Collaboration

The focused topic in Open this week was Collaboration. Basically we figured out how to work well in groups. This sounds easy enough, but in all reality, it's pretty difficult. Joining a group of people with a common goal at hand and discussing ways to accomplish your goal and then actually executing plans into action is a lot of work. People don't become successful collaborators over night. Group/People skills take time to really understand and get comfortable with; some adults still struggle with communicating in large groups or have trouble listening and are too egotistical to acknowledge other peoples' ideas. I thought that our instructors (the dynamic duo Mr. Glim and Mrs. Rad) did an excellent job demonstrating good and not-so-good collaboration, and teaching us how to be efficient and work efficiently in a group setting. We did an in-class activity that was super interesting. We had a setlist of charaters (hypothetical people)that we could group together to send off to start a new world on a differnet planet. The idea was to send people we thought would better civilazation and create an idealistic "new world". We worked invidualy at first, and over time grew in group size until the whole class was partisipant in the decison. Eventualy, after collaborating for some time, and exercising our collaborative skills, we came to conclusion. In the real world, you will always have to work with people that you do not necessarily like or want to work with. It is necessary to be able to collaborate with anyone and everyone you encounter; to be able to hear and understand them, and to make sure you are being heard and understood. Good collaboration skills are used in everyday life. Is it possible that by learning how to collaborate and how to deal with certain situations within a group setting I'll have a slight advantage over those who weren't as lucky? And is it possible that I, with my freshly obtained upper-hand in collaborating, will better understand the dynamic of a group, and overcome issues to achieve that common goal rather than those who may not be as educated in collaboration?