Achievements in Life and Hypothesis - Reponse to Conference Call
Submitted by tg on Sat, 09/15/2007 - 15:03.
Accomplishments I proud of
I am grown up in Ethiopian village where I didn’t hear the sound of car and other modern technologies. Unfortunately there is an elementary school within 5 minutes walking distance from my home. The school was one of the schools built by Swedish government to assist Ethiopian government to promote modern education. I started life from there and now I am a university lecturer. My village has now changed; there is a bus from the Addis Ababa, telephone service. Sometimes being lucky may seem work in our life. I am lucky and I had a chance to see many countries – Germany, Switzerland, Holland (Euraope), China and South Korea.
I am working in Addis Ababa University since 2003. When I joined the university, I employed as a lecturer for IT Education Unit in Business Education Department. I initiated to establish an ICT Education Department and my boss agreed on the idea. I was assigned to coordinate the team to develop the new department curriculum and establish the department. It was a challenge to bring people to work together, I took the initiative and did what I do and lastly, I was successful to establish the new Department. I am currently working the as a Department Head.
What makes successful international cross cultural research team
I think I may share my experience of group work. Originally I don’t like group work for the reason is that most of the teams in the group don’t equally (or what is expected from them) contribute for the achievement of group objective. Later when I read a project management book (I don’t remember its title and author), it says that 80 percent of the project work is done by 20 percent of the project team. Now I changed my attitude towards to group work, I am convinced in the objective, I should contribute what I can do without considering others contributions. Others should also have the same belief. Because we all live in different places, we all have different commitments that reduces our energy but we all have to do what we can do.
The other thing is communication is very important – that clarifies our team objective, our duties (what is expected from each of us), makes every body informed about the project progress and creates a sense of ownership in the project, learn the problem of others and find immediate solutions how we can fill the gap to make our project successful and so on.
I find your take on group
I find your take on group work quite refreshing :)
It is true that there are always some "cruisers" on most teams. I have had one specific example in one of my doctoral coursework for the past 3 years. Like you, my first reaction was defensive and combative: "why should he get any credit for my work?" Then, like you, I also realized that the quality of the work meant more to me, and I actually could not tell what it meant to him. I knew what I was looking for, what I worked on, the insides-outs of my project, and I could modify purposefully in the future if I needed to. What he can do with the info he simply collected is most likely limited. And the reality is, this is my life, I create my own opportunities. Same for everyone else. The quality of those opportunities depends on our own decisions.
In fact, right now, I have already boosted my dissertation project 10 fold simply by searching resources for the cross-cultural and global virtual team bibliographies. I am so excited. While looking for sources for these specific bib, I came across quite a few resources for my slightly different dissertation topic (foreign languages and cultures learning/teaching in VR)...at a time when I thought that I would find absolutely nothing.
I am still looking forward to everyone else contributions. Each of us are so different in our life experiences (academic, professional, and personal) that we are bound to have some really exciting conversations.