WEEK 12
The final week!!! Today we have presented our posters to the tutors and the rest of the group. It has to be said as a group we are quietly confident with the work we have produced, and feel we know enough about what we are trying to achieve to hold a conversation and answer a number of questions about the workshop. We were very happy with the presentation of our poster, once it was printed. Although ours did look a little inferior compared to some of the huge posters Rashika had printed for some of the other groups! we still confident though! The question and answer session part of todays presentation all went smoothly and thankfully we were all confident in answering any questions posted to us by the tutors. All in all the project and the poster appears to have proved a success.
Now the course for this semester has ended and i have had time to reflect on my learnings over the semester and feel i have actually benefited a great deal more than i ever anticipated i would at the start of the course. I feel the most beneficial factors of the course have proved to be the multiple problem solving tools we can all take with us and hopefully us in some context in the future. For me personally however the biggest positive i will take from the course has been the improvement to my presentation skills. The fact i have been asked on a weekly basis to present my findings to the class has helped me improve my speaking in front of groups and will hopefully stand me in good stead when i'm required to do presentations for any number of subjects in the future.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
WEEK 11
sad as it was last week was our last problem solving task!!!! today we just had a general overview of what we need to achieve for the rest of the course, including our hand in dates. We were actually only in class for 20mins today which allowed us to crack on with other work we had due. As its a pretty hectic time at the minute with assignments coming at us left, right and centre!! fortunately for us our poster is all but finished, and we have kept reasonably upto date with our portfolio meaning the pressure isn't on us quite as much as it seems to be for other groups. To be honest i think all our group members have their minds on submissions for other courses at this present time! I feel we at some stage before next week just need to sit down as a group together and organise all our weeks work into one portfolio, Then hopefully that will all be sorted and we can finish and present our poster to finish the course!
sad as it was last week was our last problem solving task!!!! today we just had a general overview of what we need to achieve for the rest of the course, including our hand in dates. We were actually only in class for 20mins today which allowed us to crack on with other work we had due. As its a pretty hectic time at the minute with assignments coming at us left, right and centre!! fortunately for us our poster is all but finished, and we have kept reasonably upto date with our portfolio meaning the pressure isn't on us quite as much as it seems to be for other groups. To be honest i think all our group members have their minds on submissions for other courses at this present time! I feel we at some stage before next week just need to sit down as a group together and organise all our weeks work into one portfolio, Then hopefully that will all be sorted and we can finish and present our poster to finish the course!
WEEK 10
Ethics was the subject of the course today. A brief outline of the dilemna we were given is; Would you sell your product to a large company who has offered to pay 50% above retail price, even though this will mean you can no longer offer the product to 10 customers from the public who have already been promised the product at a 10% discount. Actually quite a difficult ethical dilemna to solve! Looking at the issue from many different angles has allowed us come up with multiple solutions to the issue. Suprisingly enough (or not) all of our group members actually felt a different approach was required to solve the problem. personally from the ofset i felt the most viable option would be to offer some form of comprimise to satisfy all parties. More important than the actual outcome itself was the process we went through as a group, comparing and discussing all our different opinions before reaching an agreement as to the best solution. i felt the biggest positve to come out of today was the high standard of the presentation we produced, and our groups presenting skills back in class. Today was one of the first times we all individually knew what we wanted to say to the class, and we were all able to present without the accompanyment of notes. I feel this was due to the fact qwe all had our own opinions on the situation, and were in a way arguing the case of our own opinions. I believe my confidence in the level of our work today was duely noted by the tutor. Atleast we hope so!
Ethics was the subject of the course today. A brief outline of the dilemna we were given is; Would you sell your product to a large company who has offered to pay 50% above retail price, even though this will mean you can no longer offer the product to 10 customers from the public who have already been promised the product at a 10% discount. Actually quite a difficult ethical dilemna to solve! Looking at the issue from many different angles has allowed us come up with multiple solutions to the issue. Suprisingly enough (or not) all of our group members actually felt a different approach was required to solve the problem. personally from the ofset i felt the most viable option would be to offer some form of comprimise to satisfy all parties. More important than the actual outcome itself was the process we went through as a group, comparing and discussing all our different opinions before reaching an agreement as to the best solution. i felt the biggest positve to come out of today was the high standard of the presentation we produced, and our groups presenting skills back in class. Today was one of the first times we all individually knew what we wanted to say to the class, and we were all able to present without the accompanyment of notes. I feel this was due to the fact qwe all had our own opinions on the situation, and were in a way arguing the case of our own opinions. I believe my confidence in the level of our work today was duely noted by the tutor. Atleast we hope so!
WEEK 9
Our problem solving focus today was the idea of using consensus as a decision making tool, Personally i felt from our efforts today it was actually quite an effective tool. As the focus of our consensus today we looked into professional bodies related to our companies project. As we are exploring the idea of a boat builders workshop, it seemed obvious to research any new Zealand marine professional bodies. This actually proved to be a difficult task as there were only one or two suitable options, meaning any comparative work between the options was very limited!! Personally i felt the idea of using consensus as a problem solving tool was very effective, especially within our group. The idea that consensus allows all our group members to have their say and express their opinions on the subject means we actually get to look at the issue in hand from a variety of perspectives. In todays case we basically all agreed on the best choice of PB, however we did still discuss all the options which proved effective. I actually believe we will use a similar system in weeks to come, as this tool seemed to suit the style of our group perfectly.
Our problem solving focus today was the idea of using consensus as a decision making tool, Personally i felt from our efforts today it was actually quite an effective tool. As the focus of our consensus today we looked into professional bodies related to our companies project. As we are exploring the idea of a boat builders workshop, it seemed obvious to research any new Zealand marine professional bodies. This actually proved to be a difficult task as there were only one or two suitable options, meaning any comparative work between the options was very limited!! Personally i felt the idea of using consensus as a problem solving tool was very effective, especially within our group. The idea that consensus allows all our group members to have their say and express their opinions on the subject means we actually get to look at the issue in hand from a variety of perspectives. In todays case we basically all agreed on the best choice of PB, however we did still discuss all the options which proved effective. I actually believe we will use a similar system in weeks to come, as this tool seemed to suit the style of our group perfectly.
Week 8
During course this week there were some problems with the internet system throughout unitec, this meant we were not given a problem solving task for the day. Instead my group decided our time would be best spent deveolping our poster. The poster is starting to come along nicely now, we have a general setup and lay out of what we would like to achieve. its realy starting to look nice! We really need to start developing the information we want to display on the poster now though. We have so much to say but dont want the poster to be too text heavy, so were currently in the process of deciding what our preferences for info are. A positive from today however is we have confirmed with the print shop our formatting of poster is all ok as we were worried about the specs of the poster. Hopefully the group can carry on developing the good start we have made over the next couple of weeks.
During course this week there were some problems with the internet system throughout unitec, this meant we were not given a problem solving task for the day. Instead my group decided our time would be best spent deveolping our poster. The poster is starting to come along nicely now, we have a general setup and lay out of what we would like to achieve. its realy starting to look nice! We really need to start developing the information we want to display on the poster now though. We have so much to say but dont want the poster to be too text heavy, so were currently in the process of deciding what our preferences for info are. A positive from today however is we have confirmed with the print shop our formatting of poster is all ok as we were worried about the specs of the poster. Hopefully the group can carry on developing the good start we have made over the next couple of weeks.
Monday, June 6, 2011
WEEK 7
During course the main focus this week was to look at another critical thinking problem solving technique. This was in the form of De Bono's six thinking hats. The system of hats, is to allow you to simply look at the issue in hand and gain six different perspectives on the issue. for example when thinking with the 'white hat' on you need to take a neutral view on the issue. In some ways i found today's task easy to relate to and a simple technique to use, however on the other hand my very limited knowledge of the treaty of Waitangi, meant my views on the issue were very limited so i actually spent a lot of time looking into the treaty itself and not actually contributing to much to the actual analysis of the issue in hand. having said that i did find the simplicity and the way you break the issue down using the 6 hats perspective a very simple and effective way of analysing a particular issue. Unfortunately this week as a group we were not really able to collaborate due to attendance, however we did all go away and do our own analysis and critical thinking, and have since then combined all our work into one document which is now looking good! On another note, we also received our second written assignments today, and in all honesty i was quite confident about the topic, as i have looked at something very similar in the previous year, as well as my confidence being high after gaining a very satisfactory mark for the first assignment.
During course the main focus this week was to look at another critical thinking problem solving technique. This was in the form of De Bono's six thinking hats. The system of hats, is to allow you to simply look at the issue in hand and gain six different perspectives on the issue. for example when thinking with the 'white hat' on you need to take a neutral view on the issue. In some ways i found today's task easy to relate to and a simple technique to use, however on the other hand my very limited knowledge of the treaty of Waitangi, meant my views on the issue were very limited so i actually spent a lot of time looking into the treaty itself and not actually contributing to much to the actual analysis of the issue in hand. having said that i did find the simplicity and the way you break the issue down using the 6 hats perspective a very simple and effective way of analysing a particular issue. Unfortunately this week as a group we were not really able to collaborate due to attendance, however we did all go away and do our own analysis and critical thinking, and have since then combined all our work into one document which is now looking good! On another note, we also received our second written assignments today, and in all honesty i was quite confident about the topic, as i have looked at something very similar in the previous year, as well as my confidence being high after gaining a very satisfactory mark for the first assignment.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
WEEK 6- The course is really starting to move ahead a quite a pace now. This is down to the fact, deadlines are fast approaching, along with the first written assignment based on the given case studies. I actually found the first assignment quite an interesting proposition and feel i did a good job of analysing my chosen case study, lets just hope my mark reflects my confidence! Back to today's lecture and we are now working on our final presentation posters for the collaborative section of the course. Today i learnt that getting good marks for a poster does not always mean its the most eye catching one, and that the information it has is just as, if not more important that pretty pictures. This was due to the fact we were given the opportunity to see some past students work, along with the given grade. funnily enough the most aesthetically pleasing poster was actually awarded a FAIL, however another piece of work which at first seemed less appealing actually got graded A. Lesson learned!! With the knowledge behind us that we were actually expected to produce an academic poster, as opposed to something a lot more basic, me and my group got hard to work on our presentation. Believe it or not our biggest struggle as a group was finding an appropriate program to even start to produce our poster, this was down to both our lack of knowledge and experience in using such programs, and also i feel our high expectations of what we actually want to achieve. After fumbling around for a couple of hours we finally decided on an appropriate program and got hard to work. My distinct role on this project, is based around what information we would like to display on our poster, as to date i think this is coming together pretty well, and from what I've seen the presentation is starting to look nice. Lets just hope we can publish a finished project that meets not only ours but the tutors high expectations!!
WEEK 5- This week the course was focused around health and safety, and the idea of developing a health and safety plan for our group products. This week we were pretty confident of our abilities to perform this task well, as we had been through the pain of looking at the health and safety act in our previous year in the CAT course. Saying that, from my point of view it actually happened to be reasonably interesting as we were now actually looking at putting the act into practice, which actually held some relevance with me, and this time i could actually see the benefit of looking into what makes up the health and safety act. Given the nature of our project, we actually managed to come up with a pretty comprehensive list of potential risks for our workshop environment, in one way this made the task a lot easier for us as we actually had some information to work with. Our knowledge as a group of working in a boatbuilding workshop environment actually worked in our favour as we had the general idea of a lot of the safety measures we would need to follow. its always nice to have a bit of a headstart!! This week a couple of our group members(including myself) were pulled up for some aspects of our presentation skills, mainly with regards to reading from a piece of paper. Although i felt this was a little harsh as i was required to state our companies health and safety policy, having only had an hour to work on it! however i can understand sylilas concerns and hope to improve this by next week!!
*please note i have had some issues with regards to Internet access over the past few weeks moving house, so my log has been kept manually over that time, with the past few weeks all being uploading together.
*please note i have had some issues with regards to Internet access over the past few weeks moving house, so my log has been kept manually over that time, with the past few weeks all being uploading together.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
WEEK 4 Today we looked at the subject of sustainability within our given industry/project. We focused on the different factors of sustainability, these are; Social, Environmental, Economic, Governance. In general i don't feel that within our group it was our most effective day as a team. This was down to the fact we focused our efforts solely into the idea of 'solar powered boats' as we intended to use this idea for our group portfolio. After then undertaking some more research we then discovered this was not only an existing product which in turn mean it doesn't fit into the outline for our group project. It also has to date proved unsuccessful. having spent most of our time focusing on this idea, we unfortunately had very little to present to the rest of the APPT group during class time. On the positive side however we have now managed to come to a group decision on what our final project will be and intend to have some research to present to the class next week. Although today felt a bit like a waste of time we did eventually drill down on an idea, and i also believe we showed evidence of our groups critical thinking abilities. We now have our work cut out to catch up to other groups who progressed today, having said that i believe we have the individuals within our group with the drive and know how to do so.
WEEK 3 This week in class we focused our efforts around our first written assignment due for the course and all the surrounding factors of the given report. It was explained to us the first written assignment would be based on our chosen case study from a choice of three. These case studies are all based around a variety of work place issues. To help us with our written assignments, we were then given the opportunity to attend some workshops. These were a APA referencing workshop from a Te puna ako tutor, This was extremely beneficial as the idea of referencing reports initially confused me and i found this quite intimidating, however having the guidelines explained to us from someone in the know, cleared up any concerns i had and helped me see that referencing is something that you need to ensure you do properly but not something to worry about. Having said that the second workshop we attended was a library workshop. The negative side of this one, was that i had already attended the exact same workshop the previous week, with our group from another one of our BAT courses. Although this is a helpful lecture the first time, It wasn't necessary to attend twice. Overall today the biggest positive from the lectures was my new found confidence with APA referencing.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
WEEK 2
Problem of the week- You will be dealing with many different people over the duration of this project. Your team's ability to communicate and provide exceptional customer service may set you apart from others when applying for funding.
During this week our main focus within our group was to design a 'customer service plan.'The customer service plan we designed within our individual group was based around the idea of working within a marine design company. Before finalising our customer service plan, we initially discussed why good communication skills are important for customer service. We then moved onto identifying all the different people/groups we will be required to communicate with from our specific point of view. The individuals we based our customer service plan were, clients, Boatbuilders, employees, engineers and retailers. Once we had accumulated our list we then moved onto producing our customer service plan. The basic purpose of a customer service plan is to outline the companies goals and objectives around the subject of customer service, and how we would implement these plans and ideas.
Having produced our plan we then took our ideas back to the rest of the APPT group and presented these ideas to fellow students and tutor, which was then critiqued by these individuals.
Today i found the idea of going away and producing work as individuals then coming back to the group and presenting these ideas a very interesting task. mainly due to the fact everyone was given the same brief, so we could then see every groups different perspective on the subject.
The biggest challenge as a group we faced today was having a very tight constraint put on us to produce a presentation, however i believe as a group we performed very well with this task. Our tutor gave us some positive feedback on our presenting skills and the information we had acquired. I believe the biggest downfall of our work for the day was the fact we failed to link our customer service plan closely enough to our group portfolio technique. Having said that i believe we produced quite a comprehensive service plan within the time frame we were given.
Problem of the week- You will be dealing with many different people over the duration of this project. Your team's ability to communicate and provide exceptional customer service may set you apart from others when applying for funding.
During this week our main focus within our group was to design a 'customer service plan.'The customer service plan we designed within our individual group was based around the idea of working within a marine design company. Before finalising our customer service plan, we initially discussed why good communication skills are important for customer service. We then moved onto identifying all the different people/groups we will be required to communicate with from our specific point of view. The individuals we based our customer service plan were, clients, Boatbuilders, employees, engineers and retailers. Once we had accumulated our list we then moved onto producing our customer service plan. The basic purpose of a customer service plan is to outline the companies goals and objectives around the subject of customer service, and how we would implement these plans and ideas.
Having produced our plan we then took our ideas back to the rest of the APPT group and presented these ideas to fellow students and tutor, which was then critiqued by these individuals.
Today i found the idea of going away and producing work as individuals then coming back to the group and presenting these ideas a very interesting task. mainly due to the fact everyone was given the same brief, so we could then see every groups different perspective on the subject.
The biggest challenge as a group we faced today was having a very tight constraint put on us to produce a presentation, however i believe as a group we performed very well with this task. Our tutor gave us some positive feedback on our presenting skills and the information we had acquired. I believe the biggest downfall of our work for the day was the fact we failed to link our customer service plan closely enough to our group portfolio technique. Having said that i believe we produced quite a comprehensive service plan within the time frame we were given.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
APPT- 5110: Week 1
This week I was introduced to the APPT 5110 course as a required course as part of my Bachelors of Applied technology Degree. My specialisation within this degree is Marine. The purpose of the APPT course is "to develop fundamental academic capabilities in the context of occupational health and safety and sustainable practices in New Zealand'.
Coming into the first week of this course i had very little understanding as to what this particular course may entail. I now understand that the general purpose of the course appears to be to help us as students develop our abilities around such topics as, Critical thinking, Problem solving, Communication in a variety of ways, along with working collaboratively with other group members. Throughout this course it appears the onus will be put on us as students to further our learning whilst simply being guided by the tutors. Personally i feel this sounds like a very positive way to face the course as i believe it will allow myself as a student to grow and develop my own ideas whilst undoubtedly incurring some issues along the way that will also require to me think and develop skills i may not have known i had.
For 50% of this course i will be asked to work collaboratively with a small group of my peers on a project based around the question "What is ONE of the BIGGEST problems facing YOUR industry today?" within our group we are now required to come up with some creative solutions to whatever it is we feel the largest problem facing us in the marine industry at this current time. For our initial research as a group we thought it wise to contact some people currently working within the industry. We firstly spoke to marine tutors at unitec, who all seemed to have a universal opinion on one of the largest issues we face. Along with these individuals we also thought it would be wise to contact some members of the working industry, for example members of staff at some of New Zealands largest boat building/design companies. We have yet to hear from any of these individuals, however we are all very interested to hear there opinions. Within our first brainstorm as a group we came up with our own opinion on some of the issues we face, among these were;
Rising fuel costs,
Lack of skilled workers,
Lack of Demand for product,
Kyoto Protocol.
These were some of our suggested ideas. However we have not as of yet drilled down into any of these ideas to decide what our final project will be based around.
For myself the first week of the course was very interesting and I am looking forward to working towards some of the learning outcomes set out for us. I also look forward to devolping our ideas as a group and investigating into some of the issues we face alot further in the coming weeks.
Coming into the first week of this course i had very little understanding as to what this particular course may entail. I now understand that the general purpose of the course appears to be to help us as students develop our abilities around such topics as, Critical thinking, Problem solving, Communication in a variety of ways, along with working collaboratively with other group members. Throughout this course it appears the onus will be put on us as students to further our learning whilst simply being guided by the tutors. Personally i feel this sounds like a very positive way to face the course as i believe it will allow myself as a student to grow and develop my own ideas whilst undoubtedly incurring some issues along the way that will also require to me think and develop skills i may not have known i had.
For 50% of this course i will be asked to work collaboratively with a small group of my peers on a project based around the question "What is ONE of the BIGGEST problems facing YOUR industry today?" within our group we are now required to come up with some creative solutions to whatever it is we feel the largest problem facing us in the marine industry at this current time. For our initial research as a group we thought it wise to contact some people currently working within the industry. We firstly spoke to marine tutors at unitec, who all seemed to have a universal opinion on one of the largest issues we face. Along with these individuals we also thought it would be wise to contact some members of the working industry, for example members of staff at some of New Zealands largest boat building/design companies. We have yet to hear from any of these individuals, however we are all very interested to hear there opinions. Within our first brainstorm as a group we came up with our own opinion on some of the issues we face, among these were;
Rising fuel costs,
Lack of skilled workers,
Lack of Demand for product,
Kyoto Protocol.
These were some of our suggested ideas. However we have not as of yet drilled down into any of these ideas to decide what our final project will be based around.
For myself the first week of the course was very interesting and I am looking forward to working towards some of the learning outcomes set out for us. I also look forward to devolping our ideas as a group and investigating into some of the issues we face alot further in the coming weeks.
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