T171 ECA - Group working
Advantages
The mix of skills and experiences of group members often enhances the group to achieve more as a group that if they worked individually.
The skills and experiences of group members are shared and as such can enhance the individual members experience and skills.
Support and encouragement from group members to others in the group to each other that might not be available when working individually.
Group members can work on a project or task using asynchronous computer conferencing while balancing time between study and normal everyday life i.e. can work together while separated by time or distance.
The group definitely helped individuals to produce better work, having
done webpages before I quickly became the focus for questions and problems
which I hope I managed to sort out to everyone's satisfaction. Whether
or not I helped people to produce better work I will leave for them to
decide.
Disadvantages
The main point of group working is that the group must have a goal that is shared and the group has collective responsibility for achieving that goal.
Lack of face-to-fact contact can make it difficult to progress through the initial stages of groupwork i.e. the forming, storming and norming.
Groupwork
TMA02 required the group to produce a web channel consisting of an individual page and a common group page linked to the group members individual pages.
The conference was active for the period of the project - a nice change from other OU courses where people suddenly realise that messages are required for the TMA and the last week sees a flurry of activity.
Since I was the only one in my group who had designed web pages before the others were complete beginners I found myself answering many questions, which I didn't mind. An excerpt of one exchange follows, it is fairly lengthy because I didn't think it made too much sense otherwise.
Conference Exchange
The conference exchanges have been removed