Summary
From the start of the semester, our process has been characterized by small group work and large group discussions. As we progressed with learning about the problem and determining what our solution would be, we identified pieces of the larger goal at each stage and divided ourselves up into small teams to tackle each separately. Initially, this meant identifying key aspects of the problem faced in Puerto Rico to learn more about; later on, it meant choosing which parts of the problem to tackle and how. Furthermore, in order to handle and facilitate whole-class decision making, a group of students volunteered early on to be an “administrative team.” As the semester went on, we improved our organization and communications with each other, having whole-group check-ins every class and doing more full class discussions, along with implementing ways to communicate with everyone anonymously.
Our Path Through the Process
Background Info Searching + Problem Statement Drafting
- At the start of the semester, our instructors split us into nine groups to research information on different aspects of the issue of food insecurity in Puerto Rico. After having some class time to research and discuss within these groups, we shared the information we found with each other through brief presentations. After this, we were given free reign of the class, meaning we could organize ourselves however we thought would be best.
- We proceeded to brainstorm and split into five groups that had a good mix of members from each of the original nine research groups. We crafted a problem statement within each group and then got back together as a class and analyzed them all to see what overlaps were present. We then drafted our final problem statement based on those overlaps while keeping in mind the size of our intended scope.
Organizing Ourselves + Receiving Feedback
- From this problem statement, we split into three main groups that looked into food production, food preservation, and transportation. The administrative team was created from each of these groups and further sub-groups were created as needed within the 3 main groups.
- The administrative team focused on scheduling and setting internal deadlines for the class along with leading class discussions when high-level decisions were made. They facilitated transitions between the stages of the process by handling the logistics of new group formation, and also put together and presented information gathered from each group to the mentors during the progress check and the draft proposals.
- The Administrative team gathered information from each main group and compiled a presentation of their findings and presented the progress check to Terrascope mentors. We received lots of feedback and realized that we needed to focus on our scope and quantitative measures to make sure our solution is feasible.
- The Terrascope group did exercises to determine new ways to organize and communicate amongst ourselves other than the main administrative team. We discussed what we felt was working well, what wasn’t, and what would be better. This resulted in us developing new ways to facilitate communication between each other and forming two new groups to help us stay organized and collaborate better together.
- We started having briefings either at the start or end of each class (whenever possible) to keep everyone on the same page.
- We started including methods for anonymous contributions to whole-class discussions, initially simply by having someone read out from a google doc where anyone could write. This later developed into a Padlet that all students had access and could contribute anonymously to that would stay on the screens around the room during class, with someone reading new messages out loud periodically and upon request.
- The Low Commitment Exec team was formed since many students wanted to take a more active role in class organization, but didn’t necessarily have the time to meet outside of class like the members of the administrative team. Its purpose was to facilitate small-group discussions, document daily progress, brief small groups at the start of each class session, and ensure group collaboration.
- The Organizational Committee was formed since there was agreement that our research should be gathered into a central location to avoid searching for information we already had. Its purpose was to organize the data obtained throughout the process into a single, easily accessible database, as it was spread throughout many documents beforehand.
Solution Drafting
- Each main group (food production, food preservation, and transportation) came up with a set of solutions specific to their respective areas of focus. We compiled all of these solutions and each member of Terrascope ranked these solutions. Members were then grouped based on what they ranked as their top solutions, and then each group started preparing for a class debate. During the debate, each group defended why the solution they ranked first is the best solution, and the audience was free to ask questions. The purpose of the debate was to filter out the many solutions we came up with and reach a class consensus of what solutions the majority wanted to pursue. Afterwards, we did more research and began working on content writing for our final website.
- For website construction, we broke into new groups focusing on different aspects of the proposal. Some groups targeted background information necessary for other groups (e.g. a group looked into labor statistics) while others focused directly on the details of the proposal (e.g. food production and education). Each student chose which group they wanted to be a part of based on what part of the solution interested them the most.
Our Reflections
These are some of our thoughts and insights from our experience during the process, particularly concerning how we collaborated, how we organized ourselves, and the role of expectations in how we worked. This section touches on what we struggled with and what we think would have worked better.
Organization
We did not dedicate time to compiling our research early on, so one of the biggest challenges we faced was keeping track of information and sharing it with each other, which led to researching the same information over and over again. Thus, we think it would have been beneficial if we had developed a system and allocated some time to recording the information we knew as a whole.
Collaboration
Not every group of people works the same. Although we worked with a grouping approach, this often resulted in students feeling disconnected from each other and not knowing what other groups were doing. We countered this by having regular whole group check-ins where every group gave the whole class a brief overview of what they were doing. However, we only started having these more than halfway into the semester, which greatly hampered our ability to work together throughout much of the process. Furthermore, although we tried having such check-ins or briefings every class, this did not work out every time. We think our process could have been improved if we had implemented regular communication like this early on.
Another problem we faced was making sure the voice of everyone in the class was heard. Some students did not necessarily feel comfortable speaking out loud in a class-wide discussion setting, so we tried to implement ways of contributing to the conversation anonymously, first by having a Google Doc that the whole class could access and that someone would read out loud, and then using a Padlet which anyone could publicly contribute to. However, much like the regular briefings, this was implemented over halfway through the semester. We could have benefited from such strategies significantly more if we had started using them earlier in our process.
Expectations
We found that being in agreement about what class time is for is crucial. Throughout the semester, we worked on communicating with everyone about whether the expectation was to do research in class or out of class time, whether class time was for group discussion or quiet work time, and when we needed it to change. Initially, enough work got done by mostly doing work within class, but as the semester went on, particularly for the later deadlines like website content reviews, this stopped being enough work time. It would have been better if we began doing more research outside of class and having more discussions during class time, while we were together.
Something else we tried doing was having a class calendar, setting a schedule for what the class was supposed to do every day. This helped, but did not work for everyone. The gaps that the calendar left, however, were usually covered by simply verbally announcing scheduled deadlines and in-class events during class time.
Our path through this project, although bumpy at times, taught us a lot about collaboration and communication. Being such a large team has given us especially unique insights about how to work with many people at once, along with letting us build a community around our work.