Team Project 3.0

After hibernating all summer long, my blog comes alive again! ♪ ♫ ♩ ♬

This semester, I am doing a virtual team project: the Collaborative Documentation Project for Translation. Students from the University of Central Florida, USA, and from the University of Limerick, Ireland, have to write an instructional document. For example: how to set up a Facebook profile. Then, they send their work to French students from Université Paris Diderot, France, who will translate it in French.

I have already worked in team. In my first year of university, I did a virtual team project: first year students were put into teams randomly, and none of us knew one another (and I have never met them in the end). I was studying Japanese at this time, and my team was composed of physics, computer sciences and business students. Even though I got a excellent grade, it wasn't enjoyable.

Two members never contributed to the work and they probably stopped their studies too, as usually half of first years give up. The third member "tried" but definitely failed as he only copied texts from articles he found on the Internet. In the end, I did all the project by myself. The project was easy but it'd be better to do it in in third year, to be sure that students will be involved.

My second team project occurred during my Erasmus year at the University of Limerick. I could choose my team members this time. It was more organized as the work had to be submitted in three times. Therefore, systematic deadlines were settled.

It was much enjoyable and professional. We had group meetings regularly, we divided the tasks. Everyone respected the deadlines and all were happy with the results (but not the grade).

This Collaborative Documentation Project is therefore my third team project since college. This time, not only the team members are from different countries but also have different backgrounds. I may be studying in Ireland, but I am actually French. A French teammate of mine is British. It should be interesting to work with people from different cultures as their way of thinking will differ with mine.

Even though my first team project shouldn't be called this way, after the good experience of the second one, I am optimistic for the current project, and am looking forward to getting into it!