The Group Project - Complete!

ʻAnoʻai e nā hoa,
Greetings friends,

We made it! It was close, but I posted the final version of our paper at 11:19 pm, just before the midnight due date/time.

This exercise in collaborative learning has been quite an experience. Working in a group strictly by email without the benefit of first speaking or meeting my teammates except through text was challenging.

I found myself imagining the sound of the voices of my teammates and the hint of what they might look like given their name, the way they write, and the "tone" of their "written voice." I am sure you have done the same when reading novels or books. The author normally helps you out though, by describing the physical attributes or the texture of a voice.

"Her bright blue eyes were in stark comparison to the dark thick wavy hair that fell about her shoulders."

I just made that up. Okay, back to the point. Which is....oh yeah--which is that it helps me to meet or speak to someone on the phone prior to trying to communicating strictly through email. Despite this challenge, I feel the project turned out well and that we collaborated successfully to complete the assignment.

If I had to do it again, I would go for a smaller group. There were more people than roles. Oh, and since no one volunteered to be leader, guess what? Yep, I appointed myself. (Okay, I will wait until you are done shaking your head and sighing with disbelief.) For those of you that "know-me-know-me" it is not surprising. For myself, I truly did expect someone else to step up. It was fun!

One advantage of group work online is the ability to do the email trail and the asynchronous communication. Of course, that is a disadvantage too if you need confirmation on changing something or waiting for a response to a question. Just like global workforces though, time zone differences need to be considered. One of our team resides on the east coast.

The collaboration tools on BlackBoard (BB) need improving. Our team decided, after a several days of using BB, to return to Basecamp for our project. We made heavy use of the writeboard features. The other nice feature of Basecamp is that the text of a message is included in the email. Unlike BB, if you subscribe to a thread to receive email notices that someone else has posted to the thread, you are required to log in to see the text. Not receiving the posted text in the email notice must be related to liability and copyright. Just a guess.

Me ka ʻoiaʻiʻo,
Sincerely,
Liko

See an image of someone I admire with blue eyes and dark wavy hair. A former Miss World USA winner.