I found this topic quiet interesting because I am part of lecturer development at Varsity College. Varsity college encourages lecturers to adapt the constructivist approach in their lecture rooms. Collaboration between lecturers as well as students plays a very important role in this lesson design. Collaboration forms part of my everyday work life and it is something that I am very passionate about. It forms part of 21st century skills that we need to develop as this is very much needed in all working environments all over the world.
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For this particular topic I volunteered to be the leader as I find this topic to be very interesting. I was quiet apprehensive of being the leader as I was still not confident in my contributions in the group even though the group had taken my suggestion on. I believe I still felt self conscious because I am much younger then my colleges. My group facillitator for ONL192 was really helpful in guiding me in how to be a leader for the topic which helped me immensely to gain confidence. The first thing that the leader did was send out an email with a few steps to follow before joining the webinar. For example he told me where I could find the scenario which was on the ONL192 website. The facilitator also created a separate whatsapp group from the PBL group where we could raise any concerns we were having during our lead. Something simple like this really put me at ease to facilitate the webinars. I found these strategies quiet helpful because the next intake of ONL192 participants I will be facilitating a group so it was great to be exposed to these types of strategies to make leaders and co-leaders comfortable in the space. The first webinar that I hosted was quiet interesting because their was quiet a lot of silence because group members were waiting on me to guide the conversation which I underestimated because on the previous webinars as a participant I found group members quiet involved and insightful of the different scenarios. I never realised that leaders play such an integral role in the process of collaboration because they pose the idea or question which I did not really notice in the previous webinars because everyone was engaged! Another contributor to this is that the first webinar was on a Monday and the materials were only posted on that Monday. Participants did not really have enough time to wrap their heads around the scenario or the information. The next webinar went much better as everyone had time to research and prepare for the topic. I also was more prepared in guiding the group as I also had some ideas of how to tackle the topic. I posed these ideas to the group at first and then the conversation got started. I introduced a platform that nobody had used before called Lucid charts which is a great tool to collaborate on a mind map. As long as all group members had a gmail account (which was a requirement of the course) all members could access the platform which was one of the reasons I chose it. The group came up with a couple of ideas that they wanted to engage with in terms of collaboration on the mind map. I thought the strategy worked well because members could add at anytime even after the webinar or members that could not make the webinar could also access the mind map. The only problem I had with this tool is that the group decided they wanted to add different scenarios with solutions and we could not add another mind map. Therefore there were restrictions to the platform because we were using a free version. I had to change what platform we were using because of this. The group decided to use Prezzie. The problem with Prezzie is that the free version you cannot collaborate on one document how we collaborated on the platform is I shared my screen on Zoom and members discussed what they wanted on the Prezzie. I also gave team members my login details and they could go onto the presentation and add new ideas. Although it was unfortunate that the LucidChart had limitations I still added the mind map that was created on Lucid Charts onto the Prezzie. This gave the presentation another dimension and therefore it all worked out. The group commended me on the presentation platforms. The experience of being a group leader gave more confidence and it showed me that I should not doubt my abilities based on my age it ended up being exactly what I needed in order to feel that I was a valuable member of the group.
For this particular topic I volunteered to be the leader as I find this topic to be very interesting. I was quiet apprehensive of being the leader as I was still not confident in my contributions in the group even though the group had taken my suggestion on. I believe I still felt self conscious because I am much younger then my colleges. My group facillitator for ONL192 was really helpful in guiding me in how to be a leader for the topic which helped me immensely to gain confidence. The first thing that the leader did was send out an email with a few steps to follow before joining the webinar. For example he told me where I could find the scenario which was on the ONL192 website. The facilitator also created a separate whatsapp group from the PBL group where we could raise any concerns we were having during our lead. Something simple like this really put me at ease to facilitate the webinars. I found these strategies quiet helpful because the next intake of ONL192 participants I will be facilitating a group so it was great to be exposed to these types of strategies to make leaders and co-leaders comfortable in the space. The first webinar that I hosted was quiet interesting because their was quiet a lot of silence because group members were waiting on me to guide the conversation which I underestimated because on the previous webinars as a participant I found group members quiet involved and insightful of the different scenarios. I never realised that leaders play such an integral role in the process of collaboration because they pose the idea or question which I did not really notice in the previous webinars because everyone was engaged! Another contributor to this is that the first webinar was on a Monday and the materials were only posted on that Monday. Participants did not really have enough time to wrap their heads around the scenario or the information. The next webinar went much better as everyone had time to research and prepare for the topic. I also was more prepared in guiding the group as I also had some ideas of how to tackle the topic. I posed these ideas to the group at first and then the conversation got started. I introduced a platform that nobody had used before called Lucid charts which is a great tool to collaborate on a mind map. As long as all group members had a gmail account (which was a requirement of the course) all members could access the platform which was one of the reasons I chose it. The group came up with a couple of ideas that they wanted to engage with in terms of collaboration on the mind map. I thought the strategy worked well because members could add at anytime even after the webinar or members that could not make the webinar could also access the mind map. The only problem I had with this tool is that the group decided they wanted to add different scenarios with solutions and we could not add another mind map. Therefore there were restrictions to the platform because we were using a free version. I had to change what platform we were using because of this. The group decided to use Prezzie. The problem with Prezzie is that the free version you cannot collaborate on one document how we collaborated on the platform is I shared my screen on Zoom and members discussed what they wanted on the Prezzie. I also gave team members my login details and they could go onto the presentation and add new ideas. Although it was unfortunate that the LucidChart had limitations I still added the mind map that was created on Lucid Charts onto the Prezzie. This gave the presentation another dimension and therefore it all worked out. The group commended me on the presentation platforms. The experience of being a group leader gave more confidence and it showed me that I should not doubt my abilities based on my age it ended up being exactly what I needed in order to feel that I was a valuable member of the group.