Assessment 3 Reflection: Handy Man Will

What does a handy man and William have in common?

Rhetorical question - the answer - they have to be able to do and fix everything.

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The topic that sparked my interest the most was the ethics of modern technology, naturally I was assigned into a group with 4 other classmates. At the beginning of the assessment, I was unclear of task at hand. Integrating all elements of communication and research seemed overwhelming and daunting.

However, upon talking to my tutor, Ella Chorazy, the assessment was more or less the construction of a strategy followed by the creation of media artefacts.

When our group started off brainstorming, we briefly considered gene editing, robot citizenship, and mass redundancies in car manufacturing. Due to our varying points of view, we later settled on the ethics of robots in everyday life in relation with current media representations.

Originally, our group agreed and expected each other to do individual research to later compile together at a specific date. Unfortunately, as the day became progressively closer, my expectations were not met, and all the research material was provided by me. It took our group an absurd period of time to read and study the annotations I provided. Despite some delays, the research suggested technology is being poorly represented in today's media, and for further development to occur in automated machines, society must learn to cooperate with robots. The strategy did change many times, but the main concept did not, and that was:

To change mindsets and harbour mutual cooperation between people and machine(s).

Working with other group members was a challenge, the work load was "divided evenly" but the delivered "material" was below standard. When prompted to correct the material, the responsibility was passed around like a hot potato, and when no group member wants to assume responsibility - it always lands back into my hands.

By all means, our group did perform our roles, Boris developed and polished the communication strategy and project report, Fern assisted him, and Romy created majority of the visual media artefacts. Still, I believe the work was not divided evenly, our group had acknowledged this during the campaign production but no one was willing to contribute more effort and sacrifice their time.

Our group was too ambitious and we bit off more than we could chew. As we kept on pushing ahead, I was expected to assist with media artefacts, story pitch, story sample, collect background documentation, develop the website, compile media assets, develop a user experience chart, write and edit the project report and go through all the "half-polished" material.

It certainly did not help that communication with the group was often delayed. Members did not consult project ideas before implementations which resulted in confusion and multiple re-designs of the communication strategy.

Nothing personal, but working with Romy had been a challenge. She had some language difficulties and had trouble understanding the task/module expectations and media assets. Our group provided adequate guidance to help Romy and correct her grammatical and visual mistakes. Though it took some time, we hope Romy continues to improve, through her academic journey in professional communication.

Finishing on a positive note, this assessment made me sweat, collapse and rejoice. I learnt how it feels to handle a large workload, how cope with other teammates, accept the inevitability of human error, and always temper my expectations.