Group 31 504 Skype meeting 7

The storms have passed from the 504 land. I think as a result of some changes in ideas and adapting to change I have managed to come to some clearer understanding of Group 31s topic for this 504 collaborative project. It's hard trying to focus on two subjects - the looming deadline for 501 only four days away. Despite this I was able to read five articles

I suppose that some of my frustrations with the last meeting is that I had spent so much time doing database searches for articles on collaboration and focusing on TL role (not that this was the defined topic) but that was the area I was concentrating on. I probably felt as if most of what I found would turn out to be useless and so much time was wasted when I could have been concentrating on 501. Anyway with that behind me I actually read the the 3 articles I found by M. Lee on our new topic. They have turned out to actually be quite excellent articles and certainly something that will help frame and form our proposal.

After a forum posting from Arthur today, it seems there is some conflicting advise from the two lecturers. So bearing this in mind (God I hope Arthur is correct) we have actually further refined our topic and become more specific. We were able to break our topic up into four areas that we would initially be able research and make notes/slides individually. Using Google Docs we were able to organise ourselves and this seemed to work quite well. I am finding that the haze has cleared in terms of my understanding of the topic. I can say that we re back in the norming stage of dream development where I feel are developing cohesion again and some satisfaction that we are heading in the right direction. We were able to give each other ideas and feedback, although one group member perhaps is still trying to understand the topic.

I actually reminded the group that no matter what area we undertake originally - all areas and the whole assignment are each of our responsibility. We are working as a TEAM to create this presentation, so we have to all be responsible for all areas. One particular area is certainly (in all our opinions) quite difficult to understand - organisational theory. Even though this is not my preferred area, we all are responsible for ultimately understanding it as we have to put our names to this assignment.

It is good having one group member part of the NSW DET TL course, who meets with other students and generally discuss ideas relating to this assignment and topic.

We left our conference knowing that we would give ourselves a week before our next meeting to come up with our ideas, since 501 is due on Monday. We have three days to do some work and have something ready and meaningful.

I will be leaving 504 for a few days now to concentrate on 501. I need a miracle. I know I'll get 501 done but I tend to faff around so much I just need to WRITE, WRITE, WRITE. But it's my own learning style that is at fault - I like to write my assignments in an orderly fashion - complete one section fully then move on. I usually find that once I finish writing my assignments - usually the most I have to do is edit and cut down on words. I try not to have to go back and find references to support my argument. I like to do my reference list as I go, so it's not left until the last minute.