One of the most important skills you will learn in this class is communication. You will also learn toidentify varying roles, personalities, and the properties of an effective team. To help you develop yourcommunication skills and apply the concepts of the class workshops, you are required to keep a weeklyjournal.
Your journal will include your observations and impressions from the class each week. These wouldinclude the following:
- •Comments about the exercises the team completes in class
- •Insights about how the team is functioning
- •Progress or lack of progress that the team is making on the projects
- •Actions that you or the team take or fail to take
- •Leadership and communication that is occurring or failing to occur on the team
- •Reflections of what you are learning about yourself as the class progresses
- •Feelings and opinions about the members on the teamYou must relate your comments to
- the exercises and concepts discussed in class and results of theGlaser Workbook exercises. DO NOT REPEAT THE LESSON PLAN BACK TO ME! You may writeabout anything that you feel enhances the team development or limits the team from functioning at thegreatest potential. You may write about specific barriers or incidents, which had a positive or negativeeffect on the team performance. Also, how did the team overcome any barriers?The Journal Guidelines:Journals need to be completed following each class so the events are fresh in your mind. I will be theonly one reading your journal; the material in your journal will be treated with confidentiality and notdiscussed with others. An open, honest and sincere look at yourself and the team is critical whenwriting your journal and will help you prepare for your individual and team assessments due at the end ofthe class. It is OK to mention team members by name. Superficial reflections will not adequately prepareyou for the final assessments and will not allow you to have in-depth insights to the learning gained fromthe class exercises. A creative title should be used for each journal but also include the journal numberas stated below.The AHA Moment:At the end of each journal, include your “aha” moment for that journal period. This is “when the light bulbwent on” or “something clicked”. This may include something about a team member, you, an exercise inclass or a lecture. I want to know when you said, “aha” I get it now.Your journal must be TYPED, spaced 1.5 lines apart, using a 10 or 12 font size and two full pages inlength. Your name, journal # and date must be in the top right hand corner. Journals will be submittedas noted on the course calendar. You need to keep all of your journals together as they will berecollected at the end of the semester and turned in with your final individual assessment.Each of the four journals must reflect the specific weeks that they are being written for which is outlinedon the course calendar. Additionally, journals may also include observations from any team meetingsand communications, which are held outside the classroom.
- Please apply all of these learnings to your next journal. Also, in the journal there needs to be more reflection on the team work (how it is going or what barriers the team has in achieving goals). Please make sure your writing is very clear and concise. I am also looking for applying the course learnings or concepts learned in the course into the journal. The aha moment should be clearly stated as such. This when a light bulb goes on in your head and you think “wow, I get this” or perhaps in other class or at work you say to yourself “Oh, wow, this is what we are learning in the course”. I hope this provides ample feedback for your to improve in your next journal. I am looking forward to reading it.
The journal that was submitted lacked actual information about the team and was difficult to understand in terms of the specific team dynamics. The writing attempt may have been to try some creativity but the journal lacked details about your specific team and your specific learnings.
