I have experiences like that when I took an English online course last summer.

There were three people in my group including me. It is such a fortune that all of us were all Chinese which save us a lot time on translation problem. However, it is still not an easy thing for us to finish the final project. First of all, one of our teammates was in New York which induced a time difference between us. We couldn’t reach to each other whenever we want. The time left for us to communicate is limit because of that. What we have done to address the distance and time problem is to schedule a specific time for all of us were free to talk to have a group meeting so that we can all make an agreement to one thing. It is such an important thing to claim our goal to make sure that everyone is one the same track. One of the recipe of an online group project in the article Participating in Group Projects Online by Carole Richardson is “Make sure every member of the group agrees on the goals of the project”. In this case, the problem has been well-solved. In addition to the time difference problem, the difference between our style also caused a problem. Take making PowerPoint as an example, we were assigned different part of this presentation. So the last thing we need to do is to composite three parts together to get one final work. But the problem is that the style of our work is totally different, like the main color, the font, the allocation of text and picture etc.. The work we compose together was like a mess. It is impossible to turn in just like that. In order to deal with that issue, someone should unify it as a whole. That one was me. Although it is a hard work, since there were so many place needed to be modified, it is still worth me to finish the staff because the final work with unified style was way better than before. Therefore, to judge a group is good or not, it is important to see whether the teammates would like to make effort to improve.

One thing I found really effective is the use in personal chatting app. What we use in China is an App called WeChat, which is almost used by all of the Chinese people. It is such an easy thing to talk to my teammates by just simply adding them on WeChat. In this way, we can reach each other in a super easy way just like saying “Hello” instead of e-mail which is too formal. E-mail needs you to communicate like writing a letter which sometimes you need to write like an article in order to send. In comparison, finding others on a more personal way is a good method to have a good communication.

For me, I will allocate me time clearly. There is always a certain time that I would focus on studying. Making a plan or schedule is one of my methods to be motivate for every day’s study work. For example, I will study Physics from 10a.m. to 11a.m. everyday and Anthropology from 2pm to 3 p.m. Allocating time clearly makes me closer to my goal. And now the challenge that I am facing now is that I always confuse of whether the things I am doing now worth my time or doesn’t really have value for me to spend my time. That’s the problem of “Relevant”. “Goals that support other organizational goals are considered relevant.” From SMART goals help you achieve success. Always know what you are doing is a solution for what difficulties that I am facing now.