Collaboration and Professional Practice

As this is our final report, our progress as team members has evolved a lot since the midway report. Each of our contributions has become more specialized and progressed further, advancing the development of our solution.

Firstly, we have all come a long way individually and as a group, and in this section, we will detail certain aspects of our progress.

To begin with, Barbod has ensured our group’s progress has gone toward the standards we hoped to meet in our mid-way progress report. Barbod has taken charge of developing the idea for our challenge question. He took charge by developing the AI Safety & Wellbeing Assurance Framework, ensuring all other team members were educated and kept up to date on coding-related information, and coordinating meetings with us to make sure we all understood our roles in developing the solution. He and Amir took responsibility for coding and organizing the framework to be displayed on the website, and overall, they presented a new way of thinking for the rest of us.

Moving on, Amir has also been key in helping Barbod develop the work that has needed to be done to create the framework, which both have worked on in tandem. Amir has always helped out with creative suggestions and direct approaches to getting the work done as a team, and has collaborated with Barbod on ideas for the Capstone Day presentation.

Max and Alessandro have also been key contributors to the work that has taken place. They both always come in with positive energy, wanting to learn and ask more questions on how to be better. Max has helped out by taking charge of starting our group assignments and letting our other team members know what part they should work on, and Alessandro always comes in keen to expand on ideas.

Furthermore, Rameen has been helpful in giving us advice on how to improve as a C4 group, drawing on her past experience with C4, and she is straightforward about the goals we should be working towards as a team.

Lastly, Aabrar and Natalia have been organized, very helpful, and open-minded, offering more creative approaches, taking the time to work in a detailed manner, and always wanting to know where and how they can each contribute.

In terms of collaboration, work progressed well due to the team’s multidisciplinary strengths and open communication.

The diversity of academic backgrounds allowed the team to approach the problem from technical, organizational, and human-centred perspectives. Even though some team members felt lost or confused, especially when focusing on subjects they were unfamiliar with, other team members took it upon themselves to teach and help each other become educated on the subject in preparation for Capstone day.

In addition, our list of challenges decreased after our mid-way progress report, as we integrated a more dedicated mindset into our work and learning and improved communication with each other.

However, the main challenge that limited us was outside our control: our schedules. Because the team consisted of students from multiple disciplines, availability outside of scheduled class time varied significantly. This occasionally made it difficult to organize full-group meetings, leading to some discussions taking place asynchronously via shared documents or messaging platforms. While this approach allowed progress to continue, it sometimes slowed decision-making and required additional time to ensure all members had the opportunity to provide input.

To address this, the team relied on detailed meeting notes, comments on shared documents, and follow-up check-ins to maintain transparency and inclusivity.

In future collaborative work, the team would benefit from assigning more defined roles earlier in the process, establishing a structured timeline with milestones, and using more formal meeting agendas. These improvements would enhance efficiency and further strengthen team coordination.