This is a description of a possible 'Kick-off' in your team collaboration. All the topics are just proposals, please feel free to use your own way to start the collaboration. But take care to agree with ALL of your team colleagues, otherwise you might be start competition and not collaboration :-)
The team composition is published on the HydroWebplatform:
see topic Team Lists in the menu or click on this Team List link.
Have a look on your team and your team colleagues.
Please let me
(Frank.Molkenthin(at)b-tu.de)
know,
if your name is missing or if there are any other problems
in the composition of the teams.
We are using some Google tools within this course. These are typical examples of Web-based information sharing and collaboration tools, of cause not suitable for commercial projects. However, they demonstrate the principle of this kind of technology and related tools.
Please use a Google Account for this course. We recommend to create a new Google account for the course to avoid overlapping with already existings private accounts. Please send me (Frank.Molkenthin(at)b-tu.de) the Google account (gmail address) you would like to use for the course. We will activate (set permissions) to the Google services of your team for this Google gmail accounts.
For each team a Google Site, a Gougle Group and a Google Calendar have been created. All team members will receive an invitation email to join the site as collaborator and the group as member. The owner/manager of all GoogleSites/GoogleGroups related to HydroWeb are the two course supervisors (Frank and Nora). Please contact us (Frank.Molkenthin(at)b-tu.de), if there are problems with your site/group membership.
Coordination within HydroWeb is supported by Google Calendar. For each team one calendar has been created by the supervisor shared to all team members and published to everybody. You will receive an invitation email to share this calendar. This calendar is used to inform your team mates about your time slots to work on the course project and to define common team events.
The supervisors created their own calendar published to everybody. This calendar is used to inform the students about the availability of the supervisors and to coordinate the time slots of supervisor conferences with the different teams and locations.
To join a GoogleSite, a GoogleGroup or to use a GoggleCalendar you need an account at www.google.com!
The team work space contains the Web page 'Address Book' in the menu
under the topic 'Communication'. This page is a GoogleSite page.
Please edit this page and put your name and
communication channel/addresses in this page using the GoogleSite Web services.
As this is a shared Web page, one GoogleSite member can edit
the page by locking it for all other site collaborators.
Be aware: all information are public accessible!
Please introduce yourself shortly to your team mates by a personal card.
This could be a new Web page with your name as file name (such as Frank Molkenthin)
or a shared Web document using GoogleDocs/Drive service.
The page should contain a short description of yourself, such as age,
nationality, languages, hobbies, personal interest as well as your
educational background. It might be helpful to describe your
expectations to the EuroAquae course programme, to this course and the contribution
to the team work which in your point of view might be suitable.
Be aware: all information are public accessible!
Please add a link to your personal card in the team address book.
Most important at the begin of your team work is to find out the suitable time windows for communication and project performance. As all locations have their own 'boundary conditions' your should early agree on the time for collaboration. Please use the prepared Google Calendar for your team to mark your personal availability in these time slots. You can do this by adding events with your (location) name and text as e.g "location A will be online". We hope that all teams will find a suitable time window for their exercise performance in this way. Please let us know if there are troubles.
Please do not forget: HydroWeb is an educational game in engineering. There will be not enough time to find an ideal solution, the task is to find a suitable solution under the given constraints - such as the available free time at the different locations. Team work in EuroAquae means to share work and responsibility in a virtual organization to overcome the local constraints and to integrate the local competencies towards the common team success.
The EuroAquae teams are composed by members from
three different locations, with different background and with different types of
Internet connection. So do not expect that your team colleagues
will have the same habits and skills in Internet communication.
It might be very helpful to set up an interaction agreement which describes
how to communicate in the Internet in a way, on which all team members agree.
This includes obligations such as:
- obligation to send information (e.g. send an email)
- obligation to read information (e.g. have a look in mailboxes)
- obligation to accept information (e.g. email conformation of receipt)
- obligation to deliver information (e.g. upload a file)
- obligation to pick up information (e.g. download a file)
as well as internal rules to work on SHARED team work space.
We recommend to use Skype, Hangout, ICQ or any other kind of messenger tools in your team. Please agree within your team about the tools:
- tool for audio conferencing (e.g. Skype, Hangout, ...)
- tool for online status (e.g. Skype, Hangout, ICQ, MSN Messenger, ...)
- tool for chats (e.g. Skype, WhatsApp, ...)
- tool for application sharing (e.g. Adobe Connec Pro, Skype, ...)
When you start your team collaboration it might be helpful to agree on a work plan. An easy approach is to define responsibilities and related tasks inside your teams based on the different competence of the team members. Some examples are given in the template page on the course platform.
On the course platform (http://euroaquae.tu-cottbus.de/hydroweb) you will find an menu item "Team Photos". To complete this page, please send me an photo of your local sub-team and one group photo for all EuroAquae students at your location. Thanks for your support.
Course exercise is a academic case study on river management with Mike11 Please read the exercise description to become familiar with the exercise to be performed.
The course exercise requires several runs of Mike11 with different versions and alternatives of the given academic river model. We suggest to handle these model files in different directories/ folder on the team file system on the application server.
To manage the different versions it might be helpful to add a summary/description file and maybe the compressed (.zip) Mike11 files themselves to the GoogleSite Model Files as well as the prepared template page Model List. Please find an agreement for this purpose in your teams. The team file spaces on the application server do not have quotas for file memory, but all teams are pleased to take care on not to produce too much 'data waste' on the team works spaces :-)
The team work space for the river management task is the EuroAquae application server in Nice (access via aquacloud.net account). All team members have the same access and the same rights on this work space. The directory/ folder structure and the internal rules to manage/delete/edit files is free of choice to the teams. It might be helpful to define some internal rules to prevent overwriting of files.
Reporting is an important task in engineering projects to present the ideas and performed work to the non team members. All teams are pleased to report their progress during the course in team minutes and reports. The minutes are short summaries of the work done at the different locations and the existing problems. The team reports are important for the team members themselves to ensure the same level of information at all location and to the supervisors to observe the team work. Based on the team reports the supervisors will write team assessments with comments, remarks and if needed direct support to the teams to overcome problems.
The results of your team work has to be reported in two final reports.
Report 1 as "Project Enginnering Report" describes your case study results from the engineering point of view.
Report 2 as "Collaboration Report" describes the Web-based collaboration in your team.
Templates for the team reports and the final reports are given as pages on the team work space in GoogleSite. Please feel free to use your own structure for reporting to present your team work. You can use the Web page to link several Web pages and attachments on the Google Site and Web documents on Google Docs/Drive.
During the evaluation meeting in December each team will present its team work. This final presentation will be prepared GoogleDocs/Drive presentation.
Last but not least:
Team collaboration has a lot of technological and organizational aspects
which has to be considered by corresponding tools, methods and structures.
But all this will not automatically lead to a successful co-operation:
You have to consider the human aspects !!!
The human interaction is reduced by the Internet but both sides of the 'line' have human behaviour and habits. Most of the participants have limited English language skills ('International Broken English') and different practice of Web technology and Mike11. They will have different educational background and are coming from countries with different cultural background. So do not have the expectation, that your way of collaboration will be followed by your colleagues. It is better to start on a simple level and to set up step by step the collaboration by finding compromises. Disappointment will appear - please discuss this in your team looking for common agreements.
Anyway this is maybe one of the most interesting aspect of HydroWeb:
You have the chance to collaborate with people from different locations and different countries:
Enjoy the game as a challenge to meet new friends.