Look back to improve what happens next.
As the end of another year approaches it’s time to consider what worked, and what to consider as options to try going forward into the new year.
Your social media feed like mine, is probably filled with lots of similar content, so I’ll keep this short.
I was happy to keep posting here weekly. It was hard sometimes, but I did continue posting. It meant a bit more coordination some weeks, but felt good as an accomplishment. This will continue. Writing helps me think more clearly when I ‘think while writing’. By getting the ideas out of my head, there is space for other ideas to develop.
There is still more to be said about teaching students and others how to collaborate in a team. I know that I have more to write about this too.
I retired from teaching at the University of Aberdeen at the end of June. This still seems new, but it does feel good. My role as an external in Dublin is not over, so I am still part of the academic life. I do not miss the admin side of teaching.
Going forward
Retirement from my main role, means I might have more time for some other things. This has opened a few possibilities up, which need to be explored further in the new year.
I have found that keeping one focus to each day has made life more organised. I’ll keep doing this. This means ‘today’s a writing day’, or ‘today’s a meetings day’, which helps me plan other work around these things. It means I know when I have time for longer time to work on issues. I can plan longer tasks, more easily this way, and know that I’ll be happy that I didn’t rush them.
Have a great holiday. Think about what one thing that worked well for you this year, that you want to carry forward, and ‘maybe’ one new idea to try too.
This post is part of a project pulling together my materials and ideas about Teaching Team Collaboration: the Human-Side of Software Development for software development to students.
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The ideas above are from my book 101+ Ideas to Improve Team Collaboration, which covers all of these little things that students can do to improve their collaboration. Also available via Kindle.