13th lesson report 18th April 2007

The goal of the lesson is to get overview of the human management methods, to repeat the functions of CmapTools (for creating the organization chart). This is important for developing skills for concept map creation. Create more complicated document in Google Docs (chart, table and text in one document). This is important exercise before creation of final integrated project plan.

It’s also important to observe how they share tasks and how they work together.

The list of the issues was short:

human resources
organization chart
RAM

But to provide them as a lection was boring. That’s why I tried to present the text materials shortly – 30 minutes. I tried to activate students with additional questions but only one student was answering. I even asked here to not answer anymore but she did not hold here self down.

It’s harder from week to week to keep them away from RATE. In some computers the RATE is blocked but in others don’t (probably it depends on operation system). One other social networking portal named Orkut is also very popular. Maybe I can create some interesting tasks using the RATE and Orkut.

The creation of organization chart in CmapTool environment was very interesting to them. Most of all they liked to input personal photos to organization chart. Although to add picture to the background of the chart nodes is not very user friendly task. At first user must copy the images in to Cmap catalogue. Then s/he can add them to chart by formatting the nodes. The size of the image will affect the size of the node. That’s why user must resize or crop it beforehand. Students graphical design skills are pore. Maybe they are not interested of this field. I helped them a lot in cutting and resizing the images. Maybe now they can see why graphical design is important and cool.

The RAM (responsibility and assignments matrix) was created in Google Spreadsheet. Surprisingly it’s not possible to upload images (organization chart) to Google Spreadsheet. Students had to copy the table from Spreadsheet environment to Google text document environment. During this procedure the design of table was lost. Actually this was my mistake because I did not know that.

Practical tasks bring more activity among students. During the teamwork I observed them.

The team of the graduation ceremony worked in two separated subgroups. One (two girls) was creating the RAM table, the other one (a boy and a girl) created organization chart. The secong group almost started to fight about one photo. The boy clamed that he don’t have photo in the internet that is good enough to publish in the org chart. The girl was angry because they spend to much time by searching suitable image. she wanted to finish the task and to go home. In the end they added the image of one bottle instead of the boy’s face (in the project he was responsible for beverages). Because of the arguing they did not had time to change the size of the chart (the size is too big) and they did not combine the chart and the table together.

In the team of the 1th September ceremony only one girl was working. Others (3 girls and 1 boy) just washed here how she is working. I tried to motivate them to create the RAM table separately. The girls opened the Google Spreadsheet but did not input any data on it. Hopeless! Maybe the project manager is too strong and other members are too week. Project manager seed once that she don’t want others to do anything because she can do anything faster and with better quality. Surprisingly only this group finished on time and did all as needed (table and the chart were in same document). They finished work before others and that’s why it was possible to give advise to them – how to reduce the size of image and how to combine chart and table together.

In the team of summer party project two girls worked together behind the one computer. Other team members (one girl and one boy) did nothing. I asked them many times to start the work. Once they clam that they are looking for photos for org chart. In other cases they promised to start the work write now. The group finished only the organization chart. They did not have time for RAM table.

The grade they earn for teamwork should be affected by the work they do in the teams. I must explain the rules on next lesson.

Grading rules – the final mark of the school semester depends on three components:

summary result of teamwork – project plan
summary result of individual tasks – exercises and tagging
the grade of final examination – individual interview.

The final grade of teamwork will form in following way:

At first all team members will earn same grade.
In the end of the semester team will make self assessment. Who has participated more actively can have better result and who was lazy will have smallest grade then average team member. The self assessment is teamwork. All group members must accept the validation results.
If the result of the team self assessment is not acceptable to the teacher then those result will be basis for discussion in final examination (who did what in the team?)

Thanks to illustrated organization charts its so simple to relate students with there names.

Lesson was very interesting although a bit chaotic and nervous. I prefer not to manage such kind of chaos in every lesson. I wonder how the students liked the lesson. Feedback questionnaire would be good idea.

Overall rate to lesson 5

Comments: We did not had time for feedback questionnaire and self evaluation.