Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

[edit] My Take on COMM 352

This class is one of the most unusual classes I have taken. Ever. Our class met once a week on Mondays for three hours. The first couple of weeks we were given handouts on how groups work and the different stages of group activity. We were also given very vague intstructions as to what the goal of our class was, and an even more vague grading criteria. (If you can even call it vague, it was more like non existent) This caused considerable anxiety, confusion, anger, helplessness, and group cohesion.

I started to think around the end of the class that there was a BIG reason why were kept in the dark on grading criteria and what the final project had to be about. It created confusion and in turn made us rely on each other to get through the class. If we had had a very clear syllabus at the beginning of class, and everything was laid out just like it was in our "normal" classes, where would the anxiety come from? Without anxiety we wouldn't have had the heated discussions about what the wiki was about.

Steph didn't created confusion to "fight established norms" she did it to create the exact type of situation needed to observe group dynamics. All the roles that we took on would not have been possible without something bringing us together as a group. How many people's names do we all know from this class? How many different roles were established because of confusion with what the wiki had to be about? That's why the class was like it was, and we all took away something different from it, but the most important thing I took away was learning about how I interact in a group and what exactly my "roles" are according to the different authors we read.

[edit] Background on Phases of Group Activity

In the first few weeks of class, Steph gave us a bunch of articles about group activity. One of the first things we looked at was an article by Edgar Schein, "What To Observe in a Group." A picture of Schein can be located on the main page of our Wiki Website

We learned about different group activity such as, "Decision-Making Procedures" and "Task or Maintenance Behavior vs. Self-Oriented Behavior." This was interesting for me because it was the first time I had learned about group interactions. From these different categories, we created "Schein Teams" and these were broken down into different groups, i.e. the Maintenance Group. I was part of the Maintenance Group and we studied behavior in our fishbowls that tried to, "improve or patch us some relations among members."

Next Steph gave us a handout from Richard C. Weber, "The Group: A Cycle from Birth to Death." this was an interesting handout and we learned about the different "Stages" that groups go through. I had never realized that people had actually put together all this information on group cycles. The different stages are, "Stage I: Infancy (forming), Stage II: Adolescence (Storming), Stage III: Adulthood (Norming & Performing).

These stages have been crucial in our study of our own personal class. We have gone through all the stages a one point of another in our class. I remember when I first received this handout from Steph. It was at a point in our class when we were in the "Storming" stage, and we were trying to figure out what our final project was going to be. I thought that once we got this handout and everyone had a chance to read it, we would pass through the "Storming" stage no problem. I couldn't have been more wrong. It's not possible for a group to skip stages or pass though them easily, whether it's concious or not a group has to go through each stage, and simply knowing that stages exist doesn't make them any easier to go through.

Here was my early take on the final project idea of having a wiki website, http://ap1115.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/wiki-website/

[edit] Problems we encountered

We had around thirty people in our class. We also basically had a professor tell us to come together as a group and make a final project on the wiki. So far this might seem fairly normal, a final project in a class and a big group that will make it easy to accomplish. Now throw in no guidance, no requirements, free range to do whatever we want, thirty different opinions, and a professor who actually enjoys us arguing over what to do. It all made for some pretty interesting debates over what could be done. It was more about the process and watching our group come together enough to agree on what be done, than it was to create a final project that was amazing, because we have thirty people in our class, that's more than some businesses have employees.

Our end product was heavily debated over and sometimes people took it personal. I tried to distance myself just enough so that I would never get angry over what we were doing by reminding myself that this is just a class. An interesting class that I feel I learned a good amount from, but at the same time just a class, not worth ruining my day over. Around week 7 Steph had us read, consistency-and-mutually-exclusive it was about our end product. I picked one quote from getoutakingshous to show exactly how complicated it was to figure out our final project,

"I tend to agree with Steph on this issue that the group just thought that finally deciding on something was more important than the task she had assigned us. I feel like people in the class were just getting frustrated with the whole “process” and just wanted to figure out what the “content” was going to be so they could move forward. Taking a step back from it all though, I think that this may have a negative outcome if we move too quickly out of frustration, and not move on when we actually have a considerably larger consensus of what we should be doing. I can see where Steph was coming from with her aggravation last week, as I was quite aggravated too, but for a considerably different reason. I was aggravated that people were getting so fired up over something we still may have had some time to talk through and work out. But that seems out of the question now."

Getoutakingshous

Here's what I had to say to the same reading,

At first I would say that everyone in the class should follow the same protocol. My reasons for everyone to follow the same protocol are that 30 people working on one wiki is more efficient that 15 working on one wiki and 15 working on another wiki. It is much easier to accomplish tasks with more people..or is it? On second thought two problems come to my mind about everyone following the same protocol. The first is that if half the class is uninterested in the project then they will not be working very efficiently. The second thing is that Steph has never said that we all have to work together, so if people would be happier with diversity in the overall site, it works for me. I think that we have such freedom in this class that if some people have a vision in their mind of what they want to create (and might be too shy to speak up) then we should 1, check and see if it’s cool with Steph and 2, let people have diversity in creating the site. Personally I want to create the wikipage on “Surviving UMASS” because I have ideas that I think I could bring to the table, but that doesn’t mean that everyone thinks like I do. If someone is interested in something else, I think they should be able to create it, because at the beginning of class the course site said “imagine what YOU will DO with this vast open space”, not what “WE will DO.” With regards to everyone getting caught up in decision making, I think that we as a group definitely did. I myself figured the quicker we decided the better. I think it has to do with the “framing” of “group” projects because usually the earlier you all come together the more time you have to create something better. This is one possible reason for everyone rushing to make a decision.''

AP1115

I think that these two comments paint a good picture of exactly what it was like trying to figure out what we were going to produce. It was never clear cut, there was never a guide, and we didn't get much input from our Professor. We spent a good three weeks trying debating over what to create. Some people got frustrated and just wanted to know what we were going to create, and others got frustrated because they wanted to take time to hear everyones opinions and not rush everything. It really was an interesting few weeks.

[edit] My Contributions

I participated in much of the discussion during the semester. Part of my contribution for the final project was the Study Abroad. I also contributed with a bunch of blogposts during the year which can be found at my Wordpress, I also helped to create the Main Wiki Page

When we were discussing about whether or not to have John Elder Robison I wrote,

"If John were to come to class I think it would be very beneficial to us. I think that we could come up with questions we had about the book and about Aspergers and see if we are on the same page. For me it would be interesting to see the difference between the way he writes and the way he acts in person. I know after reading his book I have my own ideas of what John is like in person and I think it would be interesting to have an inclass dialogue where we could talk about the book and about group dynamics."

and Steph put this quote down on her Class Page

One of the other things I did in class was call Steph out for writing sideways.

[edit] In the End

I had a really good experience in this class. It was very interesting and I think that our Professor was very creative in the way she framed the class. It was ambiguous and vague, but it was perfect for allowing us to realize exactly how groups function. Without all of us wanting to assert our opinions and being able to make choices for ourselves, then we wouldn't have been able to see the roles that we played.