Online Assessments and Collaboration
Collaboration has always been an important thing in education and the workplace. Sometimes you are in teams and have to work together towards a common goal while other times you are working alone but need to help someone else or get help yourself. It is always important to never be afraid to seek help when needed.
It can be hard to work in groups in the first place but becomes even more difficult online because you are not face to face with the person and can't tell what they are doing. It can be hard to all be together aat the same time since there isn't a set class time and it also becomes a bit more complicated to try and meet to share work. Things have become easier over the years and businesses have been working together with people from all over the world for years now.
Some of the issues we run into with all collaboration assignments are that we feel like someone else isn't pulling their weight. As we learned in our learning sources this week it is important when working as a team that everyone has their own roles to help complete the bigger goal/objective. Also to go along with that it is a very good idea to create a list of duties for each role. Never assume someone knows what they are suppose to do if they were never told.
Whether the jobs pertaining to each role are decided in advance by the leader/instructor or are decided within the team depends on the situation. The great part about deciding on specifi duties for each person is that it gives us something to evaluate performance on. All we have to do is see if the people completed the jobs they were suppose to and how well.
This week we are going to share our experiences that we have had working with teams, both successfully and not. We will discuss ways that we could have better dealt with the situation and suggestion to help make sure it doesn't happen again.
By Tuesday
Create an initial post where you tell us about a positive experience you had working on a group project where the people you worked with were never in the same place to work with easily. What made the experience so positive or the work run so smoothly.
Next tell us a time where you had a bad experience and why you feel it went so wrong. Also give some tips on how the experience could have been approved either by the instructor/leader or the worker/student.
Be sure to reference this weeks learning resources.
By Friday
Read and respond to at least 2 peoples posts by either; expanding on something they have said, explaining why you disagree with something they said, share an insight you got from reading their post, or by asking clarifying questions.
By Sunday
Comment on all of the replies you received both on your initial post and the responses you gave to others.
Check back daily to reply to any comments you have received and to jump into any conversations you feel like to make conversations flow.
Click below for a copy of the grading rubric:
Rubric
When I was reading your intro I began to get excited because I thought you were going to challenge the participant to describe how to confront group peers who "weren't pulling their weight." Not that your final assignment inappropriate or ill conceived, but I thought finally, someone was going to challenge the online student to deal with conflict! I could have gone down this same road too for my blog post, but didn't? If any of us have had to perform collaborative group work online, it has or surely will lead to some conflicts. So many times conflict is completely avoided at all costs. Especially online. In my experience of course. Too often (it seems) from our literature that heavy emphasis is rightfully placed upon the instructor to deal with conflict, but it shouldn't eliminate peers from policing themselves too.
ReplyDeleteWiNd GuY (Chine)
One of the first classes in this masters program had us create a project using ADDIE. We were each assigned one of the roles of ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implement, and Evaluate). Our group worked great together, and I found that during this project I worked extra hard because I knew others were counting on me. We actually had someone that got sick and went into the hospital so a couple of us picked up the slack. I do not remember being mad that I did more, instead I found it to be a great experience. I have noticed in my traditional classroom that students will get mad if someone in the group is not pulling their weight, I understand that it could happen. I think I would probably get upset if I did not know why a group member was not participating, I would assume they were being lazy. This is why it is important to communicate with your peers. All in all I have found that when I collaborate in a group I work harder and probably learn more.
ReplyDeleteHey WiNd GuY (Nol :)),
ReplyDeleteHave you ever had the experience collaborating on a project and a person did not pull their weight? If so, how did you handle it? Was the instructor aware of this person being a dud and getting the same grade as you? I agree with you, I think a lot of time the conflict is avoided and that person "gets away with it."
I don't have any significant experience of success in online collaboration. All I could think of were camping trips my friends and I used to organize (online) and take together (in the real world). They were always very positive experiences before, during and after. I'm talking about them in past tense because most of us got families now and can't go often, and those who still go, organize them elsewhere. We still all belong to that email group that was started 12 years ago by five of us for the purpose of organizing camping trips; this group grew to include more than 200 people in 2003, and now it's almost dead - that's how much our lives have changed. During its best years, the group was very efficient in figuring out the best date, location, and transportation to that location, as well as distribution of equipment - all online. Usually, there was someone, who would express the need to go camping, and from that moment on, everything would run pretty much smoothly. At the final stage, after the trip, one of us would figure out the costs and tell us how much each of us owed to who. To me, the success of each operation was due to the good distribution of responsibilities: people would usually volunteer to be a leader, a treasurer, a driver, and so on, and rarely there was any misunderstanding. Of course, all this was held together by our friendship and common passion for camping - that simple: there was no extra political or other kind of interest, which can interfere and complicate everything when there are second and third agendas, like competing for leadership or control of some sort.
ReplyDeleteMy unsuccessful online collaboration experience happened at Walden, during my first year in EIDT program. That's the class most of us have had a problem with because of the poor organization of group work. The group I was randomly assigned to had a lot of problems. Most of my team mates weren't that much interested in the project and were pretty inert to every attempt to pull them together for a more active work. First of all, people didn't seem to pay much attention to what others were saying: given the opportunity to self-select the roles, most of us ended up in the wrong position - I got my least desirable role, and others, too, accepted whatever position simply not to complicate things. Major blow happened when our leader disappeared, and we didn't catch it right away. When asked, our instructor showed complete oblivion to the whole situation. It was I who eventually got a hold of our lost leader and clarified things. After loosing more than a week to that mess, our team never recovered. At some point, I was trying to move things along by getting people to vote and make decisions, but miserably failed in it. I have no idea how we even got something to show at the end - it was such a disparate mess wrapped into a pretty cover! This major failure happened for a few reasons: first, absence of a leader (after our PM's departure, I should have offered myself as a leader and not just try to act as one - the leader has to be recognized is some way); second, there was no time to get to know each other, and some of the team members weren't really serious about neither project nor class (I haven't met any of them in any subsequent classes); third, there was no active authority who would step in and bring things to order (the instructor would ignore my emails asking for advice, which made me think the whole idea of the class was for us to have this messy experience and try to figure our way out on our own); forth, there was no passion, no interest in the project from any of us - we all gave up at some point and only gathered our forces in the last few hours to just get it out anyhow.
Both of my examples illustrate how important it is in online group projects to know, trust, and be comfortable with each other, to be clear about each other's role and especially know your leader, for the leader to be strong and influential, and to have genuine interest in the project.
Hey Wind Guy and Cheryl,
ReplyDeleteWhen I first created my discussion question I was mostly concerned about the slackers in a group and dealing with them like you mentioned. But as you can tell that ended up not being my final focus.
I do think that this would have been a great topic to discuss and get opinions from everyone on it. It would be something that could be helpful in our professional careers to help either ourselves or others.
Even though I didn't begin my discussion with the topic I would still love to hear everyone's input on the topic of dealing with slackers in a group.
Sasha,
ReplyDeleteThe 2 examples you gave were perfect. Not only did they show reasons why it is good to have leaders and people with different jobs, but it also showed how successful a group can be no matter the size.
Also as we have learned in most other classes communication is key. You need to have a lot of communication with the people in your groups. Whether you have someone who is slacking or not.
REFLECTION:
ReplyDeleteThe good thing about my post is that it did cause good discussion. I feel that it was a little off the topic I intended but I am pleased with it because it is a topic that is still very good.
We all have problems in groups where someone isn't pulling their weight. As I mentioned above I would have loved to see some discussion on this topic of what people have done when they run into this problem.
I think the best thing I could do in the future to ensure that my discussion questions are reliable and more on topic is to stay on topic myself. As I was writing and rereading my post originally I felt that I was a little long winded and went a little off topic. But when I tried to make changes and think of what to remove I felt like it was all useful information and should stay. As they say, "less is more."