Week 6 Journal

For the final week of class, we made some major revisions to our article, and managed to come out with a final product that we are satisfied with. Despite having trouble meeting often as a group for various reasons, such as the beginning of 6-week classes, we managed to sufficiently communicate through email and work independently. As I had hoped, I was able to tighten up the section on emerging technology, while the rest of the group added pictures and captions, a more consise conclusion, and a further reading section. The fact that I took charge of emerging technology section, and urged some important changes, shows that overall one of my communicative strengths is assertiveness. However, one of my weaknesses, which held me back from helping on the other sections, was my inability to constructively criticize the work of the rest of group, which is the same problem I mentioned during the peer editing journal entry. I just have trouble finding error in others work. I feel like if they did the work, they should probably know better than me, which holds me back from confident peer editing. Anyways, the fact that we were able to get all this compilation and revision done in an efficient manner, simply through email, indicates the level of confidence that our group has developed for one another over the course of our work together. Whereas earlier in the term our group was somewhat hesitant in speaking up about a concern or idea, we have since learned to be more willing to communicate our ideas comfortably. As people become more familiar and comfortable with one another, it is only natural for communication among them to become much more fluid. For example, the way in which you communicate with your family or best friends is much different than how you communicate with someone you are not yet familiar with. I learned about the communication strengths and weaknesses of the members of my group, and of myself, during the course of this class. Overall, I enjoyed working with my group and I felt that we worked well together, especially by the end of the session, although of course not perfectly.

Week 4 Journal

For the fourth week of class, we finished our rough drafts, conducted an ethics discussion, and had a peer review session among the three groups.  For this week's journal, we were asked to focus on the peer review session.  I think that the "round-robin" style of group review was more effective than one group going to the front of the class and being reviewed by the rest all at once.  This is because, in the latter situation, I don't think the class would be as engaged and productive, much like in a regular school class, whereas the smaller group-to-group review was more conducive to discussion.  I think that I was the most talkative in my group, at least when it came to reviewing our paper.  I was not afraid to ask the other groups questions about what they thought about different parts of our paper, and I feel that this was one of my strengths.  However, I found it much harder to turn the tables and critique the papers of others.  It is very hard for me to come up with constructive suggestions about the work of others, and this has always been one of my weakness when it comes to peer editing.  

Week 3 Journal

For the third week of class, we submitted our query letter and made our pitch presentation to the class, in addition to starting to write the actual article. For these tasks, we finally did achieve the organization within our group that I feel like we needed. In fact, with regards to the query letter and pitch presentation, we divided them according to who was more comfortable with each, as written and verbal communication are two very different things. As one of my strengths is speaking, thinking on the spot, and answering questions in a concise manner, I took half of the pitch presentation, while others in the group who said that they weren't very good at oral presentation focused on the query letter. Also, our group conferenced quite well in dividing up the article itself, each of us taking a piece that we were comfortable and familiar with. Finally, I feel like one of the things that I should focus on more as we proceed is my role in providing guidance to the group. Considering that I had some previous experience with solar cells, and was the main proponent of the topic to begin with, it seems that my ideas and suggestions to the group are instantly accepted without much consideration by the others. Although I always introduce my ideas as suggestions open to criticism, I hope that my group doesn't feel any sense of restraint about expressing their opinions, good and bad, about my ideas.

Week 2 Journal

For the second week of class, our group compiled our bibliography while doing further research on our topic. As mentioned in my last post, I thought that our group could benefit from more organization, in the form of a group leader or assigned tasks. I feel that we came closer to this over the past week, with Katie becoming essentially a “compiler” for our group’s work, in that she took work from each of us separately, and she then compiled it into our final bibliography. As I mentioned in the last post also, I think one of my strengths as a communicator is that I am very open and hope to keep everyone in my group on the same page. I have tried to use this skill by inciting more conversation amongst our group, and I think that it has been working. Every fifteen minutes or so while working, we will have a quick chat with one another to discuss, and we also have a “debriefing” chat at the end of the period where we draw any conclusions about what we have done and decide on responsibilities for next class. Naturally, as we become more comfortable working together in a group, we will feel more able to communicate freely and openly with one another, as is true in all social situations.

Week 1 Journal

For the first week of class, our group decided on and refined our topic, as well as did some research on it. Thus far, our group has not had any major communication issues, although I think that a little more organization in our group would help us. We discussed possible topics in a very informal, conversational manner, and the two final choices, as well as a sharing of e-mail addresses, emerged from this discussion. The sharing of e-mail addresses definitely assisted our communication, especially before we had our team webpage. Our group gets along very well and we made sure that we were all satisfied with the eventual topic before moving forward, so we have no disputes thus far. However, it would be beneficial if our group were more talkative when doing work together, so that we were all on the same page about what was going on in the group. I think some sort of organization, such as a group leader or divided/assigned duties would help us in this regard. For example, when performing research for the bibliography as we are doing now, I don’t know what types of resources and websites the other members are using or focusing on, and for all we know, we could be doubling up and citing the same website unnecessarily, since we are working quite independently and blindly. I think one of my strengths as a communicator is that I am very open and hope to keep everyone in my group on the same page, but one of my weaknesses is that I sometimes have trouble understanding and interpreting others who think differently than I do.