Hello again!
Today and yesterday, all groups presented their work to the class. We all seemed to be enthusiastic and keen on showing our final work. Each presentation took around 45 minutes, plus discussion and responding questions from the opponent group. Although the group project was not graded, and just evaluated with “Pass or Fail”, I must say that all groups seem to have put a lot of effort on their research.
It was great to see that the interviewees belonged to different sectors and areas in the island: politicians, citizens, farmers, landowners, industries, associations, institutions or action groups. To set an example, some research projects explored conflict cases that were mediatized, such as mining versus the designation of nature conservation area. Others explored how landowners in the same area of the island responded to the declaration of their land as protected areas in a very different way, and therefore the group investigated possible explanations in a theoretical way. Findings were presented in the form of quotes, but also as role plays and open questions to the audience. This creativity and dynamism when presenting helped to understand the cases a bit better.
In addition, when groups presented the second part of the report about group dynamics, it was interesting to notice the differences in our analysis and how diverse we all were as groups!. As an example, some groups purposely decided to split into sub-groups to be more efficient in their work, and in others a”pairing” dynamic happened in an unplanned way because of age, interests, culture or other reasons. Also, some groups decided to define roles and responsibilities, and designate each member to play a role out of their confort zone in order to make the most of the learning experience, whereas other groups took for granted these roles and dealt with complications on the way. When considering language skills, on the one hand, these implied a higher workload on swedish speakers when there were not many in a group, and maybe a barrier for communication or inclusion when it was the opposite case. On the other hand, groups lacking swedish speakers encountered barriers for communicating with interviewees and booking interviews. It was noted also that perceptions, insecurities, and concerns regarding group dynamics were difficult to detect and that it required time to build trust and create space for sharing these issues. Moreover, the weather conditions and having to travel long distances to meet interviewees, in some cases created situations that made people become closer and address incidents together, such as getting stuck in a car and being rescued!.
I believe that both the group work and the little guidance from lecturers have allowed us to reflect on what is necessary to complete “a task”, not just at the technical level but also at the personal one. In my view, attending to the presentations and participating in group exercises have made clearer the point that working together “is not that simple”, and that there are multiple things to be aware of when working towards a common goal.
Thanks for reading
Ana
