Four of us were put together as a team called Earth. The goal was to come up with a plan for a group project that would be web-based. The idea was to hit common ground on a topic of interest, to explore a web-builder and then to work collaboratively to create the final product. It seemed like it could be a huge task, given the fact that one of us had a two-month old baby, one was traveling and had to deal with jetlags and different time-zones, one was in India spending the summer and the fourth had a pretty packed schedule. And the very diverse professional backgrounds did not even count!
Well, when we got together, we realized that we were all tolerant and respectful of each other’s needs and ideas. Evaluating on the basis of Johnson, Johnson and Smith’s cooperative learning model, it would seem that we were doing quite well on the following fronts:
Individual accountability – we all had our own parts to deal with.
Positive Interdependence – we knew that the project would be incomplete without even one member’s participation. Everyone had a role to play and it might not be the same as the other, but was equally significant.
Collaborative skills – we were using decision-making, trust-building, taking initiatives and regular communication to keep the collaboration smooth.
Group process – we had created deadlines, were reviewing them regularly, keeping each other updated about our progress and ensuring that work was being done the way it should be.
The only factor that can be stated as missing was ‘Face to Face interaction’ as this was an online course. Our meetings were both synchronous and asynchronous.
Our project itself turned out to be quite a success in the end. Our website (IT with VT – Instructional Technology with VoiceThread) is a resource for anyone wishing to utilize VoiceThread as a collaborative tool using audio and text comments for discussion. We all learnt a great deal throughout the process. The instructor’s review and suggestions further made it valuable, as they gave us a chance to not only improve upon our work but also to take direction from the suggestions for any future work we did using web-based technology.
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