Assessment

Group dynamics have been essential to this project; at times lack of it was detrimental, other times it has been a boon. In the beginning stages, we found intra-student communication difficult. Not only did we have problems elucidating our rapidly progressing ideas, but we also tended to limit what little cooperation there was to our weekly meetings. In addition, we often overlooked the implementation of message-clarifying visual aides. As time progressed, students learned from these mistakes and began to work continuously more cohesively. Luckily, throughout the project, communication with our teacher has been easy; she has facilitated much of our correspondence and has taught us much to aide us in articulating our ideas. Like with our teacher, we have had little trouble communicating or working with our technical advisor, he has responded promptly to our questions. The only problems communicating with him have lain in the intrinsic delay of email.

Our team has learned that finding a solution to a problem is never as easy as it seems. We started this project under the impression that once we found a solution that researching would be easy, but we were mistaken. Researching was our most difficult task as well as most time consuming. Throughout the course of the program our solution came from researching information which we were able to combine to come up with one solitary solution. In the end are research paid off and showed us that it was more difficult than it seems.

1. The first lesson learned was to actually pick a topic, and make it so we could have a workable solution. After choosing a new topic for the fifth time, we were finally able to proceed towards designing a product.
2. The second lesson learned was that the productivity cannot cease at school. If the only time work is done was at meetings, the project as a whole was always returned to as seeming more incomplete than when it was left, because the work kept piling up. You can’t procrastinate and still get done.
3. Communication is a necessary skill. In the designing of the centerboard, differences had to be put aside to create a functioning product. We had 3 essential members on the design team, each creating another view of the object, and contact was a must to keep all dimensions the same.