Collaborating and Teaching a Team

Running head: COLLABORATING AND TEACHING A TEAM
COLLABORATING AND TEACHING A TEAM
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author note

1COLLABORATING AND TEACHING A TEAM
The team work that was accomplished
In University of South Australia a summer course every year and the seniors mentor
the juniors in this session. The course is there to help out the students to get a better
understanding of their streams. Each stream is represented by a senior in that same stream..
The juniors include all three year students. The purpose of the course is to bring in
collaboration between the students and the sharing of knowledge so that the subject
undertaken is better understood and their applicability recognized. The course happens during
summer vacations and considered to be a summer course. The seniors who are chosen as
mentors have to qualify in a test and thereafter face an interview (Ouhbi, Idri, Fernández-
Alemán and Toval 2015). This process ensures that the one selected to guide the juniors is
deserving and eligible. The senior qualifying in the examination was given the responsibility.
My engineering stream is Civil and this time the juniors were to be guided by me.
The aim of organizing the summer course
The main part of the course was collaboration and developing team spirit. From each
stream, five were chosen and five teams were made. Fourth year students were elected and
made the team leaders and participants were grouped under them. The workload was huge
but the cooperation of the team members made it easy to work. The course was for 15 days
and each of the team leads was required to share their team’s progress in the course every
week. The teams were analyzed based on their performance. Being the leader communication
with each of the team members was important; the members could come up to the leaders
with doubts related to the sessions (Paul and Cowe 2015). While guiding the juniors, it was
realized that working collectively is the main aspect of teamwork. The leadership qualities
essential for guiding a team are honesty, integrity, commitment, communication skills,
decision-making capabilities along with accountability. It was realized that leaders were

2COLLABORATING AND TEACHING A TEAM
being unable to resolve the conflicts between the team members and that some students
lacked in cooperation. As it involved all the three-year students, leaders had to face some
personality clashes and they were bad at resolving the issues. Some students were not
compatible to work in a team and were creating problems. The advantages of working in the
team were learning from the team and sharing my knowledge with them as well. Teamwork
gives the student the facility to communicate with each other and inculcates the spirit of
cooperation within them. Teamwork teaches three main theories related to efficacy that are
collective, self and teacher (Grubbs and Strimel 2015). In this course, the team leaders got the
opportunity to mentor the juniors and got to learn a lot on how to handle a team in a better
way. The main aspect of working in a team is collaboration and cooperation. To become a
good leader one needs to understand each of its team members.
The main aspects of team work and collaboration
Personality plays a huge role in the case of work behavior. It was realized felt that
problems were being dealt with impatiently and hasty decisions were being taken. Leading a
team requires that one should be aware of the fact that there are many looking up to him. A
punctual leader can expect punctual students. It was realized though being good at solving
technical problems; the solutions were still being provided following the old approaches.
Team leaders were unable to look for solutions that were creative as well as effective.
Engineering courses should involve a curriculum where students can apply the theory they
are learning and get to face situations that can help them in resolving issues in the future. To
become an effective engineer four main factors are important that are higher IQ level,
reasoning, creativity, and logic (Mälkki and Paatero 2015). It was realized that proactiveness
is required to become an effective engineer. Civil engineering is the stream where field work
is a part of the course and field work requires patience and strength to handle the pressures in
the practical environment. Frequent study tours and technical sessions in the practical filed