English 420Y - Business Writing Online

I usually find group work very tedious, and sometimes very hard to get everyone on the same page. This time around I found getting in contact with other group members very easy. I worked very late this week and did not receive my emails until late last night. After receiving them I immediately contacted the rest of the group and apologized for my absence. One of my group members had already created the ganatt chart, with the help of the other members.

Initiating contact and establishing roles is sometimes the hardest part of group word. However, our group did a good job of getting started working on this project. We all quickly responded to initial emails. We first introduced ourselves and commented about how we were excited to work together on the project. My first response to my group was one of excitement. I was glad to see that everyone was checking their email regularly and responded to my email. Even when Patrick went to Chicago, we still heard back from him. The first order of business for our group was to create our Gantt Chart.

Attached is our Gantt Chart

I first found out my team members through an email sent from the professor. I responded to all providing them with my cell phone, and screen name. I later reviewed some of their material on the website. I was excited because it seemed as though they had been keeping up with their work so far. Wednesday night I was contacted by Megan on AIM. We discussed our thoughts on the project and made plans to speak Thursday night.

This week I tried to start communicating with my group via the wiki page, but unfortunately none of my group members replied back. That same day I received an email from one of my teammembers who suggested that we meet through AIM in order to get together as a group. This method did not work well since many of us had internships or other courses, so we had trouble on setting a specific time to meet. Yesterday, I checked my email and saw that there was going to be a group meeting at 8pm Central Time through the chat page the course has designed for us.

I can tell from what has been going on this week that this is going to be quite an experience. It's really obvious that my group will have a lot of difficulties since 2 of my group members are working full time and the other two are in South America. We have been trying all week to communicate in an effective way but it’s been hard. For the Gantt chart that we have to submit today, it has been really hard to do together, but I am sure that organization will improve after this.

I believe that i managed to do the best I could to get the assignments accomplished this week. I sent an email out when we were assigned groups and introduced myself. I then began sending out a few email this week to try to get things moving and start dividing up duties. I did not get much response from my group so began to work on the gantt chart by myself. Luckily i heard from Roy and got a rough draft from him . I combined the both or ours and posted our groups gantt chart.

This is the Gantt chart Melissa Wood sent us all through an email. I think we should write each other periodically to plan ahead in order to meet all the deadlines set in the chart.

Our gantt chart is attached as an excel document

I accomplished all the goals of the group for Week 5. I designed and created the Gantt Chart and initiated all the group discussion. The day that I received the names of my group members, I immediately sent out an email to introduce myself and get the project started. I provided everyone with my contact information (cell phone, email, and AIM screename) so that I can be contacted at any time. I asked everyone else to provide the same information when they replied, but only received some contact information from one other member.