laborers themselves would all have to collaborate to make that project a success.
Process Used in the Project
The process that is used in a project will often dictate how much collaboration is needed. More often than not a project will require a fair amount of collaboration to complete it. A lot of tasks require feedback from more than just one person that started the project. Working together in a group will help eliminate a one sided view and will make the project go faster and better.
Product That Collaborators Create
The end product is the collaborators goal and they want it to be perfect. A web site for example is something that needs to be appealing to its intended audience but also should be accurate with its information. For example, a web site that wants to explain some normal automobile maintenance would want to have instructions from a certified auto mechanic rather than from Mr. Johnson down the street. It would make the website sound more professional.
Benefits of Collaboration
Some of the benefits of collaboration are the ease of communication, you can use a Web conference instead of trying to get everyone together at one specified time in one place. Also, collaboration has personal and orginizational benefits. Many people like being part of a team and succeeding as a group. Less burden on only one person, the workload is spread out among many individuals.
Disadvantages of Collaboration
· Takes more time than individual work.
· Managers want to much control.
· Unwilling to share credit.
· Conflicts can ruin a group if not worked out.
· Too much criticism.
· People have different ways of approaching issues.
· Responsibility, either too much or too little.
· Technology may not be availible.
· Ethics may be questioned in some instances.
Types of Collaboration:
Coauthoring
Many people have a wrong understanding of collaboration, they believe that both authors contribute equivalent parts. Really all the authors submit ideas, but they are willing to compromise with the others. Each collaborator analyzes their ideas strengths and weaknesses to achieve the best product.
Consulting with Colleagues
Consulting can provide us with constructive criticism to help us assure quality in our work. People should be willing to consult as well as provide consultation to their co-workers.
Contributing to Team Projects
Contribution does not necessarily have to be equal, but all members of the team should voice opinions on what each persons responsibilities and roles are within the group.
Being a Good Collaborator:
Ackerson gives three guidelines to follow:
1. Treat people like you'd like to be treated.
2. Identify strengths and weaknesses of team members and use them accordingly.
3. Insist on excellence.
Self-Assess
People need to look at their work in a way free from bias, personality, and prejudices.
Be Engaged and Cooperative
· Always come prepared.
· Be able to articulate the purpose of your collaborative work.
· Be articulate in expressing your views.
· Be cooperative and supportive.
· Be direct in stating your own opinions, and respect the ideas of others.
Listen
Active listeners are attentive, involved, interested. They pay attention to what their collaborators say and don't say, also the manner of speaking and tone of voice. By being an active listener you will learn more, and accomplish more as a team.
Conform to Conversation Conventions
All collaboration requires some type of conversation. Here are some tips to make conversations easier:
All conversations
· Select an appropriate location with minimal background distractions.
· Look, sound, and act interested.
· State your points clearly.
· Provide explanations and examples as needed.
· Share the turn taking
· Respond to the other person's ideas.
Face-to-face conversations
· Make direct eye contact.
· Respect personal space.
Telephone conversations
· Don't eat, drink, or chew gum while on the phone.
· Don't put people on hold for more than a few seconds.
Electronic conversations
· Keep in mind that all electronic messages can be forwarded, printed, or permanently stored by any recipient, so be sensible, even cautious, about what you send electronically.
· Copy only enough of the message you're responding to in order to provide a context or a reminder; do not copy the entire message unless you need a legal record.
Ask Questions
By asking questions you can determine how much you already know, and what you need to learn.
· Ask open-ended questions that require comments or discussions rather than questions that ask for yes or no responses.
· Ask questions that focus attention on a range of rhetorical elements important to the project: content, context, purpose, key points, audience, conventions of organization and support, and conventions of document design.
Share
Asking questions is a good way to get information from colleagues, but you also need to give them detailed information to help assist them. Establishing a schedule is the most effective way to get information exchanged.
Use Technology Effectively
Groupware
Groupware is software designed to facilitate group interaction, usually changes the way collaborators plan, share documents, give and receive feedback, and make decisions.
Two important factors of groupware are:
1. Time
2. Location
Awareness
Team members need to be aware of the Interaction, Workspace, and Information they are using and sharing with other members. This can help avoid miscommunication and misunderstandings.
The three areas for team awareness are:
1. Interaction.
2. Workspace.
3. Information
Keeping in mind the who, what, when, where, why, and how of things.
Privacy
Respect group members privacy in sending and sharing information. You should also be cautious in using files and information from other group members.
Reflect
Look back over all the information you have received and re-assess its value, decide whether to keep information or get rid of it. This will help you maintain organization and clarity.
Negotiating Conflicts:
As you become more involved in collaborations, you will need to develop skills to manage problems and negotiate three different types of conflicts.
Affective Conflicts
Are due to personal attitudes and biases, as well as personality and values. To succeed in a project you need to develop interpersonal relationships. You need to respect others in your group and get along with them. If you do not make an attempt to do this these conflicts will set-back progress of the project and lead to other problems.
Procedural Conflicts
Groups need to outline how they will operate, many experienced collaborators use these critical factors to help run smoothly:
1. Meeting details
· Settle details of meetings: time, place, duration.
· Agree on what preparation should be done for meetings.
· Discuss the collaborative approach the group will use.
2. Team roles and responsibilities
· Identify the responsibilities each individual will assume.
· Determine how to monitor the group's progress.
· Decide on order of authorship based on some mutually acceptable criteria.
3. Productive management of conflict
· Agree on ways to minimize affective and procedural conflict.
· Agree on ways to encourage substantive conflict.
· Decide how to negotiate among alternatives and resolve disagreements.
By taking care of these three critical factors first you can reduce the chances of having set-backs due to procedural conflict down the road.
Substantive Conflicts
Includes decisions about the projects content, purpose, audience, conventions of orginization and support, and conventions of design. Two things should be agreed on before the groups starts collaboration. Agree on the purpose of the collaboration and agree on project objectives and outcomes.
A number of things can be done in order to make the collaboration a success.
1. Voice explicit disagreements- dont hold ideas inside
2. Consider alternatives to plan.
3. Ask provocitive questions. Stay on topic with questions.
4. Take a productive and critical perspective. Give only constructive criticism.
5. Seperate ideas and personality. Don't mistake objection of idea for attack on you as a person.
Cultural differences can lead to conflicts in collaboration because of how different people are used to approacing things different ways. Like in Chapter 2 conflicts can be caused by someone misinterpretaion of something that another collaborator says or does.
When working in a group one should expect some conflicts due to cultural differences. How the group overcomes the conflict is the big picture. Understanding other cultures can cut those conflicts down but will not eliminate them. People need to be calm and try to realize that not everyone has to approach things the same way they, themselves do.
22 comments:
When I have worked in groups before and had to collaborate I know how difficult this is. Being placed with people you don't know can seem somewhat scary. Often a person feels that their thoughts are wrong, which this can't be its only an idea. I know that I am guilty of this. Reading this helped me see that collaborating can be useful in a project. Saying what you think is not wrong and new ideas can inspire someone else's though or all them to say what they really were thinking.
In our future workforce collaboration skills are a necessity. Subject matter of the project often leads to many team members working together to formulate a solution. Some disadvantages of collaboration can be avoided, keeping the team on track towards progress helps avoid excessive criticism and conflict. Identifying the people involved in the individual tasks for the project will give credit where deserved. Being a good leader or collaborator in a project group often entails identifying the strengths of the members involved to appropriately allocate resources where best used. Ask questions that can help the group in discussion, these are often open ended but focus on the topic. As I have noticed at my internship is that when our group meets we have a desired set of goals for the meeting but we first recap and reflect on previous topics to be sure the problem is resolved.
I have to admit, the whole time talking about collaboration, i was waiting for plaigarism to be mentioned. Not that they are hand in hand, but I think that it would have a bigger effect on a group project rather than individually. A section I found interesting was the "how to converse" type section. We don't realize how many things we do when we talk to people that are expected in order to be polite. Some of the sections did seem to repeat the others at times, but otherwise, good job on the chapter guys.
Learning to collaborate with others is important for me because it is a huge part of what my job will be. In my information systems alot of what ill will be doing will be with a group. Learning to help other out is essential to my success in the imformation tech feild.
Collaboration in the workplace is a main point in this chapter and I agree with it because if everyone just did their own thing without talking to anyone else not much would get done. Working in a restaurant for four years has helped me with my workplace collaboration because if I needed help with something and I was being a jerk to everyone no one would help me. Accepting help and communicating or sharing ideas in the workplace is very important.
This section takes on a very difficult issue. Working in a team can be good one time and bad the other. What it all comes down to is if all the members of the team work together then it goes smoothly. If not and there is fighting the project probably won't be finished. This section gives a lot of insight on how to make a team work more effectively and how to keep a good relationship between your co-workers in the end.
Learning how to work in a group is essential in the workplace. Many jobs will have you working in a group to get a job done. This can be very helpful or hugely frustrating. No matter how you feel about working in groups, you much look past it and realize that it is a necessity sometimes. It is important to work together efficiently, though. When working inefficiently, the strengths of working in a group are not being exploited. Using help from others can greatly increase the speed at which you get a task done, and there can be different points of view on a subject.
collaboration is an important part of in the workforce. People need to be able to collaborate in many diffent ways for the well being or the outcome. When people work together they are able to get more done and lighten the load. Aslo come up with ideas that they may not have thought of on their own, or over looked. In this class we have already started to collaborate with our partner on our chapter summary.
This chapter explains the key parts in collaboration with others in the workforce. I will also agree, that collaboration skills are one of the most important skills needed in almost any field of study. Without collaboration and communication, people struggle and are unaware of situations--which only causes confusion and frustration. With my experience in the information technology field, it has been my job to communicate and work as a team, that's what makes this job successful. I look forward to improving these skills in the near future.
We have all experienced working in group and we will continue to in college and the workplace. It can be difficult and discouraging when people disagree on certain things but it is hard not to expect any sort of conflict when everyone has different ideas and opinions. Listening to their viewpoints, sharing your ideas, being respectful, asking questions, and being prepared will help contribute to success. Groups can be very beneficial when you do not have the expertise in all the areas of the project. I learned a lot about collaboration from this chapter that will benefit me during future groups.
Chapter five helps us understand more about collaboration and how to handle it in our everyday lives. Many projects that get done everyday needs collaboration to make it more successful. Even when we do group projects in our classes we use collaboration to make sure that everyone agrees with what the final product will be. Sometimes group projects can be stressful because too many people want control of what happens but usually having more than one opinion will always benefit the final product.
I've certainly had both successes and failures when it comes to collaborative projects. It's easy for a collaboration to fail, especially when many of the group members don't really communicate with each other. I've been part of some projects that don't require much interaction with other group members, but instead just compiling all of the information and having someone to sort it out or organize it. This type of collaboration doesn't usually apply to the college setting though, and can cause the information presented to be repetitious and/or unconnected. Making a collaboration a success isn't always as simple as this chapter makes it seem.
In any group projects collaboration is beneficial, but sometimes can be hard when you knock heads with teammates. It's nice to have partners though when they see things in which case you might be mistaken for. In any workplace you will find that you will have to work with others around you so you have to adjust to the different personalities you may be dealing with.
It is important while collaborating that everyone in the group is involved. You cant have one person calling all of the shots and you cant have people sitting around not contributing, because its not really a group then. Sometimes all it takes is one person to say something no one else had thought of and everything could just fall into place.
The part about collaborating with colleagues and working with groups, i thought was the best. I find that in a lot of my classes there are a lot of group projects so getting some tips on how to approach those situations can be beneficial to me.
This is a great chapter for all of us that are in college. I am sure that every single one of us has had to be in a group at one point in their college career and most likely be in one again. This chapter for me has helped to understand the strengths and weaknesses within a group and help allocate tasks to individuals strengths.
Group skills are very important in the workplace and the chapter gave a lot of helpful tips on how to do that; like how do deal with and avoid conflicts. Sometimes it can be hard to collaborate with others when the project is not going well. The chapter talked about others wanting to claim all the credit; personally I have not had that problem. But they did talk about the manager taking over, that I have had to deal with. I did not know about the different types of collaborations. That was new to me.
Having collaborative skills is essential to be successful in any field of work. Collaboration also helps get new ideas out, which are important for solving problems and creating ways to improve life. In my future field, being able to collaborate with other people and teams is key. You can't build a car or product without working as a team to create a product that people will want to use.
You can't get through a class these days without having some sort of 'group project'. Also, being a bartender, there's a lot of collaboration between servers and cooks, and if you aren't working together things are going to be very rough. Also being a tae kwon do instructor, collaboration is needed between the master instructor and the other instructors so we are all teaching the same things. Knowing how to communicate in groups is highly important to overcoming the stress and fear of working in groups. Nice summary!
Learning is a collaborative process and i think this chapter is pretty much explained how collaborative learning is effective and exciting. Well, you guys did a awesome job in putting this chapter in your own writing and understanding. I like collaborating writing and this chapter is of great interest and fun to me.
This chapter summary talks about various aspects of technical communication and how it helps in effective communication. Jake and Josh has mentioned terms like coauthoring and collaboration which is usually seen in techincal writing. The summary also explains how any form of writing goes through a review process before making it public.
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