Group+Debate+Project

The group project was a great learning experience. I am not a big group project fan, but that is more because of my personality. I learned many things from my group members and would consider this group project a great experience. I learned a lot about flipped classroom and it was not overwhelming because the work was shared among a group.

Great job taking part in the group project for the Debate Arena! You were a superstar in your group—racking up more emails and posts than I can count! (Well, I could add them all together but I was using figurative language…) You interacted well with your group in a variety of contexts, you contributed to the formation of positions, and you reflected well on your strengths and accomplishments. You received 100 points for you hard work in the first-time BJUOnline Debate Arena! (I read about online group debating and thought I would try it to see how it works--so you were, in essence, part of a digital laboratory.) According to the eLearners.com website (@http://www.elearners.com/guide/success-in-an-online-program/tips-for-tests-papers-and-homework-assignments/how-to-survive-virtual-group-work/), most e-learners have mixed feelings about group work and the activities they've had to do with their classmates. I’ll bet that you agree! I’ve included at the end of this wiki post some information about online group projects. Have you ever thought about making an animated movie? I made this one to introduce myself to my class last year. (There were many jokes around campus about facebook and teachers getting accounts.)@http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/12390228/dr-haislip-movie www.xtranormal.com Movie Making Tool Here are a couple of resources to encourage you in your calling as an educator: Make a Difference Video@http://www.makeadifferencemovie.com/Children’s Books-Read Aloud with Text (SAG) (Sometime read the book **Thank you, Mr. Falker** by Patricia Polacco. I share this true story with my students since I was diagnosed with a math disability in junior high school by a teacher who cared enough about me to find out why I never had success in my math classes. It is to God's glory that I passed College Algebra--after four attempts--for my undergrad degree at East Texas State University, and then HE got me through the doctoral statistics classes by giving me a caring and patient teacher, Dr. Kathy Pilger, and a support group of praying and knowledgeable EdD classmates who studied with me each day!@http://www.storylineonline.net/More resources for your perusal:Tumblr-Many friends are using this resource for their blogs.@https://www.tumblr.com/Media Tools for Teachers@http://mashable.com/2010/10/16/free-social-media-tools-for-teachers/?fb_ref=FBactivityhomeBlabberize-Take a picture, record your voice, and the mouth moves to your narration. Lots of fun!@http://blabberize.com/University of Houston – The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling@http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/Microsoft Mouse Mischief@http://www.microsoft.com/multipoint/mouse-mischief/en-us/default.aspxNational Library of Virtual Manipulatives@http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vlibrary.htmlPower Point Game Templates (to reinforce content)@http://jc-schools.net/tutorials/ppt-games/Super Teacher Worksheets@http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/index.html@http://www.worksheetworks.com/miscellanea/graphic-organizers.htmlCalculating GPA Tool@http://www.back2college.com/gpa.htmInteractive Graphic Organizers@http://my.hrw.com/nsmedia/intgos/html/igo.htmClassmate Shannon Steuerwald’s Website J@http://knowtrustobey.com/Poll Everywhere@http://www.polleverywhere.com/**The fastest way to create stylish real-time experiences for events using mobile devices:** Poll Everywhere replaces expensive proprietary audience response hardware with standard web technology. It's the easiest way to gather live responses in any venue: conferences, presentations, classrooms, radio, tv, print — anywhere. It can help you to raise money by letting people pledge via text messaging. And because it worksinternationally with texting, web, or Twitter, its simplicity and flexibility are earning rave reviews.Group Writing Projects:@http://homeworktips.about.com/od/studymethods/ss/groupwriting.htmOnline Group Projects:eLearners.com@http://www.elearners.com/guide/success-in-an-online-program/tips-for-tests-papers-and-homework-assignments/how-to-survive-virtual-group-work/The typical online group project involves the following steps: Does that sound familiar? How can you succeed?**Bond with your team-members.**Ask group members to post photos, details about themselves that they'd like to share, and to start a discussion board or forum in which they discuss current events and items of interest.**Potential problem:** No sense of community. There is a failure to bond, and hence a failure to thrive. Collaborations with this problem sometimes never get off the ground.**Clearly identify the work required.**Determine what the final outcome will look like. Avoid generalities and be specific early on.**Potential problem:** Collaborative papers require "blending" rather than stand-alone components. The collaboration is expected to produce a paper that flows as though it were written by a single person. This can pose a monumental, even insurmountable, challenge because individual voices, writing styles, even format can be completely at odds. Further problems surface when individual team members resent the way that their work has been edited.**Solution:** Develop structures that allow individuals to insert their own work in sections clearly identified as pertaining to them. Do not try to blend or mesh the parts.**Identify the tasks that you will need to do in order to accomplish the goal.****Potential problem:** Irrelevant activities. Group members may resist doing activities they perceive to be irrelevant to the overall goal or objective they envisioned when joining the group. Even those who go ahead and do the activities may feel resentful.**Solution:** Let the team members know how their work ties into the final objective (the project), and how it ties into a larger world as well.**Simplify the tasks and break them up in to individual steps.**Instead of envisioning one large group project, visualize the entire assignment as four or five smaller projects that will each require just two or three steps, rather than dozens.**Potential problem:** The project contains too many steps to reach the final outcome. The complexity makes it difficult to understand and to delegate work, and to set achievable goals.**Potential problem:** Resentment because of lack of work parity. Group members become angry because the work load is not evenly distributed. Some team members may be perceived as slackers or freeloaders, who take credit but refuse to pull their weight. The converse can also be true. There may be resentment because one team member will attempt to dominate and not allow individuals to participate in the process. The dominant person may be perceived as a bully, much to his or her surprise. She thought she was simply being efficient, proactive, and "Type A."**Solution: Listen.** List the roles and the responsibilities and behaviors expected of each role. Then, assign tasks to specific team members, and develop a realistic set of due dates. Make sure that there are clear ways to be in touch with each other if there are questions.**Coordinate time.**Required collaborations do not reflect the real time commitments of the participants, nor do they reflect schedules or time zone differences.**Solution:** Give the group at least a week to do each project, no matter how small. Ask the individual team members what they are doing to find out and accommodate each other's time constraints.**Develop a communications plan.**Try to communicate live-time if you can, either with instant messenger, chat, video chat, or with Internet telephony, such as Skype.**Admit it when there is friction between group members.**Get it out in the open. Then, develop a productive solution.**Potential problem:** The way team friction manifests itself can be subtle. Group members disagree, express frustration, or stop communicating altogether. Some team members are deliberately obstructive, or criticize work, endlessly debate small points, or refuse to contribute at all. Instead of working on the problem, the energy of the group is spent in conflict resolution. Some may drop out. Others find they become passive when they believe that their input does not matter, and they let the dominant team members do the work.**Solution:** Define the roles as well as the tasks. Provide guidelines for team-member roles, and describe actions to be taken by each member of the group.**Continuously review the tasks and see where you are with the deadlines.**Potential problem: Tasks are vague, poorly defined. Although the outcome may be defined and described well, the individual tasks are not clearly defined, nor are they delegated in an effective manner. Tasks are repeated needlessly, or done with contradictory results.Solution: Define and describe the tasks in terms of what needs to be done, how to do it, and how to present the results.**Redefine the outcomes as you go, based on the types of work coming.**Be flexible and make adjustments as needed.**Potential problem:** No clearly defined goal or outcome. The overall goal or desired outcome may be imprecisely described or defined. It is important to clearly define the concrete attributes: length, structure, content, purpose, format, complexity.**Solution:** Make sure that the outcome and goals are as clearly defined as possible. "SMART" goal-setting is ideal: Specific, Measured, Achievable, Reasonable, Time-based. Of course, there are downsides to having rigidly defined outcomes. They can inhibit extremely creative and driven students, and they can result in conformity and mediocrity.**Build in rewards for working with each other.**Make sure that each person clearly perceives that there exists a clear reward for the effort expended in the group work.**Competitive rather than collaborative.** Group members are caught up in proving that they are "right" and that the others are not. They do not want to modify any of their work in order to have it mesh or blend with the others in order to produce a coherent whole.**Solution:** Separate the tasks and roles so that there is division of labor, rather than overlap.
 * The instructor assigns you to a group of three or four other students.
 * You are expected to produce a group project together.
 * The project is usually gargantuan, and it requires the creation of a PowerPoint, text, and other presentation materials.
 * After you read the requirements, you e-mail your group members. No one responds.
 * You end up doing all the work yourself.
 * You swear that you will never work in an online group again!