During this time, we were discussing almost every lesson, trying to work out what we wanted to do with all the information gathered, with the direction that we wanted to go after learning about the area we had chosen, before taking a step in developing an idea, we would discuss it and come to a compromise about what we should do. We managed to get all our work done within the time frame given and that gave us the chance to discuss what we wanted to do in the lesson times. Previously, we wouldn't discuss as often, mostly we would come up with an agreement in 5minutes and then go off in our own directions. Now, we are making sure that everyone knows what they're doing, we're talking about the ideas given, giving more ideas, developing those ideas, coming to an agreement and then talk about what we could do for our group project, come up with more ideas and develop them as well. We would be constantly talking, and when we are outside of class, we would discuss on Facebook, or on Skype, where if we have any inquires, we would ask each other and get their opinions on the matter.
But, we had some faults that we would forget; sometimes we would forget every lesson. One, was that we would discussing our ideas and plans and we would forget to include Jake in our discussions. Sometimes we managed to have a full group discussion where everyone in our group was present and was contributing to the discussion which was good. But on the days that we were missing a couple of people from our group, it became harder and the remaining group members would continue the discussions but we would leave Jake out because he wasn't putting any effort to stay in the conversations. Personally, I feel that is our fault for not giving him an opportunity to come into the conversation and for forgetting that he needs to be in this conversation. But at the same time, we(meaning the rest of the group) cannot be responsible for making sure that Jake is constantly contributing to the discussions. He has to make an effort as well. And it doesn't help that whenever we try to include him in our discussions, he says stuff like "You guys talk and then tell me what you want me to do." It doesn't help because we're asking for his opinion. It makes our job harder when he says stuff like that and then we all get irritated at him and leave him out of the discussion.
Besides that, we would get sidetracked very often. We would be focusing on our group project, and we would be discussing and developing ideas. All of a sudden, we hear something from a different group and we start talking about it as well, even though it has no connection to our own group project, and then we just start talking about random stuff that seems to be triggered by a memory of a different conversation. And then after we finish laughing we would realize that we had become extremely distracted and then we would go back to focusing on the actual group project. Honestly, I have to say that we wasted a lot of time, talking about stuff like that, going off topic. It wasn't so bad because we managed to get the necessary things done, but when you think about it, you realize that you could have done all that work in a shorter period of time.
Those are the two main concerns that I have noticed during the past couple of weeks. The other things that we could probably improve on is how we manage the work needed to be completed. We could probably change the way we set out the homework. Instead of getting everyone to do the same piece of homework, we could assign that particular piece of homework to certain people and get the rest to do something else that is productive as well. That way, we could have moved faster in completing our group project.
Overall, I would say that we have done a good job. We managed to work well as a group, minus the problems that we saw. It was a fun topic but now, I am happy that we're going to be starting our actual group project. We have learnt a lot about ourselves as individuals and as a group and we can take all those experiences and apply them to our actual group project which could help us. Having the mock group project was good because we could see what our strengths were as a group and also we could see what our weaknesses were as well. Now we can start our actual group project with full awareness of what we can do and what we need to do.
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