Educational Technology Facilitator
Grant MacEwan University

Reflection

This artefact I am presenting to you, is a collaborative group assignment where we staged a Twitter debate on the question "how can we involve adult-learners in non-traditional ways when discussing adult learning principles and theories?" Each of the team members tweeted their reflection on the question in less than 140 characters, drawing from major adult learning theories. 

At the start of my M. Ed. program, I was quite nervous about participating in group projects at a graduate school level.  I know they are a vital part of everyone's academic and professional career, but looking back at my undergraduate studies, I must admit I had a fairly negative experience and outlook towards group work; my first group project experience included one of the members plagiarizing his portion of the content.  Subsequently, I have either avoided group projects or ensured I worked with only people I am familiar with. 

However, I believe this collaborative assignment revolutionized my view on group work.  The first thing we did as a group was to agree on a communication method.  After a few emails back and forth, trying to arrange for a mutually convenient time to meet online, we quickly realized it would be unrealistic for us to meet synchronously, but we didn't let our personal and professional obligations, or the time zones stand in the way of us getting together as a group (3.2).  Despite never having met in person, our email exchanges were sufficient for us to build a sense of comradery right from the beginning and throughout the collaboration process.  In the end, we managed to meet virtually via asynchronous technologies such as email, cloud document sharing tools, … etcetera (3.1).  Our challenges, for example, group members located in different time zones, actually became our strength, because we were able to collaborate at all hours of the day. 

I learned that one crucial step I had missed in my previous group work experience, was starting the process by identifying each group member's strengths and weaknesses; this step is just as important, if not more so, as identifying the task at hand (4.7).  We identified some knowledge gaps, such as unfamiliarity with Twitter among some of the group members, then those who were familiar with the technology, such as myself, jumped in to fill the gaps (4.4).  One member suggested we ought to have a narrator role to ask questions and to help move the conversation along while the rest of us participated in the Twitter debate (4.5).  Once the debate was over, another member stepped up to compile a chronological list of all the tweets we had generated; as a result, we can presented our work in different presentation styles (4.6).  

Ultimately, I realized avoiding group work did not help me become a better group work participant.  With the right support from diverse group members, we can turn many limitations to our advantages.  I plan to continue using Twitter in both my personal and professional life. I am in the process of setting up a Twitter feed where Grant MacEwan University faculty members can tweet about comments or questions they have regarding the learning management system. Support staff and other faculty members will be able to respond and share their expertise (3.5).