Teamwork, One Marshmallow, and Report Writing

https://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower?language=it 

After you participate in the Marshmallow Challenge, write a report about it. Reflect on teamwork, and your role in the process. Make recommendations and suggestions for improving the collaborative/teamwork process. 
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Report Writing. When writing a formal report about a project, proposal, progress, or research findings for work, use formal language (avoid contractions and slang; introduce terminology in full form first, then with abbreviations later: Augmented Reality…AR), and check your punctuation, and spelling. Follow these organizational guidelines to help you.

Report Writing: Organization & Content

1. Title  (not too short, not too long).  Remember to ensure it communicates your topic and purpose. 2. Introduction & Purpose:  In the introduction, give a little background about why the study/project was requested, who is/ was on your team, team roles/responsibilities, and the purpose or objective that was requested. 3.  Main Results:  Explain the principle outcomes of what you learned based on your project or research, marketing focus group, or survey. 4.  Secondary Results:  This category of results may not always apply. In the case they do, they may include surprising, or unexpected information. 5. Recommendations  & Conclusion:  How can you interpret the results? How might they be applied to the company’s purposes, or business objectives? Add suggestions and examples of how to enact those suggestions where possible and relevant. 6.  Appendix with list of research results (graphs, statistics, etc.), if necessary.  Use a graph to visually represent your information. It is a strategic way to help readers remember.

B. Practice: read the following sentences from a report about color theory and new packaging for a brand. Which sections (1-6) from Exercise 6A do they correspond to?

__   Based on the survey results, we discovered that many of our customers under the age of 40 (male or female) enjoy using our social media pages.  The results also clearly show that there is a lot of interest in using augmented reality (AR), so our customers may interact with our products, and packaging in a virtual way. This may result in increased sales since customers may post, or repost online comments about their virtual experiences with our packaging and products. We highly recommend investigating how to implement AR, as well as estimating a timeline in which to deliver AR to our customers.

__  Our main objective was to contact our primary target audience, who has been active on our website and social media pages to gather reactions about our new packaging design and shape.

__  Fig. 1 Graph representing users between the ages of 16-24, Fig. 2 users aged 25-40.

__ Online Survey Results: Color Preference in Packaging.

__ One remarkable result from this survey is that all users between the ages of 16-40 are active online, and would prefer using some kind of AR to interact with our packaging.

__ Two months ago, at the monthly meeting, the executive committee requested that I (Sally Johns) set up a team to investigate reactions to our new packaging colors and shapes. Harold Jones created the survey, Jordi Frank collected and graphed results, and I interpreted them, as well as wrote this report.

C.   Sample Report:

Marshmallow Challenge

Introduction & Purpose: what is the marshmallow challenge?

The task of this challenge, theoretically, is simple: in twenty minutes, teams must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one meter of tape, one meter of string, and one marshmallow. The marshmallow needs to be on top of the structure. This challenge was presented to us during the Business English course.

Main Results of our team

After having briefly consulted on how to proceed, we decided to take advantage of all the elements at our disposal, even outside of those we received. What is the highest thing in this room? The ceiling, of course.
So we began to hang the string on the roof and we tied the other end to a pile of spaghetti in a sort of a “Marshmallow Tower”. The most beautiful and most solid tower ever built. The idea was mine, but it would never have happened without the help of my team.

Secondary Results

As expected, our structure was the highest compared to others built by other groups. In particular, a team that has tried to copy us, failed.  They did not calculate their time well enough.

Recommendations & Conclusion

Despite the excellent result, improvement is always possible. For future similar situations, it would be a good idea to be more focused in the planning phase, without being overly guided by instinct. Here, we might do rapid prototypes to quickly check if a certain structure can hold the weight of the marshmallow. Finally, these types of team-buliding experiences are beneficial for coworkers to create trust and collaboration between them. I would highly recommend doing at least three such activities per year.

D. Write: Write a formal report that summarizes a case study, or a recent trend in your sector that you believe is positive.  Create a professional document and use these headings/subheadings:

Title (you chooose)

INTRODUCTION & PURPOSE

MAIN RESULTS

SECONDARY RESULTS

RECOMMENDATIONS & CONCLUSION

APPENDIX (if necessary)

Extension Activity:

1.  Listening:  Sonic Branding https://www.npr.org/2014/10/20/357576510/from-sizzling-fajitas-to-the-super-bowl-how-sounds-help-sell      Listen to the news report on how sounds help sell products and services. Take notes on the main ideas and examples. Compare your notes with other students in the next class. Did you all note the same things, more or less? If not, where are there differences?  Discuss any sonic branding of popular products, or services from your country.