Summary

On 17 April 2025, the DSDT Section came together for our third section meeting: Collaboration by Design.

There is a distinct difference between teamwork and collaboration. Teamwork is when a group of individuals work towards a common goal. Collaboration is the process of problem-solving together towards a common solution and relies on the success of the group, rather than the success of individuals. There is a place for both. But in a world of hybrid and remote working it is easy to fall into teamwork, because many of us work alone, from our homes and we forget about all the micro-collaborations that come from sitting side-by-side with our colleagues each day.

The Civil Service College has put together a 2-minute read on the differences between collaboration and teamwork. The key takeaway I have from this article is that depending on the task at hand, we should be making a conscious choice to take either a collaborative, or a teamwork approach.

Understanding the Differences between Teamwork and Collaboration | The Civil Service College

On 17 April 2025, the Digital Skills, Design and Training section came together for our third section meeting since we came together as a new team in October 2024. Section meetings are a time for all of our teams (Training, Design, OER, and those in-between) to come together and focus on a combination of professional learning, sharing good practice, social engagement, team culture, and peer-to-peer learning (and teaching). This time the meeting was hosted by the Design Team, and was titled “Collaboration by Design”. The theme of the section meeting centred around collaboration, and provided colleagues who would not usually work side-by-side the opportunity to learn more about the services their colleagues provide. In theory, this will lead to collaborations between our services, resulting in a better experience for our service-users, and better operating efficiency for our service-operators.

What we did

The section meeting contained two main activities:

A Kahoot! challenge completed individually
A digital escape room completed in small groups

The goal was to give colleagues the opportunity to work by themselves, and then as a collaborative group. This was followed up with anonymous reflections on their experience. I provided the written prompt “Reflection on working individually, and collaboratively” along with verbal prompts such as:

Did you enjoy working as a group?
Maybe you prefer working alone, and hated having to rely on others?

Agenda

Our section meeting agenda was as follows:

Opening and Welcome (10 mins)
Introduction to Collaboration (5 mins)
Individual Activity using Kahoot! (10 mins)
Collaborative Activity: Digital Escape Room using OneNote (40 mins)
Reflection on the difference between working individually and collaboratively (10 mins)
Lightning Talks from each team/segment within the section (15 mins)
Close (5 mins)

What we thought

Here is a collection of thoughts from members of our section, written during the reflection part of the meeting:

It was a joyful way to create memories with colleagues – having fun and playing is a great way to form connections and understand the colleagues working styles and (sometimes hidden) abilities and talents

Good to work with others and discuss answers and have a laugh at our different thoughts

Collaborating felt very rewarding when we succeeded

Pooling our knowledge made the task less stressful and more fun, we could all input and celebrate our success together.

Working individually has its place, some work is obviously not designed to be done collaboratively. I think in our day to day jobs it’s nice to have a mixture of solo and collaborative work.

A welcome break from the norm! It was really great finding out more about other teams / services and reflecting both individually and as part of a team.

Fun morning spent laughing and collaborating with my colleagues 🙂

Collaboration is fun and brings in a broader knowledge base.

Collaboration isn’t always easy, especially when you work with a team you are not familiar with. Success comes from giving each team member the space to contribute in their own way.