User:Vtaylor/Group projects/Publishing and Presentation

Publishing and Presentation Performing: Having established roles, personalities, and norms, the group's time, attention, and energy is increasingly directed at the group task and decreasingly concerned with group maintenance, procedural questions, or personalities. http://www-honors.ucdavis.edu/vohs/sec04-2.html

WARM-UP

   * How can the teams show their product or productions to best advantage?
   * What can teams learn from seeing the work of other teams? 

Objectives

   * Understand the importance of presentation in the group project life cycle.
   * Explore options for staging a group presentations event in an online environment 

small group LEARN

The team has now settled its relationships and expectations. They can begin performing by diagnosing, solving problems, and choosing and implementing changes. At last team members have discovered and accepted each other's strengths and weakness, and learned what their roles are. The team is now an effective, cohesive unit. You can tell when a team has reached this stage because they start getting a lot of work done. http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadtem2.html

In the Presentation phase, team members show the fruits of their efforts. This is a celebration of the successes and provides an opportunity for teams to compare results. Everyone loves "show and tell" so this should be a highlight of the project activity.

   * Presentation
   * Deliverables
   * Synthesis
   * Refinement
   * Quality assessment
   * Review and approval

EXPLORE

   * Lessons in Smallness
     http://www.astd.org/members/td_magazine/td0203/76020321.pdf

   * What is the collaborative classroom?
     http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/rpl_esys/collab.htm 

APPLY

   * These phases are not to be moved through as rapidly as possible. Problems in performing may often be traced back to insufficient storming and norming, for instance. Group discussion, while storming out some controversies, may return to issues involved in forming, redistributing responsibilities, rediscovering common values, and modifying procedures. Similarly, a group having difficulty in performing may either implicitly or explicitly, need to redefine some norms. During the first discussions, in particular, the team needs to lay a lot of groundwork and get a firm foundation. The group's success depends upon it. http://www-honors.ucdavis.edu/vohs/sec04-2.html 

EVALUATE

   * Review the Publishing and Presentation discussion. Add a posting of your own - either a question or an observation. Post repsonses or comments on at least two other postings.

10 Characteristics of Authentic Activities

http://www.thiagi.com/pfp/IE4H/september2002.html#Checklist

Here's a checklist related to this concept, paraphrased from a research presentation by Tom Reeves and two colleagues from Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia: Jan Herrington and Ron Oliver.

You can use this checklist to evaluate and modify your training simulations and activities to make sure that they reflect the real world.

  1. Authentic activities have real-world relevance. These activities reflect what professional do on their real-world jobs.

  2. Authentic activities are ill-defined, requiring participants to define the tasks and sub-tasks needed to complete the activity. The problems presented to participants cannot be solved by the simple application of a step-by-step procedure or formula. Participants must break down the problem into tasks and sub-tasks in order to solve it.

  3. Authentic activities require participants to spend a lot of time in exploring and solving problems. Truly authentic activities will require days, weeks, and months rather than minutes or hours.

  4. Authentic activities provide the opportunity for participants to examine the task from different perspectives. The activities will require participants to use a variety of viewpoints and resources rather than use a single theory or model.

  5. Authentic activities provide the opportunity to collaborate. The activities (and their real-world counterparts) will require teamwork among participants.

  6. Authentic activities provide the opportunity to reflect and involve participants' beliefs and values. These activities require participants to make informed choices and provide ample experiences for reflection and discuss during debriefing.

  7. Authentic activities can be integrated and applied across different subject areas. As in the real world, these activities should encourage a cross-functional approach that requires participants to play different roles.

  8. Authentic activities are seamlessly integrated with assessment. The activities will incorporate real world performance assessment, rather than artificial paper-and-pencil tests.

  9. Authentic activities create polished products valuable in their own right rather than as preparation for something else. The activity will result in a ready-to-use product instead of some artificial object.

 10. Authentic activities allow competing solutions and diversity of outcomes. The activity will permit different unique and creative solutions, rather than a single correct answer obtained by the application of predefined rules and procedures. 

They don't like to work on group projects.

Online group projects have been used with people from different cultures around the world. Group projects are used with children and adults, with blue-collar workers and corporate presidents. As long as we approach students with respect and facilitate a project that is relevant to their needs, there is seldom any resistance. Obviously, we should not be violating cultural norms and should make appropriate adjustments to our language in order to use a project effectively with different groups.

One more objection: We don't have time for group projects. We have too many topics to cover. This objection reflects confusion between presenting information and achieving learning objectives. As Harold Stolovitch points out in the title of his best-selling book, �Telling ain't training.� If we don't have time to provide interactive opportunities for practice and feedback, we could be efficiently replaced by audio- and videotape recordings.

http://faculty.deanza.edu/taylorvalerie/stories/storyReader$135