My knowledge and understanding of program development, implementation, and assessment were further informed by the project by seeing the statistics and hearing the reviews from parents provided to us by Dr. Pederson’s class. I took statistics in previous semesters and was able to evaluate the data we collected, but it was informative to see the work and hear the explanation from another student’s perspective.
My understanding of other course content related to parenting and child development was further informed by the project because outside of classes, I am a nanny. Two of the three children I provide care for are in the family fun time kit age group of 3-5 years old which allowed me to bring this project to them and see it come to life. I was able to provide an extra two kits, with the surplus of supplies, to the parents of the children. They have recently gone through a divorce and are trying to navigate activities that allow them both to still spend time with their children. I was proud to facilitate this because both the parents and children loved our group’s activity.
Areas in which our group had strengths while completing the project are communicating and project assembly. Many fabulous ideas were proposed and our level of communication skills made project selection simple and easy. Another strength I will note was the project assembly line. Having all the supplies laid out this way made assembling 51 family fun time kits efficient and was an easy way to have everyone in the group participate. I feel as if our group had a lot more fun with this project because we were all equally involved in developing and executing the final product. I will note that there is one component in which our group had done differently to improve the overall project product which is taking more photos. We took very few images during the process which did not give us very many options when it came to using those photos when the group did class presentations.
The professional skills I developed while completing the collaborative project are teamwork and time management. I often choose to work alone on graded and assignments and this project helped me with teamwork by reminding me that everyone is different in their learning and style of work. The collaborative project also helped me with time management. Not everyone in a group has the same schedule and availability to meet and work on things together. Almost all the individuals on my team either had a job or participated in a sport outside of classes, so time management was a very important skill to be reminded of. These skills will be important in the workplace or graduate school setting because there are not many instances of solo work in these locations. Group collaboration is important in everyday tasks and life settings.
With strength and value, I feel as if I contributed group coordination and finalizing details to the collaborative project. When our group would meet, I coordinated a time and place for us to meet and display the supplies needed for our project in an assembly line for maximum efficiency. I housed our final dino buddies project and brought the completed projects to our professor’s office on its due date. In terms of areas of improvement, I could have stepped back within the group and provided more areas for my group members to participate. I am a perfectionist and like knowing when and how things are done especially when it comes to graded assignments.