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.

Pick one concept from the assigned reading this week, not already discussed, that you found useful or interesting and discuss it.

MOTAVATION is KEYYY. For me, if I do not want to do something I do not end up doing it, or end up doing it with little effort. In small groups the motivation is obvious because it is not only for your own good. I think motivation in groups is easily attained because members think about the group as hole and this gives them more incentive to listen better. Good listening in groups leads to easily shared ideas which gives the group a better chance at solving complex problems.