Collaborative Process

Week 8 EDUI 6707 was the culmination of our collaborative work process. This was an unusual groupwork experience for me. It went well and we all worked nicely together. Our topic was cohort / familiarity and how it impacts interaction within the larger group. Our group was composed of people from two or three other cohorts so it was of immediate interest to us to see whether or familiarity was a significant factor affecting online students.

Everyone has experience of dysfunctional groups and everyone fears this secretly. Our work process turned out to be much like my own personal work cycle. I spend a lot of time thinking and reading, discussing what I will do, and dabbling in preliminary work, before finally getting down to writing more or less at the last hour. It's done quickly, but usually fairly well.

We had weekly synchronous meetings on line, which for me were at 7:30 AM on Thursdays (the first day of my weekend) and for the others at 8:30 PM on Wednesday evenings - late on a work day for them in California and Arizona. We meet without an agenda and without even much of a plan, but generally chatted a while before getting down to whatever business we had. No one chaired the meting and minutes were kept by the computer system.  Meetings usually lasted 60 to 90 minutes and were a lot of fun.

One of the memorable things about this process is that we had all decided to do a paper having, tacitly and unanimously decided individually to avoid an analysis of email threads that was suggested as the first type of project in the assignment documentation. However, when we started talking a new, collective interest in analyzing our own group behavior online emerged. Everyone seemed to have the same idea at once. I really can't say who suggested it first, if anyone. Suddenly, it was just there and we were planning it. Someone said they'd do this, someone else would do that, and that was it. We didn't set hard deadlines or reiterate "expectations". Everything moved smoothly and organically.

Over the next couple of weeks we decided on the tools we would use and what kind of information we would look for. The actual writing was done on two GoogleDoc pages and Chris pulled it together into a single document at the end. There was a flurry of emails in the group as we approached the deadline and people began working of the final phase of the process. This was fast and sudden, and again, unplanned. I missed since it apparently happened on a Saturday or Sunday morning my time, and I was at work.

When I saw the paper I was amazed at the result. Just as I could not imagine the topic without the others in the team, I could not imagine what the final paper would look like either.

All in all, it was a very positive experience. This was one of the most successful, and most low-key groups I've every worked in. The key, I think, lies in member selection which was partly deliberate, partly serendipitous.