Course Collaboration - Weeks 8 & 9

I felt very productive during Week 8, organizing the wiki and adding bits. I also set up the new 'home page' for the support section.  A decided to mirror my style with the 'home page' for teaches. During our second Skype meeting, everyone seemed enthused by our progress. The structure suggested by A is working. Everyone seemed to get a boost after the first Skype meeting and there was far more content being put up by everyone although N was the only one who did not put much up. As well as individual content, there was some collaborative writing. In our second Skype discussion, I suggested that instead of thinking of 'my pages', we should start thinking of 'our pages' and there was enthusiastic agreement all round.

I had less time to work on the wiki during Week 9. However, I managed to add some critique to the pages I already created. And I continued to organize the content into folders. A continues to create quite a lot of content. But also S, S and T are adding a lot. T and L have been creating images for navigation and N created a header for the wiki. N, however, is still not doing much writing, just adding small bits.

Before our third Skype meeting, A suggested that we needed to be ruthless and delete undeveloped pages. She created a short list for discussion at Skype. At the meeting, I brought this up and asked whether there were any pages in this list that people were going to develop.  This was the first time that I noted anxiety among some members of the group - in particular N but also S. It was mostly their pages that they had just started which was on the list. N was particularly defensive and didn't seen to understand my suggestion to group them in a folder so we could all review them. After the meeting, he brought up the issue again in the DB. Both A and I tried to explain we were not going to delete them but make them more visible by being all together so people could develop them if they wish. S understood and was pleased they were more visible. I am not sure about N.

This has been the only bit of tension so far in the group. And it is understandable. People have different working styles. N has been very slow to produce content but after the third Skype meeting, he has been developing his pages. The only thing is I am not sure if they link in with the rest of the wiki. He is still thinking individually rather than collectively. Both A and I tried to encourage him and others to maybe concentrate on developing existing pages rather than adding new pages. However, it is hard to know whether N felt agrieved as he had done a lot of background work and was holding back in putting anything up on the wiki. I am doing more work on common pages now in particular the metapages. But still need to add some more critical pieces.