BLOG POST 1- Reflection on one or more of the Better Lives lectures and how they have influenced your thinking.
The lecture series on a whole presented us with a bunch of guest talks that covered different parts of the Better Lives themes such as diversity. The one lecture in particular that stood out to me and influenced me was the lecture that was presented by Claire Swift and it focused on the topic of collaboration. Collaboration refers to the action of working with someone to produce something, this relates to the Better Lives unit because the unit requires people for all different majors within LCF to come together and collaborate on a chosen project. This lecture stood out to me the most because of its links to social responsibility which is a main theme in the unit. Social responsibility refers to an ethical theory which states that individuals are supposedly accountable for fulfilling their ‘civic duty’ and that the actions of the individual person must benefit the whole of society. This point suits the lecture topic the most because it’s essentially saying that we are responsible for fulfilling our duty in group work and that we are therefore responsible for our contribution as it benefits the group, we would be working in.
The main point of the lecture that was presented to us that has influenced the way I began to think about the unit itself, was when Claire suggested that collaboration is about sharing knowledge and expertise and that it is a ‘creative endeavour’ and is not meant to be competitive, and how we should look at it as if it is a shared understanding of each other’s strengths and a chance to recognise the power of working together. This influenced the way I started to look at my project in particular, knowing my project would include working with a range of different people to develop a character over the weeks to come, so this clarified for me the ideal way I should approach my project.
This lecture also presented us with what collaboration is made up of, it is supposedly made up of 6 key points, which hare: participation, collective, transparency, independence, persistence and emergence. The main point that stands out for me from this list of what has been suggested as what makes up collaboration, is participation. Claire, when presenting this point used a quote which explains this in what I think is the best way to put it, the quote is ‘Learning happens in the minds and souls, not in the databases of multiple-choice tests’ this was said by Sir Ken Robinson. This quote explains how that essentially participation in collaborative projects are necessary for us to learn, this also leads to the point that if you do not participate then you do not achieve.
This lecture has influenced the way I think about the topics now because it has shown me that in order to succeed and get the full potential out of the better lives project then I need to look at it in a more positive way and participate to the fullest extent in terms of the collaboration side of things.