As this group handbook project comes to a close, it is always nice to reflect and look back on the progress that was made from start to finish. Overall, I enjoyed the project and the general concept of making a handbook for first year students from the perspective of current college students from all grades. I know I definitely would have found a handbook like that to be extremely helpful and valuable for me. Some things that I thought went well was the communication between my group members. We had a group text and whenever any of us had a question or needed help, someone would always respond in a timely manner. I think the most challenging part of the project was getting everyone’s interviews and other information in the same place. However, we overcame this obstacle by creating a shared document before creating an official eportfolio page.
For my group, I think everything went pretty smoothly from start to finish. If we were going to do anything differently next time, it would probably be just to make the pages of the handbook nicer to look at with more pictures or maybe a theme for the pages. Advice that I would give to a student doing this project next year would definitely be to share a google or word document with all group members to keep all your information in the same place. That was a huge help for my group and I think it also kept us accountable for getting our portions of the project done on time.
Reflection- What went well in my project is our practicing and oour meeting the day before the project. I think that helped benefit our preparedness. What also went well for our group is the flow of our speech, again i credit that to our dry run and practice from the previous night. The challenges we faced were trying to find a time to meet that fit in to all 4 group memebrs schedule. But, we were able to figure it out and evrything went according to plan. The thing that I would do next time is practice and be more prepared for my dry run. The advice that I would give to students doing this next year is communicate with your group, ask questions, and practice your speech.
Overall, the project as a whole went well, what worked most was our ability to work together when it came to presenting to the class and our flow when switching roles and pages. Being able to work together to make the presentation smooth worked well. Our biggest challenge was getting it to look like a full complete website, when it came to looking clean and every page similar, we should have spent more time getting it together. Next time, we should have focused more on getting stuff done faster, we were slow in getting our information and we should have gotten it done faster so we had more time to fix and edit it. Some advice I would offer someone else, would be to not push it off or delay it, getting it done fast is the best possible way of doing it.
Overall, I thought this was a very successful project. We were always ahead of schedule and did a very good job. Most things went very well for us. We were very good at communicating in the group chat we made. It really helped us stay on track and was very helpful when we were not able to meet in person. The way we split up the work was also good because we did not argue, and everyone was happy with what they ended up doing. One thing that was difficult for us was meeting in person and this was because of how our schedules were set up. Since there was no time for us to meet in person, keeping in touch in the group chat was vital and ended up working out very well for us. There is not much I would change for next time as we did a very good job, especially having our presentation last exactly ten minutes. One piece of advice I would give to someone doing this project next year would be to get all your work done earlier rather than later so that you stay on track and are able fix things rather than having to do things for the first time after your dry run.
As we wrap up our second major project, I think that the project went well overall. I think the highlights of our work as a group was the final presentation as well as the overall quality of our writing on the site. As a group we really learned a lot from our first presentation and enhanced what we needed to to finish strong. I think the shift came mostly from when we switched from having the mentality of just reading each page to truly presenting them instead by just going over the pages. I think one of our biggest challenges was just out of class communication. Fortunately it never really impacted the final product but there were some times where communication was struggling a bit mainly due to the fact we all are different people with different schedules and couldn’t always be working on the projects at the same time. As for if I had to do this project again, I would mainly focus on the website even more than I did for this project. I learned later on during the project about the capabilities of WordPress and in learning later on I had to edit the existing site as I added new features to it. The best advice I could give to somebody attempting to do this same project in the future is to really understand how you are supposed to present it before you begin writing the pages out. From my experience the final product could have had more casual and straight to the point writing and still been fine.
Now that the project and presentation are finally over, I can reflect on what things went well and what things that we maybe could have improved on. As for the things that went well, we got the timing down perfectly, ending our presentation right at ten minutes. Another thing that went well was our flow and tone while presenting, along with helpful body language and eye contact with the audience. Some of the challenges that we faced during the presentation was how long to spend talking about each page, however I think we did an alright job with that. Another challenge for me, as the website maker, was formatting the website in order to look different and stand out to the audience. I spent countless hours in my dorm room just playing around with the settings of my portfolio website to make the text and pictures flow in a visually appealing way. I If I were to do this again the advice that I would give my future self would be to lessen the amount of text, because most audience members won’t even read past the first sentence or two before getting bored and clicking away. The advice that I would offer to future groups doing this same project would be to split up the workload evenly amongst the group members and meet out of class to practice and go over your presentation before presenting it.
Our first group project in communications was very fun and yet rather simple, each group was tasked with writing and formatting a “handbook” onto an Eportfolio site. The handbook was to be presented and effectively sold to our peers, it was our job to work as a team to complete all the respective parts of the handbook and share our collective thoughts with the class. Ben Lehane was our site maker and a journalist, Altirque McElveen was a journalist and an editor. I myself was somewhat of a leader making sure we got everything accomplished on time and in a professional manner, as well as doing my own journalism and editing.
I found it very difficult to make the sale, it was easy to organize and make the handbook especially with two other co-authors and editors but presenting the handbook was difficult for us. On our dry-run we were not able to complete our entire handbook because we ran out of time exceeding our ten minute limit. The second time around we still were just under at the ten minute marker, I personally needed to be more concise in my description and presentation of the handbook. A more concise presentation wouldn’t only be more appealing to freshmen who have a short attention span but also busy salesmen and investors. Next time around if I could tell myself anything it would be to spend more time reciting the sales pitch. I feel that our handbook was professional and well made but the presentation was sincerely in need of improvement, we spent far too much time introducing the different parts of the handbook in the beginning rather than letting them speak for themselves later in the handbook.
I thought I did so well on my group’s speech! I have never felt more comfortable or confident in front of a crowd, and it might’ve been because my friend Tony was doing it with me- making it so that I had someone to lean on- but I also felt that I was just generally comfortable presenting. I felt I spoke loudly and not for too long as not to prolong our presentation, I felt that I was confident in my words and the messages I was presenting, and I didn’t look at the website once! It was so fun being able to feel comfortable right off the bat, and if I had any qualms, they were with my group mates and not myself. Though I felt like everyone did a great job, and unlike last year where I was in Professor Miller’s class and had to miss the group speech, I felt comfortable and confident in this year’s where I was actually able to participate. I really got along with my group members and I felt that the tasks were evenly divided, too. Having Tony in my group helped since I already had his contact information from last year, and I was comfortable with interviewing faculty members since I work at the library, too.
I thought overall the project went well. I liked working with the people in my group, everyone was easy to get in touch with. I think our first run presenting to the class was rough, but I feel like we came together and were more focused on the idea of highlighting our handbook instead of going through every single thing. I was nervous being up there presenting but I found some comfort in the fact that my groupmates were nervous, too. I wish I rehearsed what I was going to say more but I believe I still did okay when it was my turn to speak. What I would do differently next time would to be establish a “format” in the beginning before we all started writing to keep it consistent. Something I would tell someone doing this project next year would be to, at the very least, meet twice with your group mates. The first after the project is assigned to designate who is writing what, interviewing who, and setting up a rough plan. The second is after doing the dry run of the presentation in front of the class to finalize what everyone will say to “sell” their section of the handbook and clean up the site with photo credits, fixing spelling errors, etc.
I think overall my group did pretty good. We hit all the goals we were supposed to and really did not have any trouble with much really. We did a good job of all staying on the same page. I think right from the beginning we really got going and were doing good. We assigned jobs and responsibilities out quickly and got to work fast. We all had a basic idea of what we wanted todo before we began, the rubric was pretty structured so we did not really have to come up with much ourselves. I would say the hardest part of the project was probably getting everyone to format there stuff the same way just because with this it was the small things that it took to make it look professional. As for presenting I think we adopted really well from the first time, the first time we talked way too long and were way over the tie. Then on the final time we hit it perfectly with our time being just under 10 minutes which is the perfect time for this project. As for advice I think the one piece of advice I would give is to not slack because this project has lots of little steps and if you miss a little step it is going to screw everything up.
This project went magnificent with the group of people I did it with. I felt like from the beginning there was a instant connection that we all we’re gonna take part of this project. With our group there really wasn’t any challenges we all communicated really well within each other. We contacted everyday to see the progress of the project to make sure everything was put together. Next time if I had to do this I would re-do the whole cycle because I think I gave my best effort to my group. If I’m giving advice to a group doing this project next year I would say ” Make sure you get everybody’s information beforehand so that you guys communicate the status of the project”. This is why having great communication skills is important because these are some people that you don’t even know.
The things I think that went well was our abilities to sell the handbook to the audience. The biggest challenges were finding different answers to some of the questions we asked. I felt like many of the questions were able to be answered by the same things as others that we interviewed. Taking the entire project in and giving my advice to people doing the project next year would have to be “Be Creative” with your questions and to interview different types of people.
I believe that overall, this project went very well for me and my group. We worked well together to delegate the work, and everyone did their part well. I wouldn’t say we faced any challenges honestly, other than some schedule conflicts that made it difficult to meet outside of class. However, to combat this, we made a group chat which was very helpful to be able to communicate with each other about the project at any time. We got all of our parts done quickly and efficiently (with the exception of my professor interview that ended up taking a little longer), and used feedback from our peers to improve our presentation even more. The advice I would give to someone doing this project would be to communicate well with your group, and stay on top of your tasks because it will make it so much easier to do any necessary revisions afterwards.
I believe that my groups hand book came out very well and was sellable to an audience. The biggest challenge that my group had as a whole was trying to make our book different than everyone else. The way we conquered that was making key points of our interviews and bringing up some of the least useful advice that we got throughout their freshman year. In the end I can say I enjoyed giving my advice to freshman and learning from others experiences to show all the good things of UNE to help freshman the best way as possible.
This was a really cool project idea, I really liked how we were able to collaborate with peers to figure out the most important things that we have learned about UNE and how we can convey this information to a nervous first year student. What worked well, in my opinion, was my groups ability to collaborate. Everyone was able to bring a different type of insight into this project and were really able to encompass all of the aspects of this campus. I think the only challenge my group faced was our scheduling conflict. Trying to do a project with four students who have crazy schedules is really hard, so I think that was the area that we struggled in. I think next time I would just make sure everything is assigned appropriately, so that we have a clear understanding of who does what. As for advice for a future student, I think that they should not be nervous about working with a group. This is large project and being able to split the work with others is really important, and gives you a chance to work with people who you have never have ever met before.
As this class’ second project comes to its conclusion, I find myself reflecting on the experience.
It was overall a pleasant experience because my teammates were so nice and cooperatives. But even so, it had its challenges. The easiest and the hardest part of this assignment stemmed from the same thing funnily enough. Working with others. On one hand, it does make it so that the workload is lighter so I can focus on other classes as well as this project. But on the other, due to the nature of the assignment I am supposed to conform. Conforming is not something that is in my skillset whatsoever. I march to the beat of my own drum, always have according to my mother. So I do feel bad that my inability to do so might bring down their grades also, they don’t deserve it because they were such great partners.
As for advice for next year, I’d give them a heads up that this project is happening so they can plan their schedules for that part of the semester accordingly.
After completing the insiders hand book for new UNE students it is always good to reflect on the work that was done for the project. Overall I enjoyed the project and being able to work with a group of people I have never talked to or worked with. I also enjoyed this type of project because I got to see the bare bones of the project when it was first started to the finishing product. Our group had great communication. We used a text message group chat and we would always use it to talk about the project and what we planned on doing in our shared doc. The hardest part was making sure we had all the information that we needed to make it easier for the site keeper because they already had a lot on their plate. Some advice I would give to future students doing this project is to make sure your group talks a lot and knows who is doing what parts. Another piece of advice i can give you is to make sure you use a shared word doc so each member of the group can see the progress that everyone is making and to hold each other accountable.
The project overall came together well. Everything came together on time and with reasonably good results. The most challenging parts were communication with the group and site design, as well as trying not to sound repetitive. There were many instances of similar advice, however this does not discount its value. Next time, I would reorganize the work just a bit, not to change how much was distributed, but what parts were distributed where (perhaps giving each person a specific lesson and 2-3 interviews covering all three lessons), and I would decide on a specific interview format from the very start. I would recommend that future students do the same, and tell them to add “Next” and “Previous” buttons to their pages. And most importantly, make sure all group members are on top of their work and keeping each other updated.
18 thoughts on “JORUNAL # 16”
As this group handbook project comes to a close, it is always nice to reflect and look back on the progress that was made from start to finish. Overall, I enjoyed the project and the general concept of making a handbook for first year students from the perspective of current college students from all grades. I know I definitely would have found a handbook like that to be extremely helpful and valuable for me. Some things that I thought went well was the communication between my group members. We had a group text and whenever any of us had a question or needed help, someone would always respond in a timely manner. I think the most challenging part of the project was getting everyone’s interviews and other information in the same place. However, we overcame this obstacle by creating a shared document before creating an official eportfolio page.
For my group, I think everything went pretty smoothly from start to finish. If we were going to do anything differently next time, it would probably be just to make the pages of the handbook nicer to look at with more pictures or maybe a theme for the pages. Advice that I would give to a student doing this project next year would definitely be to share a google or word document with all group members to keep all your information in the same place. That was a huge help for my group and I think it also kept us accountable for getting our portions of the project done on time.
Journal 16
Reflection- What went well in my project is our practicing and oour meeting the day before the project. I think that helped benefit our preparedness. What also went well for our group is the flow of our speech, again i credit that to our dry run and practice from the previous night. The challenges we faced were trying to find a time to meet that fit in to all 4 group memebrs schedule. But, we were able to figure it out and evrything went according to plan. The thing that I would do next time is practice and be more prepared for my dry run. The advice that I would give to students doing this next year is communicate with your group, ask questions, and practice your speech.
Journal #16:
Overall, the project as a whole went well, what worked most was our ability to work together when it came to presenting to the class and our flow when switching roles and pages. Being able to work together to make the presentation smooth worked well. Our biggest challenge was getting it to look like a full complete website, when it came to looking clean and every page similar, we should have spent more time getting it together. Next time, we should have focused more on getting stuff done faster, we were slow in getting our information and we should have gotten it done faster so we had more time to fix and edit it. Some advice I would offer someone else, would be to not push it off or delay it, getting it done fast is the best possible way of doing it.
Overall, I thought this was a very successful project. We were always ahead of schedule and did a very good job. Most things went very well for us. We were very good at communicating in the group chat we made. It really helped us stay on track and was very helpful when we were not able to meet in person. The way we split up the work was also good because we did not argue, and everyone was happy with what they ended up doing. One thing that was difficult for us was meeting in person and this was because of how our schedules were set up. Since there was no time for us to meet in person, keeping in touch in the group chat was vital and ended up working out very well for us. There is not much I would change for next time as we did a very good job, especially having our presentation last exactly ten minutes. One piece of advice I would give to someone doing this project next year would be to get all your work done earlier rather than later so that you stay on track and are able fix things rather than having to do things for the first time after your dry run.
As we wrap up our second major project, I think that the project went well overall. I think the highlights of our work as a group was the final presentation as well as the overall quality of our writing on the site. As a group we really learned a lot from our first presentation and enhanced what we needed to to finish strong. I think the shift came mostly from when we switched from having the mentality of just reading each page to truly presenting them instead by just going over the pages. I think one of our biggest challenges was just out of class communication. Fortunately it never really impacted the final product but there were some times where communication was struggling a bit mainly due to the fact we all are different people with different schedules and couldn’t always be working on the projects at the same time. As for if I had to do this project again, I would mainly focus on the website even more than I did for this project. I learned later on during the project about the capabilities of WordPress and in learning later on I had to edit the existing site as I added new features to it. The best advice I could give to somebody attempting to do this same project in the future is to really understand how you are supposed to present it before you begin writing the pages out. From my experience the final product could have had more casual and straight to the point writing and still been fine.
Ryan Kelly
Prof. Jessie Miller
Communications 110
9 November 2023
Journal 16
Now that the project and presentation are finally over, I can reflect on what things went well and what things that we maybe could have improved on. As for the things that went well, we got the timing down perfectly, ending our presentation right at ten minutes. Another thing that went well was our flow and tone while presenting, along with helpful body language and eye contact with the audience. Some of the challenges that we faced during the presentation was how long to spend talking about each page, however I think we did an alright job with that. Another challenge for me, as the website maker, was formatting the website in order to look different and stand out to the audience. I spent countless hours in my dorm room just playing around with the settings of my portfolio website to make the text and pictures flow in a visually appealing way. I If I were to do this again the advice that I would give my future self would be to lessen the amount of text, because most audience members won’t even read past the first sentence or two before getting bored and clicking away. The advice that I would offer to future groups doing this same project would be to split up the workload evenly amongst the group members and meet out of class to practice and go over your presentation before presenting it.
Sawyer Ohman
CMM110-A
11/9/23
Our first group project in communications was very fun and yet rather simple, each group was tasked with writing and formatting a “handbook” onto an Eportfolio site. The handbook was to be presented and effectively sold to our peers, it was our job to work as a team to complete all the respective parts of the handbook and share our collective thoughts with the class. Ben Lehane was our site maker and a journalist, Altirque McElveen was a journalist and an editor. I myself was somewhat of a leader making sure we got everything accomplished on time and in a professional manner, as well as doing my own journalism and editing.
I found it very difficult to make the sale, it was easy to organize and make the handbook especially with two other co-authors and editors but presenting the handbook was difficult for us. On our dry-run we were not able to complete our entire handbook because we ran out of time exceeding our ten minute limit. The second time around we still were just under at the ten minute marker, I personally needed to be more concise in my description and presentation of the handbook. A more concise presentation wouldn’t only be more appealing to freshmen who have a short attention span but also busy salesmen and investors. Next time around if I could tell myself anything it would be to spend more time reciting the sales pitch. I feel that our handbook was professional and well made but the presentation was sincerely in need of improvement, we spent far too much time introducing the different parts of the handbook in the beginning rather than letting them speak for themselves later in the handbook.
I thought I did so well on my group’s speech! I have never felt more comfortable or confident in front of a crowd, and it might’ve been because my friend Tony was doing it with me- making it so that I had someone to lean on- but I also felt that I was just generally comfortable presenting. I felt I spoke loudly and not for too long as not to prolong our presentation, I felt that I was confident in my words and the messages I was presenting, and I didn’t look at the website once! It was so fun being able to feel comfortable right off the bat, and if I had any qualms, they were with my group mates and not myself. Though I felt like everyone did a great job, and unlike last year where I was in Professor Miller’s class and had to miss the group speech, I felt comfortable and confident in this year’s where I was actually able to participate. I really got along with my group members and I felt that the tasks were evenly divided, too. Having Tony in my group helped since I already had his contact information from last year, and I was comfortable with interviewing faculty members since I work at the library, too.
I thought overall the project went well. I liked working with the people in my group, everyone was easy to get in touch with. I think our first run presenting to the class was rough, but I feel like we came together and were more focused on the idea of highlighting our handbook instead of going through every single thing. I was nervous being up there presenting but I found some comfort in the fact that my groupmates were nervous, too. I wish I rehearsed what I was going to say more but I believe I still did okay when it was my turn to speak. What I would do differently next time would to be establish a “format” in the beginning before we all started writing to keep it consistent. Something I would tell someone doing this project next year would be to, at the very least, meet twice with your group mates. The first after the project is assigned to designate who is writing what, interviewing who, and setting up a rough plan. The second is after doing the dry run of the presentation in front of the class to finalize what everyone will say to “sell” their section of the handbook and clean up the site with photo credits, fixing spelling errors, etc.
I think overall my group did pretty good. We hit all the goals we were supposed to and really did not have any trouble with much really. We did a good job of all staying on the same page. I think right from the beginning we really got going and were doing good. We assigned jobs and responsibilities out quickly and got to work fast. We all had a basic idea of what we wanted todo before we began, the rubric was pretty structured so we did not really have to come up with much ourselves. I would say the hardest part of the project was probably getting everyone to format there stuff the same way just because with this it was the small things that it took to make it look professional. As for presenting I think we adopted really well from the first time, the first time we talked way too long and were way over the tie. Then on the final time we hit it perfectly with our time being just under 10 minutes which is the perfect time for this project. As for advice I think the one piece of advice I would give is to not slack because this project has lots of little steps and if you miss a little step it is going to screw everything up.
This project went magnificent with the group of people I did it with. I felt like from the beginning there was a instant connection that we all we’re gonna take part of this project. With our group there really wasn’t any challenges we all communicated really well within each other. We contacted everyday to see the progress of the project to make sure everything was put together. Next time if I had to do this I would re-do the whole cycle because I think I gave my best effort to my group. If I’m giving advice to a group doing this project next year I would say ” Make sure you get everybody’s information beforehand so that you guys communicate the status of the project”. This is why having great communication skills is important because these are some people that you don’t even know.
The things I think that went well was our abilities to sell the handbook to the audience. The biggest challenges were finding different answers to some of the questions we asked. I felt like many of the questions were able to be answered by the same things as others that we interviewed. Taking the entire project in and giving my advice to people doing the project next year would have to be “Be Creative” with your questions and to interview different types of people.
I believe that overall, this project went very well for me and my group. We worked well together to delegate the work, and everyone did their part well. I wouldn’t say we faced any challenges honestly, other than some schedule conflicts that made it difficult to meet outside of class. However, to combat this, we made a group chat which was very helpful to be able to communicate with each other about the project at any time. We got all of our parts done quickly and efficiently (with the exception of my professor interview that ended up taking a little longer), and used feedback from our peers to improve our presentation even more. The advice I would give to someone doing this project would be to communicate well with your group, and stay on top of your tasks because it will make it so much easier to do any necessary revisions afterwards.
I believe that my groups hand book came out very well and was sellable to an audience. The biggest challenge that my group had as a whole was trying to make our book different than everyone else. The way we conquered that was making key points of our interviews and bringing up some of the least useful advice that we got throughout their freshman year. In the end I can say I enjoyed giving my advice to freshman and learning from others experiences to show all the good things of UNE to help freshman the best way as possible.
This was a really cool project idea, I really liked how we were able to collaborate with peers to figure out the most important things that we have learned about UNE and how we can convey this information to a nervous first year student. What worked well, in my opinion, was my groups ability to collaborate. Everyone was able to bring a different type of insight into this project and were really able to encompass all of the aspects of this campus. I think the only challenge my group faced was our scheduling conflict. Trying to do a project with four students who have crazy schedules is really hard, so I think that was the area that we struggled in. I think next time I would just make sure everything is assigned appropriately, so that we have a clear understanding of who does what. As for advice for a future student, I think that they should not be nervous about working with a group. This is large project and being able to split the work with others is really important, and gives you a chance to work with people who you have never have ever met before.
As this class’ second project comes to its conclusion, I find myself reflecting on the experience.
It was overall a pleasant experience because my teammates were so nice and cooperatives. But even so, it had its challenges. The easiest and the hardest part of this assignment stemmed from the same thing funnily enough. Working with others. On one hand, it does make it so that the workload is lighter so I can focus on other classes as well as this project. But on the other, due to the nature of the assignment I am supposed to conform. Conforming is not something that is in my skillset whatsoever. I march to the beat of my own drum, always have according to my mother. So I do feel bad that my inability to do so might bring down their grades also, they don’t deserve it because they were such great partners.
As for advice for next year, I’d give them a heads up that this project is happening so they can plan their schedules for that part of the semester accordingly.
After completing the insiders hand book for new UNE students it is always good to reflect on the work that was done for the project. Overall I enjoyed the project and being able to work with a group of people I have never talked to or worked with. I also enjoyed this type of project because I got to see the bare bones of the project when it was first started to the finishing product. Our group had great communication. We used a text message group chat and we would always use it to talk about the project and what we planned on doing in our shared doc. The hardest part was making sure we had all the information that we needed to make it easier for the site keeper because they already had a lot on their plate. Some advice I would give to future students doing this project is to make sure your group talks a lot and knows who is doing what parts. Another piece of advice i can give you is to make sure you use a shared word doc so each member of the group can see the progress that everyone is making and to hold each other accountable.
The project overall came together well. Everything came together on time and with reasonably good results. The most challenging parts were communication with the group and site design, as well as trying not to sound repetitive. There were many instances of similar advice, however this does not discount its value. Next time, I would reorganize the work just a bit, not to change how much was distributed, but what parts were distributed where (perhaps giving each person a specific lesson and 2-3 interviews covering all three lessons), and I would decide on a specific interview format from the very start. I would recommend that future students do the same, and tell them to add “Next” and “Previous” buttons to their pages. And most importantly, make sure all group members are on top of their work and keeping each other updated.