Collaborative Documentation Project for Translation

March 25, 2019 Your impressions of working in a virtual team (including whether or not you would wish to do so again) Working in virtual teams is something I have come to enjoy. It is a method of group work that I find myself to prefer over 'face-to-face' meeting. I look forward to working in virtual teams in my future career and hope the experience I have gained from UCF will help me to be successful in doing so.  New skills you developed during the course of the project  Sadly, I do not think I learned any new skills during this course project. My part was extremely small and presented no ability to develop my experience or skills I may already have.  A brief description of the leadership structure in your team and an evaluation of how effective the team leadership was  Our group suffered from a lack of clear leadership. While there were a couple of students who seemed to just 'take over', there were no true roles established. The entire proj...

March 22, 2019 As we are nearing the final days of our group project I continue to ask myself what I could have done better. I believe an answer to this would have been to consult my professor in regards to the lack of solid communication and delegation within my group. These two problems have been continuous issues since the beginning of the project. My fellow UCF group members, I believe, have been as frustrated as I have been with the overall group communication and work delegation. One of my UCF teammates has voiced her frustration of offering several times to take on specific tasks only to be ignored by the members from the University of Limerick. Not only did I not have an answer for her on how to approach the situation, but I was also just as frustrated as she. Coupled with the lack of good communication and delegation, I believe one of the large issues our group suffered from was a poor choice in subject matter. In my opinion, our topic was one that could have been chosen...

March 21, 2019 The project is in the final stages and sadly I do not have much to reflect back on. The main forms of communication my team chose were email and Google Hangouts. I think Google Hangouts would have been an efficient means of communication however, it was not utilized nearly enough. Instead, my group chose to continue with annoyingly long email chains. And to make it even more frustrating there have been many different email chains. I was reviewing all of the emails from this project this week and we have over 13 different email chains. How much more confusing can one project get? I believe horrible communication, lack of delegation, and an overall sense of 'I' instead of 'We' has greatly affected our overall project. I know for a fact my fellow UCF group members have been frustrated since the start of this project and things have not been remedied. However, I do feel that one of the steps I could have taken to help fix these problems would have been to...

March 20, 2019 As our project is nearing a close not much has changed in ways of how our group functions. The group as a whole has consistently lacked good communication and delegation. These aspects have caused much frustration on the part of the UCF members. One of my UCF group members has vented this week about reaching out to the group offering to take on 4 different elements of the project and each suggestion was ignored and taken on by a different member. She in turn, like myself, has 'shut down'. While I find no fault in the project itself, the group from the University of Limerick as made this entire process extremely frustrating and discouraging. Without good communication and delegation, this whole process has suffered. I, like my fellow UCF members, truly hope this lack of contribution on our part doesn't hurt our grade. My choice to not follow up with emails may seem a poor choice or lack of good judgment but I have no motivation left in me to participate wi...

March 15, 2019 Our project due date is on the horizon and I am still frustrated by the means of communication within my group. I find the long email chains horrendous to keep up with and follow. One of my fellow UCF students who is in my group has voiced many of the same concerns I've had throughout this process. She offered to take the project of redoing our screenshots but was simply ignored by the other members. This is not something that is respectful or makes for a pleasant group environment. I do admit, sadly and frustratingly, that this past week I have not kept up with the emails as I should. I am beyond frustrated with the group members who are not from UCF and am discouraged because of it. This is certainly not an excuse by any means, but my motivation and excitement for the project have long been gone. I still feel as though the UCF members in our group have been shafted by the others and wish we could have contributed more. I believe the other UCF ladies agree wit...

March 8, 2019 Our group is still in the translation phase and I still feel like I wish I could have done more for this project. My contribution was minimal and that leaves me feeling discouraged. It seems there is still work being done that was not discussed or delegated. Design templates are being made without discussion with the group as a whole. Communication is still something that seems very unorganized and frustrating. However, I am trying to remain positive about the project. I am trying to learn what I can and take from this experience some good knowledge of how it is to work in such a diverse group.

March 7, 2019 Our project is now in the translation phase. It seems as though the portion of the project where the UCF students would be involved happened very quickly. Communication among the group members has slowed considerably compared to the first couple of months. I still would have liked to establish a better and more efficient means of communication among our group. It seems as though the reliance on long email chains hindered organization and thorough communication. Although a group in Google Hangouts was established, I do not think this resource was used as well as it could have been. This experience so far has taught me the importance of being aware of the different cultures one may have to work with in a group setting. The international students seemed to work within a different capacity than the UCF students. Things were extremely fast-paced with them. For the most part, it seemed that they were ok with someone taking on a task that was not discussed among the group ...

February 24, 2019 It is the day before our final draft is due to the translators and sadly I feel as if I have contributed nothing. Our group's means of communication is still through different email chains and has not become any more organized or easier to follow along with. I am questioning why we even decided to add the resource of Google Hangouts, as it has hardly been used. However, I think our group could have benefited in using this resource more instead of relying on long email chains. A new concern has come about in reviewing our project. I hope our instructions are seen as sufficient enough. It feels as though the steps and guide were just copied and pasted from the Flickr guide. They may have been tweaked here or there but all in all, there is not much depth to the document. This goes back to the idea that our group should have picked something a bit more informative and useful. In my opinion, our document is not a document. It is simply a line by line guide on how t...

February 21, 2019 I believe we are almost to the midway point in our project and things still seem unorganized. Thankfully, I was given the task to write the introduction and conclusion for our instructions. I was very happy to oblige, however, short my work may be, at least I have some contribution thus far. I am still finding it difficult to follow along with group communication. The long emails are hard to follow and there to seem to be new chains added every couple of days. This method of communication, in my opinion, is extremely scattered and disheveled. Yet another issue is the lack of delegation with the workload. I believe there is some effort in divvying up the work but nowhere near what it should be. So far, this has been a learning experience for me. Being new to international communication within a group has certainly brought its challenges. This new dynamic is teaching me how to deal with the challenges of international, multicultural communication. It seems there...

February 15, 2019 Another week is coming to an end and sadly our group seems to be moving ahead without better delegation. There has been yet another draft completed and submitted for the group to review that only one person composed. I am part of the writing team but was not included in any aspect of this. Work was not sectioned off and distributed to the writing team and the drafts are virtually complete only left open to minor comments here or there. I am extremely frustrated and astounded that this is the way my other team members are working. There is no delegation, there is no sharing in the workload of writing the instructions. I cannot simply understand what went wrong and where it was decided for one person to write the whole document without consulting the other writers. Since the drafts have been completed it seems the other members chosen as writers can only comment on what they would change. Certainly not a large contribution to the project. As the project moves to...

February 13, 2019 This week has presented some challenges yet again with this group project. One of the members submitted a draft for the project which is seemingly finished other than editing and some tweaking. There is little to no communication about what work should be divided where and to whom. It seems as though whoever wishes to take a part of the project does so without consulting the group. I reached out to one of my fellow UCF group members and we share similar frustrations in this area. We wish we were more involved instead of simpling answering an email chain. And the email chain is yet another source of frustration. There are several different email chains going on at once, it is confusing and makes little sense, to say the least. The frustrations I am voicing are ones that would typically spur me to action in contacting my professor to find a remedy for. However, the fact that this group consists largely of international students makes, makes this situation a little m...

February 9. 2019 We have finished up the week in our group by picking a final topic. Communication still seems odd being held mainly in an email chain. However, I believe this to be a part of the intercultural and international collaboration that I just need to accept. I do wish our group relied more on the Google Hangouts resource as a main means of communication. In my opinion, that method may be simpler to follow and keep track of. Although I am pleased my group chose a topic, I will be anxious to see how this topic provides enough pertinent information to accomplish a successful project. One of our choices was to write instructions for working with and adding documents to Google Drive. I felt this topic would be extremely helpful for students such as myself who could use some guidance with this platform. However, our topic will be how to use Flickr, an app I'm not familiar with and in my opinion, does not provide any helpful information to students. I wish we would have cho...

February 7, 2019 We are still in the beginning stages of this collaboration process but I am already overwhelmed. One of the first aspects of this intercultural dynamic I noticed is the difference in the 'tech saviness' of myself and my international group members. Their ability to formulate documents and post them to Google drive as quickly as they did shows their tech skills. Skills that are not matched by my own, which causes quite a bit of anxiousness and stress on my end. I feel as though I was not able to contribute anything thus far to our project as everything was done without delegation. The documents were prepared so quickly and without discussion I was unaware they were even being composed. Another element that makes me nervous, is the amount of people that are in our one group. So far, communication has been sporadic and it is hard to keep track of everyone. I hope we can move towards a smoother means of communication instead of trailing email chains.  However, ...