Qualities, Contributions, and Expectations

One of the members of my group wrote an email directly to me because she said she was not able to get into ConnectYard for some reason. She wrote to thank me for my help getting her set up in Teleplace. She was the administrator in my group. From her involvement in the group, I can tell that she has many of the qualities that I respect in a good administrator. First, she always acted professionally and she knew how and when to ask for help. She accepted help graciously and yet she realized that it didn't diminish her status. During our meetings, she took on the role of moderator, often summarizing what we had said or agreed upon and reiterating each person's agreed-upon tasks so that we were all clear on what we had decided to do. She was business-like yet personable and friendly.

As I reflect on my contribution to the group, I realize that probably the most major contribution I made was to set the stage for our meetings. I took it upon myself to set up the environment for our first meeting and to introduce group members to the features of Teleplace that would be of most benefit to our group in the short period of time we would have together. I set up a corner of the Cross Program Collaboration room with 2 display panels, 2 bookshelves, and signs to help everyone know what was available. I also put several resources on the bookshelves--documents describing the assignment and the whitepaper we were to read, along with a couple web pages on 21st century business and learning. Then in our first meeting, I showed everyone briefly how we could import documents and web sites and put on the shelves or view together in the display. I also taught them how to view items privately and save on their computer. We also took a blank document and used it for group brainstorming. These skills proved useful for all of our group meetings.

As I reflect on the experience as a whole, I will say that I had high expectations of what we would be able to do together. I expected that we would gain more insight into each person's perspective on the topic of what is happening in education today and where it is moving. In reality, we discussed these matters very little. I think a lot of it had to do with our time frame. It took several days of contacting each other through ConnectYard and email before we met for our first meeting, so we had about 10 days to get the work done. With everyone on drastically different schedules, our few meetings were spent trying to achieve as much as possible with minimal time. There wasn't much time for chit chat, but the Pooh in me craved a little more of this interaction. If I were the instructor, I would definitely plan to do these kinds of projects again, but I would plan for just a little more time.