PBL 1 Summary

My team's first assignment is complete and we are making great progress on our second assignment, revolving around Pompeii.

I am very pleased with the interaction, communication, and production of our team during the first PBL assignment. All of us got along very well and our varying personality types filled different roles throughout the project.

Since I am the oldest, most senior member (it is kind of depressing saying that!), I found myself being the source for focus and direction as our project developed. I am a naturally engaging, extroverted person and I brought that kind of energy to the group as we were getting to know one another. Once we all warmed up, we have since become friends.

The first obstacle that was tackled was delegating research and doing the leg work. Tyler, Rachel, and Justin all have great researching capabilities and have a work ethic to bring to the table. This made information gathering the easiest part of the project.

The more difficult task was to take our plentiful information and then transform and combine our resources into a succinct and effective presentation that fit the parameters of the prompt. This is the area that our group sort of struggled with and grew throughout the assignment. We are all capable, intelligent researches but expanding and utilizing our creativity is a task that isn't exercised enough. We brainstormed extensively and decided that creating a story and acting as characters from the past would be entertaining and understandable for the target market (school-aged students).

We met out of class at least once a week and never fell behind on tasks and self-imposed due dates. Being able to delegate tasks like that made this group work very easy compared to other experiences I've had. Most of the time in group projects, one person has to take complete control due to the lack of initiative by the other groups members. This was not a problem for our team. Rachel was kind enough to let us use her house to prepare our edible road and practice our presentation multiple times.

I feel that, as a group, we demonstrated high marks in information gathering, accountability, and accuracy. There were definite areas of improvement though. The actual presentation itself should have been formatted more like the "Jeopardy" group. That group created a lesson-plan that could be picked up and placed in any class room and still be viable. If we could have followed that model, I think our presentation would have been more effective. Also, during the actual presentation, every group member abandoned what we practiced for so long: being succinct and precise. Our running time was about 40 minutes when it should have been only 20. I'm not sure why there was such a schism between our practices and our actual presentation, but I'm sure that nerves and a lack of experience in public presentations played into it. These are two areas that must be improved for our second assignment.