E-Learning Week 3 - Tasks and Reflection

The first task was to create a group environment for our study group. 
First, I managed to gather the group in Skype for a conversation, and I also created a group environment in PBWorks.

For the first task we created a group conversation in Skype, after which we moved to Google Docs for some collaborative effort. This collaborative effort was fixed into a nice task 1. This task would need some feedback in order to see if it is done correctly or is there something more that needs to be added. [This point was already written on week 4]

The second task was to read and reflect on the following:

1. Which principles of groupwork, communities of practice and collaborative learning should a distributed group consider, when planning the design of an e-learning course?

Concerning groupwork, one should consider the following points (according to the reading material):

1. Distribute roles, and shift them if necessary.
2. Meet the deadlines and make sure everyone has done their jobs in the group.
3. Make sure everyone has the information that is necessary for the next tasks.
4. Encourage peer collaboration and ask others to remind of the work to be done.
5. Encourage and give peer feedback in order to feel good about the job that has been done and give courage for the next steps.
6. Use a collaborative environment in order to participate fully in groupwork.
7. Use an agregator in order to follow others' posts and try to make the most out of the information you get from there.

2. What was the most important thing you learned this week? What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week’s activities raised for you?

Concerning groupwork, the experience was great. I was able to gather a group and make them participate as well. Everyone was very willing to join and had their spirits up, which was a good sign. To be honest, I considered that the group would be more passive, but I was positively surprised that I worked with such a great team. Even Alice, who joined the group later, was very positive and got her hands on the project.


3. What is your evaluation of this week's groupwork? (What went well and what did not? How did groupwork influence fulfilling your personal learning contract?)

I would evaluate our groupwork the following way:
First I managed to add every member to my Skype account and start an individual conversation with them, then we managed to fix (using Doodle) a common time when we should meet all together. I was very positive with the

4. Describe what has changed in your personal learning environment and in group environment?

My personal learning environment consists of the usual means, because this is a kind of system I have used during the whole IMKE learning period. On week 3 nothing changed in our group learning environment yet. A PbWiki environment was created in order to collaborate with the groupwork tasks. I created an introduction of all members as well as put some vital information to the environment.