Post#2 4/29

Collaborative being defined as a ‘Win-win” situation is best type of conflict resolution and is what every group strives from when in conflict. Collaborative conflict resolution is energy consuming because it takes time and effort to come up with a solution that satisfies all parties involved. Collaborative conflict resolution that I have engaged in was when I was a part of a group that was deciding on when to meet next. Half the group wanted to meet in the morning to get it done with, while the other half wanted to sleep in and meet later. The group decided to meet a little before noon because it let members sleep in as well as get it done with somewhat early in the day. This is a simple example of collaboration conflict resolution because it was a win-win for all members in the group. It required extra time and energy to find a time that everyone was free at but the solution was worth it.

            Competitive conflict is different from collaborative conflict in that one side wins, or gets what they want, while the other side has to deal with it. This would be if the group said they were going to meet in the morning and those who wanted to sleep in would be out of luck. I would say that most of the time collaborative conflict resolution is the most satisfying to me because I like to go along with the team. There are times that in the win-lose situation I might lose and that’s never fun. I figure if everyone is willing to compromise a little the best decision for the group members will be made, but it dosent always work out like that.

question #1 4/25

A forum, panel, colloquium, and symposium all have distinctive differences. A forum is a public discussion that the entire audience is involved with. A panel has four to eight participants that are experts on a topic and openly discuss that topic. A colloquium also experts that discuss a topic in front of an audience, but the colloquium is only three to six experts and there is also a moderator that facilitates their interaction. Lastly, the symposium deals with more difficult and complex problems and is disused in front of an audience through two to six speeches that focuses on specific aspects of the complex problem. When making a public a presentation I would prefer to do or listen to a forum. I would prefer a forum because nothing goes unsaid. If the audience has any questions about anything they can ask questions they have to make it clear. The only down side to a forum is that the dissicussion could get off topic. But when staying on topic, I think the forum is most effect because it gets every ones thoughts on the topic out in the open.

post #3 4/23

I thought an important concept to from chapter ten were the barriers to creativity. I think that these were more important than the cultural barriers of creativity because occur more often. The barriers listed are lack of self-confidence, fear of taking risk, feel a need to conform, do not feel we are in an environment that encourages creativity, or find ourselves locked into our habitual ways of looking at the world. The three most common of these that happen that I see happen the most, or that I face are lack of self-confidence, fear of taking risks, and being locked in habitual ways. In addition, every group that I am in that lacks creativity is because of one of this reason. Reason that people fall in to this happening are failed attempts. You are in a group and try to be creative, but it fails and all the heat comes down on you for suggesting it, next time you are in a situation like this you don’t mention a creative way because you are afraid of taking a risk,  and have no confidence. It is important to push failed attempts out of mind and keep trying until it works out.

5 cultural barriers

Cultural barriers can be detrimental to group creativity. Barriers that are mentioned in the book are a requirement for conforminity, an expectation of practically, particular arenas for competition or cooperation, an expectation of politeness and following rules for social order, reliance on statically proofs, a dependence on generalizations, a trust in the power of reason and logic, and a reliance on expert knowledge. I think that some of these things would keep a group from being creative because every different person has a set of rules that has been shaped for him/her while he was growing up. If someone does not know how to be free and is used to doing it the way he has been taught then it would be hard for a member to free himself from the old way and be creative. I myself have fallen in this. My group gets a problem that I know how to solve one way but no other way. When the way I know how to solve it is not available then its hard for me to think about another way to solve the problem

post one week 4/17- 4/23

Creativity acting in a way that you have not done before. It is hard being that you are not accustomed to it and you are not positive if it will work.  Creativity is a good thing in groups because it offers different, unique ways to solve problems. A time I that I used creativity to was when I was in a group and we had to put together this large table with a lot of data and then take all the data and get the averages for the data. The problem was we would have had to stay up all night to finish this so I thought of a way to cut sometime. I had never used excel before to do that but I had been told that by filling out the tables you could automatically get the averages and sums. So I tried it out and worked with it for a while and finally got to get what I needed done and it cut the time we would have spent almost in half. This is an example of being creative because I tried something I had no knowledge of before using it and if was helpful solution to the group because it got the work done and was faster.

adopting effective group communication strategies for CMC

I thought an important concept from chapter 15 was adopting effective group communication strategies for CMC. I thought this was important because most people are accustomed to face to face small group communication. When in a group dealing with CMC members must change their mind setting and come up with the best strategies for the medium that is being utilize so that communication between members is at its full potential. In addition, members must be aware of the “technology trance” or letting the technology they are using to communicate dictate the decisions they make rather than the larger context of the groups human relationship. Falling into this can be detrimental to small groups. It is also important for group members to pay attention to patterns that may be forming during the sharing of the groups ideas. This is because the medium that they might loss some of the information they are trying to share.

How do anonymity, group size, and proximity influence participation and communication in CMC groups?

Anonymity, group size, and proximity influence participation and communication in CMC groups greatly. Larger CMC groups “Appear to benefit the most from using CMC, as they generate more ideas per member than smaller CMC groups.” This is because there are more ideas facilitating, which in turn spark more ideas from others hearing things they have not thought about. Diversity is also a great help in CMC communication because it bring more knowledge and different experiences to the table, which in turn make it easier to solve complex problems. Proximity plays a role because people that are not in the same room, or can not see each other do not feel the pressures to conform to the group and in turn stick with their original ideas. This Helps the small group process because it brings more ideas to the table. This also goes with anonymity, because these people are are not seen by the group do not conform to the groups identity.

How does CMC differ from f2f communication?

Computer-mediated communication or CMC is “describes communication that takes place through a variety of media and provides distributed group members with video, audio, and text based messaging capabilities.” (pg. 261) f2f communication is face to face communication, or a physical meeting. These two forms of communicating are very different. In a class setting like this one, CMC is helpful because the teacher is available to answer questions 7 days a week via email. The response time will be longer than the instantaneous response you would get face to face. Also with face to face communication some students are less likely to ask questions because they do not want to sound stupid in front of a class, but in a CMC setting usually the details are more detailed because the teacher wants to be as clear and concise as possible so question don’t need to be asked as often, but when nessacarry there is privacy.