My third artifact is another one of my reflections, but this time it is from the online collaboration week of class. The reason I choose this is that I have never had to collaborate with anyone for a project solely online. I know that in the world we live in that I will have to do it again in the future whether it be for school or a job, and I believe this experience was an important one for me to have.

Week 3

Online Collaboration

This week’s content has been very eye-opening for me for several reasons. While I have had online classes before I have never had to collaborate with my peers like this before. It has been challenging for a few reasons, but it has also been really fun. I think that one of the main issues that I have had is making sure that everyone has time to get to meet up, and also getting back to group members it in a timely manner. I’m sure that everyone is very busy, which is part of the reason we are taking online classes, but when working in group decisions can’t be made until every group member has said their thoughts. Where the problem comes up is when a group member is caught up in business and they cannot correspond as quickly this leads to the group having to wait to make decisions and makes the project last a lot longer. Unfortunately, when in this position there is not much you can do but wait till the member is available. There is, however, precautions that all member of the group can take to make sure that the work gets done before the due date. According to Richardson(2004), we should “waste no time communicating with your group”, and I think that this is detrimental to the success of the collaboration because if you communicate as soon as possible there is a less of a chance of falling behind because of a busy schedule. This is what my group did and we were able to complete everything we needed in a timely manner. Also, to have made this easier we could have used an easier form of communication like text or GroupMe so that messages would be instant, and responding would be much quicker. I think that the next time I have to do an online collaboration I will definitely use one of these easier forms of communication.

References

Richardson, Carole. (2004). Participating in Group Projects Online. In G. M. Piskurich (Ed.), Getting the most from online learning: A learner’s guide (pp. 145-152). San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.

For my first artifact, I wanted to share my reflection from the time & task management week because I feel as though managing time is something we all deal with the things I learned this week will be tips that I will apply in my professional life for a long time.

                                                         Week 4

                                Time, Task, & Environment Management

I find that one of the areas that I have the most trouble with is time management. This has always been a trouble of mine ever since high school. I am a very good procrastinator and often leave things to the last minute and end up turning in sloppy, rushed work. That used to work for me, but now as I grow in terms of my education leaving things for the last minute is no longer good enough for several reasons. First of all, I turn in work that is not to the best of my ability and it causes my grades to drop. Secondly, This is simply not good for my mental health and causes me an unnecessary amount of stress that could easily be avoided. Third, I am not allowing myself to fully exercise what I have learned and because of this I fall behind and am constantly playing catch up. This is an issue that I have been really trying to fix these last few years and I feel as though and making a lot of progress, but those changes only occurred when I started to acknowledge what was causing them. I believe that one of the things that caused this was laziness and also a growing disinterest in what I was doing that eventually lead me to not trying my best to do well. In Leach’s 6 reasons people procrastinate they say that being disinterested in what I am doing is just an excuse used by procrastinators, I think that reading this was very important to me because this is often why I put things off. Know every time I see myself doing it I will tell myself to “Just do it” as Leach suggested I do, that way I have more time to do things I enjoy

References

Leach, A. (n.d.). Time Management Tips for Non-Traditional Students. Retrieved June 26, 2017, from http://spsblog.cofc.edu/blog/6-time-management-tips-for-non-traditional-students (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site..    

When thinking back to the first week of class I can say that the reading where they said online classes have just much (if not more) work than regular ones, was completely true.

Group work is always difficult especially when trying to find a balance between doing too much and doing too little. With my group though I feel I was able to find that balance despite my busy schedule.

In one of this weeks learning, we learned about procrastination and why people do it. I have to say that I identified with several of the reasons and I’m better for realizing that my excuses are just that, excuses.

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