Group collaboration

Collaboration tool

Your group must decide on how to communicate and complete each week's task. You can choose whatever communication tool that works best for your group. For a list of tools see the 'Collaboration Tools' tab here and to the left.

If you are having trouble making a decision on a collaboration tool, feel free to email us and we can discuss more with you.

How to collaborate

There are numerous ways to collaborate and collectively work through the group tasks. Your group can collaborate in any way you see fit/works best for the group. To help you get started though, some groups in the past have found it best:

• for a different group member to start the weekly discussion and submit the final answer each week;
• to allocate particular questions to different members to provide a first draft for review and comment.

The bottom line is you can do whatever you want- this is your group and you can come to whatever arrangement works best for the collective. We just ask that your answers be submitted sometime on Sunday for the corresponding week's task!

Peer review

Similar to the collaborative work, reviewing the work of two other groups and leaving feedback can be done in a number of ways. In the past, the two most common ways are:

• a group collectively discussing and posting a single, group review of the other groups' answers;

• a group deciding individual members will leave feedback for the other groups (ie one or multiple person(s) in your group leaves feedback for the other two groups (and a different person can be responsible for this each week))

Whichever way you choose to peer review may depend upon the time the group has to collaborate and discuss the answers of other groups. All we want to see is that your group, in one way or another, is reviewing the work of two other groups and leaving feedback.

How to leave peer review:

• Your group will leave peer review on the bottom of the group you're reviewing's google doc (ie, if you're Group 3 and you're peer reviewing Group 1's assignment from Week 3 - go to the Week 3 folder, find Group 1's document, and leave your feedback under their answer)

• Be sure to notate what group you are (ie as a heading) then write your review below so that we know you've done the task

• You have until the following Tuesday to leave feedback (ie Week 3's assignment is due on Sunday the 25th - be sure to have left feedback for Week 3 by COB Tuesday the 27th)

• Please post on that week's discussion board when you've finished with your two reviews (eg. "Hi all - Group 3 just finished reviewing Groups 1 and 2's assignment from Week 3)

Submitting your final group answer

• Each week we have given you a link to a folder in Google Drive. This folder contains a Google Doc for every group, and this is where you'll post (ie copy and paste) your final answer for each respective week. You will need to either have a gmail account or create an account in order to access Google Drive.
  

• After you've submitted your answer, please let everyone know by writing a comment in that week's discussion board. (eg "Hi all, we just finished week 3's task and posted to the google doc! Would love your review and comments!")

• Once you submit your final answer, the course leaders will review and leave feedback in your specific group's Google Doc by the following Wednesday.

• As stated above, you will also leave feedback/peer review two other group's answers. You will leave this peer review in the group which you are reviewing's Google Doc.

Facilitator communication

The facilitators will be in communication with you through a number of ways:

• You can always leave comments/questions to us on the discussion board.
• We will hold office hours twice a week where you can schedule a virtual meetup with us (skype, Google+ Hangout, etc), give us a call, or email us (jessica.smith81@det.nsw.edu.au; delia.browne@det.nsw.edu.au; sarah.luxlee@det.nsw.edu.au) and expect a quick response. The time(s) and date(s) of our office hours will be decided once we receive your questionnaires from Week 1.
• You can email us any time outside of office hours, but we may not be able to respond as quickly as we would during office hours.
• We’ll leave feedback on all your posted answers the following Wednesday.