Week 7 – CST – 300 Module 7

OLI – Module 10

In this week’s OLI module, we learned how to apply conflict recognition, active listening, and assertion message skills with multiple team members. Because each team member has different views, you must learn how to understand and formulate a conflict resolution that might not work for other members. The issue was that some of the students were complaining about being overworked. A student, Emma, agrees that they are being overworked, and another student, Freda, thinks that they should stop complaining and just do the work. This was a good exercise on how to deal with different team members with different views on the same issue.

The other activity from the module was a group activity where we had to role play as a group to produce an idea for a game. The point of the role-playing game was to have an observer who will add or subtract points depending on criteria that we learned from the conflict resolution like recognizing conflict, active listening, and negative points for “you message.” Our group came up with a clown themed pinball machine with a projector. The role I chose was project manager. As a project manager, what I found most difficult was creating the foundational layer of ideas. The project manager initiates an idea, and the specialized members refine it into a viable game plan. Our group has really good chemistry and, due to the lack of conflict, there was no need for conflict resolution.

 

Part 1: Reflection on your team’s Final Video Project Planning

Our team’s final research video planning is still in progress. We are using google slides to collaborate and make a slideshow video with voice over from each member. Each member will discuss a topic within Genomics for a couple of slides for the 8-10 minute video. For the 2-5 minute video, we will simplify the explanations of the subtopics and add more visual aids. We mainly use Discord and email to communicate as well as weekly meetings, also through Discord. The process has not been smooth but that was mainly due to the Ethics Argument Essay that we needed to complete this week. In the future, I believe planning and starting early will make a huge difference in large collaborative projects. If we start early, we can spread the workload throughout a longer period of time making it more achievable.

 

Part 2: Reflection on lecture readings and week’s activities

This week’s readings were informative. I enjoyed the video titled “Life After Death by PowerPoint.” The video covered an extensive list of things you should not do when using PowerPoint for a presentation. Some of the things you should not do include reading everything in your slides, having text moving, using excessive bullet points, and using too many acronyms.

 We were also required to watch two TED videos, one topic that is related to Computer Science and one related to our own interest.

The Computer Science related video I saw was “Don’t Fear Superintelligent AI” by Grady Booch. He is a scientist and philosopher who is a systems engineer dealing with Nasa’s mission to Mars. He wants to build a Hal from Space Odyssey but “without the homicidal tendencies.” He believes that the fear that we have of AI taking over is not likely, because the AI will have our values embedded in it. He concluded by suggesting that we should focus more on how AI can improve human life.

The other video I watch was titled “Nature, art, and magical blocks of flying concrete.” The speaker’s name is Lonneke Gordijin and she is an experimental artist. Her presentation explained how humans are drifting away from nature by building things that are not moving like things move in nature. She claims that people are attracted and have an innate response to movements in nature. She used drones to imitate the murmuration of a flock of birds all at the same time. She finished by revealing a huge block of concrete floating around the theater to invoke the sense of curiosity and openness to understand, which is what her presentation was all about.