Forum Group Report Documentation

For the forum group book report, each participant was to choose which book they wished to read from a list of six books on the course syllabus. The book I choose was Extraordinary Minds by Howard Gardner. It was a popular book as so many chose it, we had to be spit in to group 1 and group 2 for the group report. After considerable emails the people were split into the two groups. I was in Group 1 along with Al Biersbach, Bob Gill, Brenda Hauff, and Annette Edison. We communicated via the WebCT discussion board and email and decided that each of us would take two chapters of the book to read. I was responsible for Chapters 1 and 9.

On October 20, Al, Brenda and myself met in Chat Room 2 after a class chat and created a timeline to follow in order to complete the assignment by the due date. It was agreeable to the rest of the forum group participants to follow this.

Once read our assigned chapters, we posted a review of the chapter on the discussion board for our other group members to read and respond to. Once all chapters were read and posted we met each other in the chat room and discussed how to put the report together. After discussion, it was determined that we needed to shorten up what we had summarized and send it to Brenda to put together in document form.

Bob began a rubric for evaluating the forum book report and its process. He emailed what he had started to the rest of the group and we offered suggestions as what to change and modify.

I found this process extremely interesting. I have worked with all of my group members on group projects in the past with the exception of Brenda. It was interesting to watch group dynamics as we went about our business of completing the assignment. Those of us who had taken previous online courses and who had worked with each other, knew each other’s work habit patterns. I am sure that Brenda felt out of sync at times with the rest of the group. Not that she was excluded in any way – it was like I stated previously, we knew each other’s work habits. I think Brenda probably felt some frustrations with online group work because of this. This made me realize the importance of building community and a rapport between classmates in an online course as well as communication between group members. All in all, I feel that our group worked well together and our finished product was a quality piece.

Results of the forum group project:

One frustration that I had with the project was that there was not a lot of interaction on the Chapters read that each member posted. I tried to get discussions going, but I think the others felt it was enough to summarize the chapters for the project. There was some discussion, but I think more would have added to the depth of our group report. I am not saying what we did was not quality work, it was, but sometimes we rely too much on what is written and not upon what we feel or think ourselves upon reading someone else’s work. The following summarizes "extraordinary" in the classroom for me after conclusion of the forum group report: