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] The one and only Akademakid in Group Dynamics (Comm. 352)

Summary of the Class:

This is honestly the strangest course that I have ever taken in my career at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). I have taken over 100 credits of college courses at UMass. Upon walking into class the first day, we had no visible instructor. All I could see was directions on the chalkboard. I thought to myself, "what in the hell is going on?" Our professor, Stephanie Jo Kent, walked into the room 15 minutes later. I am sitting there thinking, "finally we will get a normal class structure". Boy, was I dead wrong with that statement! Steph took 3/4 of the class who said they were "leaders", gave us the assignment, and said "go downstairs to a classroom and lead". From then on it has been a constant flow of information, do-it-yourself work, and mind-boggling ideas with how people work in groups. I definately had to get used to the structure (or lack there of) to the class before I was able to grasp the information at hand. Once I got into the flow of things, this class is actually pretty interesting and I was able to learn some worthy information about Group Dynamics.

Unusual Methods of Class Work:

Whenever we had homework due or needed to respond to something about class material, we wrote in our personal annonymous blogs using wordpress.com. We were able to customize our web blog pages to our personal styles and only Steph knew who our annonymous names were in the class. Here is my wordpress blog page:

Akademakid

Steph also has a wordpress web blog that included directions, information, and articles that we had to reply and comment on:

A Place in Space

The course also had a website on umasswiki.com which was Group Dynamics. This is where you can access almost every piece of work that we did in the course.

As a group we had to make wiki pages about our experiences here at UMass. Our group did an Athletics Wiki site that I am pretty proud of. I did the "Varsity Sports" part. It was the first wiki page that I have ever created (this is the second).

We met in a usual classroom but also gathered in a computer lab at the Web Dubios Library on campus. We did a lot of different group activities. Some were very unusual (pictures of what we did).

Akademakid's Contribution to our Group

“What to Observe in a Group” by Kenneth Schein

I took away a lot from this article. I learned the difference between content and process of groups. Content is the what? And process is the how? This basic understanding is something to keep in mind for how groups formalize. We broke up into groups of who wanted to be in the content and process groups for the course wiki. I wanted originally to be in process, but then later changed my mind and joined the content group. I really wanted to talk about sports when the conscious was to make a UMass page. That plan ended up working and I think we did a great job creating it. Communication, Decision-Making Procedures, Task Maintenance Behavoir vs. Self Oriented Behavoir, and Emotional Issues were discussed in the article. My group focused on Communication in the fishbowls in class. I did a really good job forming different kinds of aspects of group communication in these fishbowls.

Contribution to the Sports Group:

I have worked with two other guys on the sports section of our course wiki pages. I have contributed a lot of work, time, and effort. My first hurtle to overcome was to get familiar and be able to use wiki pages. I have never contributed any kid of work to wiki pages and it took a while to get a grasp of. One item that did help, and might help other aspiring wiki users in the future is wiki for dummies.

We have done some peer evaluations about what each group member has contributed to the class. We follow Edgar Schein’s ideas on how to evaluate groups http://www.umasswiki.com/wiki/Class:COM352_-_Group_Dynamics_-_Spring_2008/Observing_Group_Dynamics. It is important skill because we need to know what to look for and how groups work to make accurate assessments of group members.

Another area of focus by our class is the functional roles of members in a group. This information was available in “Functional Roles of Group Members” by Kenneth D. Benne and Paul Sheats. The roles that people in a group affect the group’s development in many ways. I was made aware that I am an “information giver” by peer evaluations in our sports group. This is because I have displayed extensive knowledge of the subject and was able to offer my own experience to better the group. This “information giver” member role is part of “group task role” category. These task roles are essential for groups to use in completing various functions in groups. The article also explains “group building and maintenance roles”, “individual roles”, and explains the importance of “group flexibility”.

Our Group as a Whole (Group Dynamics)

You can see what did from class to class. http://www.umasswiki.com/wiki/Class:COM352_-_Group_Dynamics_-_Spring_2008/course_outlines_and_in-class_activities

Now our class (group) has gone through a lot of stages, according to Richard Weber in “The Group: A Cycle from Birth to Death”. It is an article that shows the stages of groups. We were in the first stage for the first two classes or so. It is the Infancy, or “Forming” stage. After that, we were working on what it means to be a group, a leader, what goes into a group, and how do we make this group work to make a wiki. This stage is called Adolescence or “Storming”. We were in this stage for a long time while arguing about what and how we are making this wiki about. The Adulthood stage is “Norming and Performing” and we were able to start that when we started to get into our groups, such as my sports group, and really start creating the content. It has been a wild ride. But we were able to go through all of these steps, as to mostly all groups, and come out with a good product.