What's gone on so far..

Hi everyone...

For my first blog entry I think I should document what has occurred up until this point in the EL6082 module and how our team has collaborated in the virtual team assignment. This blog will document my thoughts and observations on the virtual team assignment and the collaborative technological tools we are in the process of assessing. 

As an introduction to the virtual team assignment our class held a video conference with our peers in Florida. We were introduced to our team members and informed of exactly what the assignment would entail. I found that the video conference was an effective way of communicating with the students in Florida. Sound and video quality was good and it was in effect, a showcase of how a successful collaborative meeting should be held. Given that the meeting was hosted by our respective course leaders the meeting was organised well and gave everyone was a chance to have an image of who we would be collaborating with. 

I am part of a team of two other Irish students (Shane and Sherona) and two American students (Tyler and Rebecca). We have regular meetings with each other on the chat forum in Sulis and also on the discussion forum on sulis. We have also conducted a conference via Skype.

Chat Forum

So far I have found the chat forum on sulis quite ineffective as a means of communicating with my team mates. The chat forum is helpful in organising (for example) times for meetings, however we also attempted to conduct meetings over chat but inevitably it tends to descend into chaos as everyone tries to communicate different opinions without taking into account what the previous user has contributed.

Discussion Forum

The discussion forum is, in my opinion, more effective as a means of conducting a meeting between five people that usually lasts up to an hour. It gives each team member the opportunity to consider previous posts and address other team members' opinions. The discussion forums are helpful in solving long term issues as team members can post outside of meeting times and other team members can reply in their own time.

Skype Conference

We conducted a skype conference yesterday evening which I thought would have run much smoother. We encountered various technical issues beforehand. However the end result was positive as we managed to discuss everything we wanted to with our American counterparts.

E-mail

I am in the process of assessing e-mail as a collaborative tool. As a means of doing this I circulated an e-mail through g-mail with a journal article relating to technological collaborative tools attached. Each team member has replied with their opinion on the journal article and my plan now is to address the points each team member has made in their e-mails and compile a conclusion e-mail. So far we have not encountered many problems with e-mail as a collaborative tool.  

Thanks for reading my reflective learning blog. I plan to post again in a few days to let you know how our research is going!

Susan