Evaluating What Worked and Did Not Work For a Collaborative Wiki Page Assignment

  This past week I completed a group project for which I was responsible for researching and contributing my findings in the effort to collaboratively develop a reference page in the Teaching and Learning Resources wiki with my fellow group members. Our professor has stated that there were several purposes for this assignment. Obviously, one of the main purposes for this group assignment was for us to experience completing a project with a group. For some this may have been a first experience working in a group setting and for others this may be something they have experienced many times throughout the course of their educational or professional career. Also, and this was new to many of us I’m sure, was that this project served the purpose of giving us the opportunity to learn more about the functions of a wiki page. During the assignment we had to post information and revise it and to do so without repeating our group members’ contributions but instead by either adding to their contributions or creating new sections of information. The particular group I was in was responsible for researching and providing information about the learning theory of “constructivism.” Several of us assigned ourselves to the topic, so I can say personally that I was already interested in the subject and in exploring it further.

 The group in which I was involved had a lot of trouble getting started. I don’t think this can be contributed to any one person. One of our group members jumped right in and began editing preexisting information on the page. The rest of us, however, took a little longer to figure out what was going on. For instance, I think I was waiting to kind of get a feel for how the page was supposed to flow and unfortunately, I think others were doing the same. I think with more time we could have created a more comprehensive informational page but with the time we were each able to contribute I think we ended up with more information that I expected. Because we were slow to collaborate it made it kind of tricky to disperse roles for the group. I found an area that I felt worthy of expanding upon and kind of claimed it for my own but I never really got much feedback on whether that was ok with anyone. One thing that definitely did not work was creating the Discussion Page. We just didn’t use it. In hindsight, I probably should have just stuck with the comment section on the main page. I know one thing I did that was a hindrance to my group and that had to be my lack of time for the project. Very recently our little preschool suffered two tragic, completely unexpected losses. This required funeral visits, planning meetings for what we were going to do for the families and more than anything extra time in the office helping to keep everything caught up. I think what made this group project so difficult is that none of us were able to make the project our top priority at the same time to collaborate in a real-time situation. While getting a good grade is a definite priority for me, it’s funny how this second time around I just cannot always make my schoolwork my number one priority every day. The perfectionist in me wants to, but the adult in me says to keep up with my grown-up responsibilities. In the future I might reach out to my fellow group members as early as possible. I could tell that one of my group members that I thought was just ignoring the assignment actually contributed a lot to the page once she understood what was going on. Keeping this in mind, I will not assume anything about my group members and I’ll try not to be too shy to reach out. I was afraid to ask if anyone needed help because I didn’t want to come across as pushy or a know-it-all, especially since I know so little about anything in this class! At one point I asked if there was a time everyone could be available so we could discuss how to go about dissecting the various portions of the page and I did not receive any feedback. Again, I think this was possibly because I posted it to the separate discussion page.  In the future it would be nice to have some roles established early on and negotiate who will be revising what. At times I would start to edit something and then think I would be offended if someone just starting slashing through my work. Also, in the future I will just get started! It really didn’t work or make sense for us to wait on each other in order to understand how to do it. I think all of us were a little unsure of ourselves (or that’s the impression I got). If, in the future, we just dive in and start working it will give more timid teammates a stronger base to work from.