riam hussain, samantha cannizzaro and semi ahn · web viewin terms of online communication,...

ALC201 Group1. Collaborative ProjectRiam Hussain, Samantha Cannizzaro and Semi Ahn

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ALC201. Collaborative ProjectDigital Media and EducationCritical Reflection

Our group made use of a variety of digital media in completing our project. For the most part,

this was due to our attempts to communicate with each other, as we tried several different

methods before discovering one which worked for us. These communication methods we

ultimately discarded were WhatsApp and email. We made use of phone SMS throughout,

though the most successful form of digital media we used was Teambox.

Via Teambox, we mainly communicated through several bulletin-board-style posts, separated

according to the topic we discussed within. We attempted to hold a video conference;

however, due to the fact that none of us had an Internet connection with optimal bandwidth,

the video stream lagged, making it impossible to communicate with it in real time. Our video

conference turned into a text conference, with each of us ignoring the faulty video feed and

communicating with the conference software's chat tool.

The bulk of the work was done on our home laptops and computers, though due to several

technological mishaps, including viruses, Internet connection problems and computers

crashing, some of the work had to be done at university and on borrowed computers.

When compiling the raw material, we used digital video cameras for our interviews, and

Windows Sound Recorder for the voiceovers. A headset which incorporated a microphone

was used to record the voiceovers at first; the sound quality turned out to be abysmal, and a

built-in laptop microphone was used for the second take. The actual video was compiled

using Windows Live Movie Maker.

This assignment has led to a feeling of a loss of control in many situations. As often timing

became our group’s weakness. It became very difficult to organise timing to construct ideas

and generate our work and it came to a point where we would have to find information on our

own and then come back as a group to share and build on this. Collaborative learning is

where a group of two or more people come together to build synchronously and interactively

to together find a joint solution to the same problem through communication, (Curtis,

2001).Our downfall was in finding this means of conversation because we needed something

that was instant and readily available. This is where Teambox came into play, it has been the

most valuable when collaborating and our strength was in reporting back to each other


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through this application. Here we would post ideas and engage in conversation that would

lead to the development of the final product. We needed to find this Computer-mediated

communication source in order to find a way to establish and further our ideas. Computer

mediated communication is a process that usually involves those who come together through

perspective email and bulletin boards and then referring to text based interactions, (Curtis,

2001). This was our processes, moving from email to Deakin cloud to Teambox.

As a group we were able to stay in touch with each other during the group project, but there

were strengths and weaknesses of the use of communication tools we had gone through as a

group. In terms of online communication, online discussion forum and chatting is something

that enables students to interact with each other and discuss their ideas (Blackmon 2012, p.2).

Group1 firstly used an e-mail, especially Deakin account e-mail in order to contact each other

and choose the theme for our group project. Our group members had tried to chat and discuss

the ideas via e-mail, however it didn’t work constantly because of there were technological

problems such as we sometimes can’t access the internet. In addition to this we were not able

to make decisions for our collaborative one, because the messages we had exchanged was

messy. Also, a member may forget to email every member and hit reply rather than reply all,

which also led to miscommunication.


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What was important for our group was that we each agreed upon our ‘spark’ and could feel

confident in creating something from this. Once we had found our initial idea it became

easier to begin working and communicating.

It was the time in-between our construction of the proposal and the final product that was our

demise in a way. As we had enough time to leave the work and concentrate on our other

studies and come back to the Collaboration we were left with a loss of direction. As we had

not discussed an exact time to re start the work we each began our own research in the

anticipation of starting up again. However as I’m sure was the case for most group

communication was the hardest part, once we got it started up again we were able to get work

done, it was the in-between that made things difficult. Although online media makes it simple

to connect and communicate it is a matter of being at the right place at the right time, and

knowing to be there for the group discussions. As we made Teambox our primary place for

communication, it worked efficiently when we were all online and on the page, but no one

new to be on it unless they saw a notification sent to their e-mail or we notified through

another digital media device prior. In order to constructively communicate online students

need to be actively participating and building on other contributions, while thinking critically

about what has been discussed and what to bring to further discussions, (Bullen, 2007). Our

group was able to do this but it was getting to this point that was our struggle.


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We came to the realisation that our idea had to be something that was an ever present part of

digital media, and something that we could each relate to and find information valuable to us.

The construct of Digital media’s relationship with education was a topic we each could

appreciate and draw from. Our group consisted of two on campus students and one online

student, from that we began to develop the dilemma in online learning and whether it helps or

hinders, and with that a relationship between the context of our assignment and creation of

the assignment itself.

Our initial idea was to discuss how digital media was used for education, especially online

learning in the contemporary world, and to make a five minute video clip comparing past and

future aspects of education. We wanted to understand the effect that it has had on students,

both beneficial and its limitations, and to display it in an interview form, and personal

discussion. We also decided to focus primarily on online high school and university students,

more so, adolescents.


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This collaborative project aims to investigate how education is related to digital media.

Specifically, Group 1 mainly dealt with online education which is the learning in the cyber

space, and also produced a 5 minutes video that included a comparison of online education to

offline education as well as the interviewee’s experience of online education.


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All members of Group 1 had worked with the team project through online communication

and there are several online communication tools we each used such as what’s app, e-mail

and Team- box. In this new age, online communication plays an important role in group

projects, however there are some problems such as technological issues, that prove to be a

limitation to the communication ways.

The main weakness of e-mail is that we are not able to discuss instantly and continually.

Therefore, we started to use what’s app for instant messaging and share our ideas. On the

other hand, we also had tried to use what’s app in order to choose the topic what we are going

to work with, also figure out ideas of the project. However, there was a problem, which is one

member tried to download what’s app but it’s failed because of technical problem. Also, It

was found that what’s app was only useful for instant and short message like a chat. If I want

to upload the images, or videos, it takes a longer amount of time and the sending images

sometimes failed. Therefore, we also acknowledge that what’s app in not useful tool, and that

communication via what’s app was an inconvenient way to process our collaborative project.

We were able to build on our work the most when we were all available to communicate at

the one time, and once this occurred we each we able to grasp an understanding of others

intentions for the work. We were able to come up with some great things when we got to the


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point of communication that allowed time for discussion. A value of group work is that

people can get other’s perspective of ideas by sharing their ideas as well as enhance their

thoughts, which they can’t achieve in individual work. (Stacey 1999). To fulfil this value,

Group 1 finally chose our online communication tool and it is Teambox.

We came to the conclusion that this would be the best means of communication for our

collaborative project. As it has several divided categories, such as conversation, tasks and

sharing files. Also, we divided the tasks into several sections including video conference,

video, planning, and the section of uploading images, this made it easier to share information

that we collected individually. We exchanged our ideas within these sections and got new

perspective from each member, for example sharing the interview questions we would use

and asking for any changes or anything to be added. Moreover, one of the advantages that the

Teambox has provided to the users was that of video conferencing. our Group was now able

to do face to face communication via video conferencing and it was really useful to discuss

our ideas or anything that we had missed so far. Before using Teambox, the timing was a big

issue because the members do not check their e-mail or mobile regularly so we needed to

wait for other’s replying for roughly two days at a time. However, we can still keep

discussing ideas and organizing the time well via Teambox because the notification through

e-mail worked well so I was able to check it anytime and anywhere. Teambox is the best way

to communicate with a group and a useful collaborative management tool. We were able to

exchange and uploaded images into Teambox but the video was too big to upload, so we than


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turned to YouTube as our video sharing resource. We each uploaded parts of the video we

had recorded individually into one member YouTube account and then each were able to

access it from our com pouters without the stress of having to send it and wait days for the

download, after it was edited through movie maker.

Our group's main weakness with using digital media was that at first, we did not really ensure

the medium we were using was a good fit for the purpose we wanted to use it for. None of us

had spent much time communicating with group project partners on Cloud Deakin before, so

we didn't seriously consider using it for this project, even though it had some useful features.

We were each familiar with SMS messaging and email, so we automatically defaulted to

those particular mediums. However, we were engaged on a project which required a

considerable amount of collaboration and discussion between three people, and as previously

discussed, email was not truly suitable for that.

One other problem we ran up against was the discovery that our initial ideas for our video

project were a little too ambitious. This was partly due to the five-minute time limit for the

video, which seemed sufficiently long for us to include everything we wanted. Once we

started adding together our interview footage and sound recordings, we discovered that if we

wanted to keep our video to five minutes, we would have to discard a lot of the project. This

problem might have been overcome if we had used a free storyboard tool to map out our


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project beforehand, though unfortunately we did not realise this was an option until it was

already too late.

There was also some noticeable strength to our usage of digital media. Our early

communication problems meant that once we found that we could communicate more

successfully through Teambox, we quickly embraced the variety of features it offered us. We

made use of tools to create task check-lists, set up deadlines and assign each member

something to work on. We also became more flexible with our use of digital media; when our

video conference began lagging too badly for us to be able to understand each other, instead

of giving up and closing the application; we used the text chat tool to make the most of our

rare opportunity to communicate in real-time.

We believe that during the course of this project, we each learned a few new ways to make

better use of digital media.


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References

Blackmon, S 2012, ‘Outcomes of Chat and Discussion Board Use in Online Learning: A

Research Synthesis’, Journal of Educators Online, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 1-19.

Bullen, M 2007, ‘Participation and critical thinking in online university distance education’,

Journal of distance education, vol.13, no.2

Curtis, D 2001, ‘Exploring collaborative online learning’, JALN, vol.5, no.2,

<http://wikieducator.org/images/6/60/ALN_Collaborative_Learning.pdf >

Stacey, E 1999, Collaborative Learning in an Online Environment, Journal of Distance

Education, vol. 14, no. 2, pp.14-33, retrieved 23 September 2013,

<http://www.jofde.ca/index.php/jde/article/view/154/379>

Screen shots taken by Samantha Cannizzaro, Riam Hussain and Semi Ahn

http://www.jofde.ca/index.php/jde/article/view/154/379

http://wikieducator.org/images/6/60/ALN_Collaborative_Learning.pdf

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