Maddy 4. The End Is Near

I remember enrolling in this subject at the start of 2013, my final year of university. I remember having to apply specifically to be part of the Willow Patterns project and having absolutely no idea what this subject would bring to me or what it even entailed. I spent Brisbane’s winter over in the European summer throughout June and July, only to come back to missing about 2 weeks of semester 2, not having even read the Willow Pattern book. I remember panicking greatly, I became very ill and I thought that it was the end of the world. All I wanted to do was graduate and I thought I had set myself up for a serious loss in not being prepared come the start of semester 2 2013 – my final semester of university at QUT.

I was in a group with seven other students, all different ages, and all studying different degrees – a diverse range of students with different interests. It was interesting and handy to have students across all disciplines of study who could offer different perspectives on this project we were to be working on throughout the whole semester. We created a document at the start which outlined our specific project, our roles and responsibilities, and how we would all engage with the project before we set about our tasks. My opinion is that we have done very well in working together and there has never quite been a difficult moment within the group. The only difficult aspect is time and getting together as a whole to discuss topics. It has not happened often but we have always tried our best and put in as much effort as we could to meet and hand in our individual work at the appropriate deadlines. There was also Facebook, you can never forget Facebook, and it’s always there with us glued to it! So thank you Facebook, you became very handy when it came to discussing group tasks, weekly meetings and other general topics regarding the Willow Patterns project.

‘Though teamwork is high on today’s agenda, one such design characteristic is team autonomy’ (Leach, Wall, Rogelberg and Jackson, 2005, 2). It is explained that members of teams with autonomy are typically responsible for the day-to-day management of some natural unit of work which involves decision making with task allocation and execution, and problem solving. It is evident today that teams with greater autonomy have better performance and lower member strain (Leach, Wall, Rogelberg and Jackson, 2005, 3). This article for Applied Psychology was mostly referring to organizations with teams and employees, but the overall topic is about effective teamwork and applies to our group working on the Willow Pattern project. It is clearly evident that team autonomy needs to be
present if a team is to be successful in all aspects of working on a project and getting decisions made and goals reached.

Kayes and Kayes (2011, 132) write that for teams to be effective, team members must not only share common values but must coordinate actions across time, space and expertise. I believe our group has been evidently effective in working on the Willow Pattern project, we share the same values of studying at a university, share similar disciplines and most of us are sharing the common fact that we are graduating at end of semester. We have distributed tasks evenly across all members of the group as based upon each different expertise. We have all been fair and very understanding, always willing to help, and be as efficient as possible.

I honestly believe that we have all worked towards a goal on this Willow Pattern project, and we have established a fit group that have worked well together, established rules and norms for effective, cohesive work etc. It is obvious from what I have researched on group work how important it is in everyday life, but also for when we want to go out into the real world, work in an organisation and work alongside many different employees. We first set ourselves goals for the semester, outlining what we were each to do, and coordinated efficiently across expertises and time. I think we will see positive results at the very end of semester with this project and, for some, will finish our last university subject ever on a positive high. The end is near and it’s an exciting prospect, something I am very much looking forward too.