Pennsylvania Essay Reflection

Blog Reflection

1) Group Interaction

For group interaction for our essay, it is my opinion that our group interacted very poorly together. We didn't have any really good solid interaction that was productive for the essay and consequently, it reflected very greatly on the essay that we produced. This was because of several factors. One of them would be that some members of the wiki group would choose to be absent on crucial days and therefore we could not interact as a group because one or more group members were missing. Another reason would be a lack of focus on the part of group members, being them being distracted with things that were not work related or not focusing on the big picture of what we needed to be doing, therefore the group could not function. Group members were sometimes belligerent and would not listen to other group members, criticizing them personally. Other times group members would be counter-productive by distracting other group members and showed a general lack of concern about the essay. Communication was extremely difficult because some group members seemed to not care at all about the essay or working on it, while other frustrated group members tried to engage the other members in the work. The result was that some group members did very little work, while others struggled greatly to pick up the rest of the work and it resulted in a poor essay because of it.

2) Use of Contract

Using our contract was difficult for our essay, mainly because there seemed to be a lack of respect for the contract itself. Our contract is short, but very specific and outlines that each group member is supposed to be working equally on the assignments and that each group member that fails to complete an equal amount of work or is absent from class without a legitimate reason, will have their grade on their assignment suffer as a result, and only their grade on the assignment. However, some group members felt that they did not have to do equal work, leaving a very unbalanced amount of work distribution. When threatened at desperate measures of failing the assignment because these group members had failed to do any work for the assignment, there still was a lack of concern about the essay, resulting in, again, a poor essay.

3) Use of Wiki

I am not so sure that the wiki was used to the full advantage that it should have been by all group members. I felt that while there was an ample amount of research that was done, because members that had looked through that research and annotated it and were the ones that were supposed to be knowledgeable on certain topics failed to contribute sufficiently to the essay, the research was then not applied to the actual essay. So, while some group members did focus and research and annotate quite a few sources, because those same group members failed to help apply that information to the essay, it was lost because those group members did not do their part for the essay. Overall, I would say that use of wiki would be graded a four out of ten, because of the above and aforesaid reasons.

4) Individual Progress

For my own individual progress, it is a very touchy subject to address. Because I spent most of my time working on the essay alone and trying but failing to communicate with other group members, it was a very frustrating experience overall. It also would not be one that applied much of what I've learned in arts of democracy, mainly because there was not conflict resolution: despite my several attempts to communicate with other group members, nothing happened. So, individually, I did most of the work on the essay that we did. However, because I was working alone and I also spent so much of my time in class trying to communicate with group members and get them to do work as well, I would say that I in no way was able to do as great of a job on the essay that I could have, had I not had to deal with my group members or if my group members had done an equal amount of work. So, honestly, I felt that overall, because there was a lack of voices coming across in the essay and a group dynamic that clearly didn't work, our final result was a reflection on that generalness I have above mentioned.