English 420Y - Business Writing Online

The Service Learning Project seems to off to a good start. Judging from the activity reports the groups are sending, everyone seems to be working hard and making progress. However, we just wanted to give a gentle reminder to produce detailed, quality work blogs and activity reports. Remember, the project description specifies that "These activity reports (250 words each) should briefly and professionally describe work completed and how this work contributed to the goals of the group." Work blogs should be at least 200 words and describe your specific work and how it contributed to the group.

In reading Feuds in Student Groups, I learned that at worst, groups waste time insidiously, accomplish little work, and creat an arena in which interpersonal conflict can rage. A trio of structural aspects set the stage for feuds in groups: interdependence, rewards systems, and the mix of educational backgrounds and demographic characteristics among students.

In The Thomson Handbook Chapter 25, Desktop Publishing and Graphic Design for Writers, I learned the basic principles of graphic design. I thought the brochures used typography effectively.

Week 5

I got in touch with all the members of the group this week. We sent emails to each other. We all agreed through email that the wiki page that was provided for us was a great idea. We completed the Ghantt Chart by Friday July 13th.

This week being the first week of the project, was more of a learning experience rather than doing work. After I sent the first email on Tuesday, Kim took the leadership role and began forming how the group would function. After a few emails, we all started saying what our strong suits were so that we could divide the work up accordingly. This is what eventually led to the formation of our gantt chart. As of right now, we all know the work that we are supposed to be researching and by early next week, we plan to have a rough draft completed and ready to turn in.

This week was the beginning of project, so rather than the real work, get to know who my members are and brainstorming for our gantt chart. After receiving emails from my group members introducing themselves, I also send emails to my members introducing myself. I tried to figure out how we should divide our works by dividing the work into perhaps two groups to make the work less hard yet effective. Still I suggested giving enough feed back to each other is important so that everybody is involved in the project.

From a group perspective, this week started out slowly for our group but the communication and collaboration picked up a lot today. We started off by introduction and exchanging contact information through e-mail. I provided my group member with my cell number for future immediate contact. After going through the project description an analyzing the logistics of the group I suggested that we should pull our groups target date for deliverables by two days.

I am attaching an updated and more detailed copy of our groups Gantt Chart. We Shall be following this more closely and using this one.

Weber Service Learning Group 5 Gantt Chart

***This is Work Blog Week 5 not Week 6

So far, so good! I would say this week has been a good start to what I hope to be a very good group and final product. We started this week out on Tuesday by emailing each other and expressing how excited we were about the project. Beth was the first to lead off the email with a quick introduction and we all shortly followed. We exchanged AIM contacts, email addresses, facebook accounts, and phone numbers. So far email seems to be our primary means of communication, but as the project goes on I hope to at least try out the wiki space.

This week was a light work week for the most part. Our group worked on the Gantt chart and tried to figure out how to communicate the most effectively. I just tried to communicate with my group and I did so first by sending them an email saying hi with my screen name so that they could have another way to contact me. I then checked out the wiki page to see what people had posted and what needed to be done in our group. I then made comments about some things that were posted about group meetings. I then started looking over the project and what had to be done.