It was a cold, windy Monday night - August 31 here in Melbourne. Not only was it stormy outside but also in terms of Group 31s topic for our 504 collaborative group project. I have to admit that I thought we had been working well working towards finalising our topic. For the first time I actually felt as if I were out of the loop and not understanding the task at hand. I remember thinking at the time why do we need to completely change our topic idea. I was happily sailing along having a firm idea of where we were heading. I recall referring to Tuckman (1965) team development model after reflecting upon a previous Skype conference. During and after this meeting I felt as if Group 31 were characterised by conflict and internal dissent. I felt that our topic had done a bit of a complete change of direction (I don't want to mention in exactly what ways and give our topic away - sorry but I have to). I remember actually feeling somewhat frustrated at how the topic was moving away from something that I was comfortable with overall (I know there would be some major reworking) to something that I wasn't sure at all.
Our new topic derives from a book by M. Lee. I will add the name of this book here when this assignment is submitted. So while others in the group discussed the topic I thought (after consulting with the others) I'd do a database search of this author as he is quite known in his area of expertise, of which we were tapping into. I found three quite good articles that I think should prove to be quite useful based on our new and revised topic. Maybe our group during this session it was evident that our purpose was unclear and our objective become confused - we hadn't fully thought out our ideas fully. Maybe this is where the group was pulling in different directions (Tuckman, p. 75).
So after a long 2 hour conference and with a new and revised topic in mind I search in desperation trying to understand this new focus. I left the meeting feeling a bit unsure of my ideas within the group. So I decided to concentrate on reading the articles i had found by Lee and track down some research by Moyle (2006) and a book by Lee and Winzenried (2009), which will now become the initial basis of our assignment. Hopefully I'll be able to make sense of this and be able to refocus myself on this topic. Again, this reflects the nature of group and team work. I understand there needs to be give and take, so that's why I thought I'd step back a bit. I am sure there was another group member who seemed to be a little confused like I was. The wonder of group work - the course is obviously wanting us to experience many of the stages that occur during collaborative work.
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