Ced0550: Week Five

This was a big week for me. I had to prepare/finalize my lesson to be taught online. The major challenge was trying to master Elluminate to the point that I could manipulate it for class. I found Elluminate to be extremely user friendly, and I thought the video tutorials were particularly helpful. This week also had us working in groups again. I'm not sure what has happened, but collaborating has become more and more challenging as time has gone on. Seems earlier in the program my groups had very little trouble finding a time to gather online and complete our projects. The last two classes, however, have been a different story. I'm not sure if it's the time of year, or if our lives have gotten even busier, or if we're less motivated to work, yet again, in groups. This collaboration in particular has given me a new attitude about groups in online learning. Not too long ago, a friend of mine was talking about her daughter, a sophomore, struggling with a group project. She was very frustrated that one or two people refused to pull their weight, and so she was doing everything and of course getting extremely frustrated. When asked why she wouldn't just let the others suffer, she said she couldn't because one group was being given, and she didn't want to have a lower grade because of the two knuckleheads. Well, after hearing of some of the same frustration with other groups in our online learning environment, I've evaluated how I would lead collaborative assignments. First, as difficult as it may be to assess, I think it's only fair that each group member receive a separate grade. I understand the one grade is supposed to perhaps motivate the group to do well, but it only works to frustrate the driven members. The slackers, on the other hand, end up benefiting and learn basically nothing. Second, in my opinion in order for group work to actually work, time during class has to be given, at least initially, for the group to get together and get organized. Half our battle was trying to find a time to even meet initially. We ended up sharing a Google doc with everyone getting on and doing what they could when they could. Perhaps 3 were available at a given time. It just seems that when it comes to online learning, people's schedules aren't as flexible. That's the reason why they typically are online in the first place - so that they can learn at their own time and place. Also, as is the case with this cohort, we're all full-timers during the day, so that automatically leaves us with less time to meet. Overall, I think we were able to complete a great presentation, but if the same attempts at collaborating were done with high schoolers, it would be a whole different story.