Telecollaboration Instructions for Group Meetings

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You have signed the telecollaboration contract so you already have an overview of what are ideal conditions and behaviours for successful technology and digitally-mediated exchanges. You will be expected to meet the minimum requirements in that description and to help others also do so. You have also been assigned to a group, based on the times you said you were available for telecollaboration (answers from the doodle calendar). These will be posted in 'our space'. (Don't forget, you need our password to access this page). You should look up your partners' email addresses in our shared document (also in 'our space').  Each group will have a group leader (see more details below) but in for your first meeting, the leader and scribe will be from UIUC.  Before the first meeting, the group leader must be sure to email the group members to:

• confirm the meeting time

• confirm how you will meet (Recommendations: Zoom, Skype, etc.)

 

Each meeting has specific instructions to complete a variety of activities. Each week, the activity is expected to lead into different learning outcomes: Some of these activities are designed to move you forward in your group projects, others are aimed at stimulating discussion for enhanced comprehension of different issues, other activities may be to prepare materials or output to present to your classmates in your face-to-face, etc. Note too, that at times, your 'meetings' may be asynchronous (e.g. forum posts instead of synchronous videochats) but you are still expected to meet the deadlines posted in the instructions.

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Your group will decide on two key individual roles for each meeting: leader and scribe. These roles will rotate each week and the person to fulfil these roles will be selected at the end of the meeting for the next meeting. Everyone else, as team members, are expected to participate fully in collaboration with the others. Everyone is required to provide peer evaluations in TEAMMATES after each meeting.

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The leader is in charge of reminding participants of impending tasks and meetings and managing the workflow of the meeting. The leader must send reminders to all of the members of the group about meeting times, meeting locations (which platform is being used), and what preparation should be done beforehand. The leader is also responsible for ensuring that the meeting starts on time, that the discussion flows  efficiently, will try to keep everyone on task and that everyone is given an opportunity to participate. The leader should make sure that everyone understands the assigned task and that everyone has prepared for the activity. The leader should make sure that no one monopolizes the conversation and that no one is a 'silent' participant. The leader should try to resolve any conflicts or issues that arise as quickly as possible and report to the teachers any incident that could not be resolved or anything that may require teacher intervention. 

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The scribe is in charge of documenting the meetings. This means that the scribe will take notes (minutes) of main discussion points and conclusions of the group, will collect 'evidence' of who has attended and what has been done during the meeting (screenshots, examples of output) and will be in charge of ensuring that group members have links to any output from the meetings that might be needed for in-class activities and for reminding group members to complete their peer evaluations. The scribe will make sure that the minutes and evidence is uploaded to the group's folder (more details in meeting 1).