5. Group Dynamic & Final Project#

Week’s introduction#

We started this week with finding problems that interest us or that we see in our everyday life, which led us to bring the
next day an object that represents this problem the most. This activity brought us together and created a lot of questioning
because some objects were intriguing.

Group formation#

We were put all together in a room where everyone displayed his object in a circle, then everyone had the chance to get
a look and analyze every object. After that, everyone took his object and had to look for two or three students to form
a group based on their objects’ relatedness to yours.

I chose a Vaccine syringe to represent the need for prevention in the underdeveloped countries against infectious diseases
(like Malaria) and the lack of accessibility to basic care (like insulin for Both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, which leads
to serious complications and are associated with increased mortality).

While looking for someone with the same interest as me, I met:
Camille Lamon,a third year undergraduate double majoring in bioengineering and biomedical engineering. She came with
her medications representing social inequality in the disparity of medication accessibility.
Julien Desuter, a second year graduate pursuing a master’s degree in Physics. He came with a bottle cap representing
assistance and mutual aid for the less fortunate since they used to collect bottle caps at their school to afford
a wheelchair for a student in need.

Problem identification#

Storming Ideas#

Having some points in common, we formed a group of three then we had to storm as many words as possible that relates to our
problematics in two minutes. This activity helped us later to define our main and final problematics.

After some discussion and sharing opinions, the words that stuck us the most were:
Accessibility
Prevention
Basic Care
Disease
Poverty

Identifying Common Points#

Having these words in mind, we had the task to make solid problematics out of them. This activity had us discussing social
and medical problems that we face every day all around the world. It also helped us know each other more and where
everyone’s ideas where coming from, when and where they faced them and much more.
After some long talks, we came out with the next problematics:
Poverty and Accessibility to basic care and medication
How to improve healthcare accessibility in the developing world?
How to improve social inequality regarding health?
How to prevent against current diseases?
How to raise awareness about people with a handicap?

Voting#

With all these questions and problems, we took a vote to decide on the best one that fits us the most.
The vote goes at it follows:
1. Everyone has post-its in a different color
2. Everyone puts as much post-its as they desire on their choices (multiple choices are allowed)
3. We decide the winner based on the number of post-its on each choice

But since our discussion earlier, we’ve been pretty much convinced what the best choice was way before the vote.
The vote went as seen below for the forth option (How to prevent against current diseases?):

Finalizing Our Main Problematic#

Choosing “How to prevent against current diseases?”, We had one more task to do before starting our research:
What is this current disease? Once again, we resorted to storming out ideas which lead to a vote right after.

Voting#

The vote consisted of putting the number from 1 to 3 next to the disease wanted the most, and the one with the highest
addition is the winner. Me, coming up with malaria in the beginning and defending it and talking about contraceptives,
Malaria and HIV had a draw,finishing in our top choices after a pretty tough voting. So we had to bring a neutral party
(our teacher Denis) to decide, but he was too neutral that we resorted to tossing a coin, which ended up on choosing HIV.
But it was too good to be true, one week later, and after some advice from juries, we were advised to change our subject,
it was too complicated for us, and there was nothing much to work on. Luckily, we managed to find some interesting things to
work on with Diabetes (We were all happy with this choice).

Rules#

Before working on anything, we had to provide a productive and positive atmosphere. To do so, we set some rules and boundaries:
1. Productive and present in discussion
2. Respect deadlines
3. Don’t procrastinate
4. Be punctual
5. Prioritize Honesty over Kindness
6. Be reactive in the group chat
7. Fair repartition of the work