PUFS-Team+Work

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The SL project in our class of American culture has faced many challanges. Although we started this project with excitment, the confusion and the failure of communicating have been occured. However it gives us a field of communication in English. I think it promote my ability to communicate with unknown people in the world in some degree. Speaking of my team project, I am team 3 and my team combined with team 4 now. When find ..(to be continue)

I didn't know about second life. I just know through the class of English culture. Infact this class is my second try. So I know how much this class's style be changed. It's very nice try to contact another nation's people through Second life. New type of lesson. It's a good method to know about different nation's culture and think. But meeting is so hard because of time zone difference. When we join the second Life, they got asleep. It's opposite either. And second problem is computer. Some computer can not join there and some student don't have com. l also don't have computer. If I have to try joining I should go to the school's computer room but it don't open at weekend. So if I log on the second life, I have to go PC room. Above all, we are University student who have to some study, work or another important thing. Joining at meeting time in SL is hard because we feel difficulty to change schedule. Infact we don't know how to play Second life well. It's a little hard. Flying in SL is so easy but nobody knew the method of landing. the person who didn't game ever like SL doesn't know Where I am. except that, we clash about many problem. (This game is hard) New trying is very good but we can found some problem. It's just my opinion that If we met chating program like MSN, we can communicate each other more easilly. I'm senior citizen so I have to ready graduating, Logging in SL is hard to me. Maybe this kinds of problem make many students hard. It's not going well but I knew existence of SL, which is able to make meeting with another people. I will use this more frequently. I believe if we play SL hard, we will be able to meet each others when we graduate, either. By KyoungSeobindigo (SL ID : kyungseob indigo)

First, I'd like to say it is really good and helpful to have a chance to communicate with other foreign students through Second Life. Everyone seemed to be excited and interested to talk with them, and I also felt happy to meet them in a virtual world. When I started working with my team members, it was not that hard to do our tasks (making team name, flag and rules) because most of Japanese students were quite active and I also tried to meet each other and talk about many things (language, culture, and so on) in SL using 'Social Hours'. But, as time went by, we were faced with some problems such as time zone difference, operating SL, and different schedule because of the exams or other assigments, so we couldn't meet frequently and had to talk only through the wiki. And there is also another problem that some students who don't participate in our project. Before joining the team, I could see only one American and one French student except Japenese students in SL. I know it's not easy to meet everyone on the website, but some American students don't leave a message or express their opinion on wiki. Comparing to the early days of this semester, we're getting better than before, but I don't think we achieved the work well as we expected. These days, the Japanese students and I are talking about something to build in our team area and voting about the ideas. We are often sending an email to everyone about the work we're doing now and trying to log in to SL as much as possible. Of course, it is a challenging project to all students, but I think we can make it if we try to be more active and show positive attitude. And I hope there are more chances like 'Social Hours' to meet other students in SL. At first, I and other Japanese students tried to log in to SL to meet each other and talk about our project, but it became more difficult to meet them in SL. I think it would be good if we make some time on weekends like before to be able to communicate with each other. :)

By Heejung Indigo

 Jinyi Hastings - 11.1.07 ---My team's outcome(successes) until now--- At first time, I thought it could be very helpful to get to know other cultures. But there are a lot of problems to communicate each other. Anyway, my team name is "SHARING MINDS" which means that team members should share our ideas and mind with deep understanding. Team flag looks like this; It contains all flags representing our nations. Team rules are difficult to choose. So we just put our own rules on the Wiki page. We couldn't discuss those. ---Organizational methods--- I hardly meet our team members in SL. All team's outcome came out of the Wiki site. SL should have been a main role in this project, but I think the Wiki site is better to say something to team members. ---Problems--- Since I got into this project, I've not been able to see any big steps on this project. Why I can't see any is that I couldn't meet my team members who I have to meet and talk about cross-cultural things in the SL. Of course, I've admitted that, as a person who has a job, I couldn't have enough time being there. Every country's students have this kind of reason, I think. And time gap could be one of the reasons, too.

**20050018 Kim, Minhwa (Minhwa Indigo)**
Firts of all, I wanna say that the use of SL was a good idea and it was new to me, so I was excited at first. However, as you know we had kind of lots of problems of using it. So we had to find another way to do it like this wikispace. (I don't know that this is for that but, this is good though.) About the way we did_ Before two teams got work together, I think we posted many notes, actually more that anyother teams, hehe We proceed things (getting to know each other by posting personal profile, making team flag, setting meeting times) kind of faster. We tried to communicate each other to do team project, but it was really difficult to set a meeting time because of the time zone, Even though we posted all of the avilabe time to be in SL, there's no time in common to meet all of my team members. The technical problem to install SL on my computer was the part of the problems. So, I talked with one of my team members by MSN messenger, just once and that's all. And after two teams started to work together, we also have been doing things faster. I thinks there's just some students who really involve in the proceed. But, I think things are going fine. We made our team rules, name and flag is under consideration, team land in SL is also. I'm not sure how things are gonna be, but I think it's not gonna work smothly as long as we have the problems about the SL and the time zone. BUT I wanna say that the try is very good and it's gonna work better than now in the future_ :D

I agree with Minju Indigo. Even though we are in the middle of this smester, we are not really advanced with second life. Actually, I've never heard about second life site before attending this class. Of course, this site gives us very good opportunity to talk with students who live different countries and study different subjects. We can improve our English and have chance to learn their culture as well. However, we have some difficulties doing our projects with other foreign students. First, we have big time differences. There are many students such as American, French,Japanese etc. There is little time difference between Korea and Japan, but we have rare chance to talk to American and French students. It is very difficult to do group projet unless all members of the group participate. All students have different schedule, so it is very difficult to meet all group members at the same time on the internet. Time difference makes it more difficult. Second, most students are not very good at English. Even if they have very good ideas, they have troubles expressing themselves in English. Moreover, it is very difficult to access SL. Many stusents cannot be logged in at their home. Also, it is very strange for most students because we are not accustomed to it. Even moving avatar is difficult sometimes! I think that this is the first try to do this big group project, so professors and students are having trial and error. In my opinion, it would be better if we(Korean students) tried this only ourselves. We can be divided into three groups! If it were, doing project would have been much easier!!!
 * Sungeun Indigo**

We are middle of team project, but I don't think it is going well. At the first, I tried to do something vigorously in wiki, to contact with team members, write something on the board.... I think that my team members (especially, japanese friends)are pretty active and very cooperative. (of course, some of them I haven't seen. They didn't anything. ) But we can't easily meet in SL because of computer problems and time problems. So we can communicate only through wiki. ( I think that if we accessed SL more easily it would be easy to doing project with multinational team members. ) Also during the mid term exam, it wasn't easy to join wiki and to keep communication with team members. For team project, I have to share my free time, maybe If I met team members on the internet in the class time It would be much better. I think I need more efforts to contact with members and share lots of ideas. Eventhough it isn't going well so far. But little by little we are getting to learn what we have to do for good communication and cooperation. So It is going to well from now on.

by Minju Indigo

First of all, I'd like to apologize in advance about what it might seem offensive to the reader in this essay. However, the point here is to share with you what I personally think about this whole project in general and not to criticize the individuals participating in this project. To start, I'd like to say that I find SL a good site to chat with people from around the world. It may also be a perfect place for students who are doing their masters on-line to gather together to share information about the course they are in. In our case, I think that MA-TESOL graduate students' invololvement in this project is just absurd. First, because the other students are still undergraduate students. Second, we don't share the same major. Third, our class is about cross-cultural issues and not about 3D architecture design. Fourth, Some participants in the project cannot even express themselves in understandable English and honestly I don't blame them because they were pushed into something they are not ready for it yet. Fourth, we started as a group of 8 members and because only some students seemed to be interested in the project we suddenly became 16 members. But the number of participants is still low as it was if it's not the same. And the list goes on.... Again, I'm not saying that using SL as a tool to give the students a chance to socialize with other students from around the globe is a bad thing. I think using SL can motivate the students to keep learning new things in order to interact with their pals. However, I didn't enter graduate school to socialize with other people nor to be used as a guinea pig in a virtual experiment. Most students in grad school are here to update their skills and/or to further their knowledge in the field of education, not to build things on SL. By the way, I forgot to state that our biggest success in 5 weeks in SL was creating a name and a flag for our team. What a disappointment! By Omar1hastings.

Now, we are in the middle of SL project. At first I was very intersing and have tried to work according to the wue assignmemt even I couldn't meet any team members. Oneday KGU students appeared and made a mistake of removing all my works that I had worked very hard for many days. I expressed my anger to them and they apologized. Later I realized that they were not good at wiki and didn't do that intentionally. Anyway after that they began to start wiki but not SL. They couldn't do SL in the evening because they can use computer in there shcool only in daytime. Even weekend they should go their hometown. So we had big problem that we can not meet at all in SL.. Fortunatly I could contact a my team member fom EAUL. HE and I met frequently and discussed about the team name, flag and building. And I uproaded the results on wiki and I suggested for other members to give their opinions about that. Thanksfully the KGU students gave their opinions even they cuoldn't join in SL and other members put their own ideas. So we could decide our team name with GLOBREIND, 10 team rules and team flag. Even it took a longtime to decide them I think the result after tring to get as many as members opinions is the biggest sucess. Actually we don't have any special organizational methods yet but we are tring to do our best finding appropriate method for next mission.
 * (Oct. 29th Hyunjeong Davies )**


 * Current Status of the Project “Cross-Cultural Communication in Second Life”**

1. Organizational methods Team 5 doesn’t have any form of organization except horizontal relationship among team members as it was formed. There are two reasons for it. In terms of team membership vitality the level is low. Only 30~40% of team membership is active which doesn’t show team’s energy and motivation are enough, but indicates just sustainable condition. And to have a few meetings with a few team members might be a great opportunity and very lucky at current point. In this situation the concept to select a team leader for driving force I had in mind at initial stage might be useless. The second view point is more fundamental issue. As Omar a colleague of the class said one day, team members are concerned only with their objectives and interest, which seems very natural phenomenon. The problematic issue is almost all the team members have different objectives and interest. If someone asks team members for strong unity it may seem burdensome to them. It has some similar looks of United Nations. Any member should not be a leader of team at this condition or, even though there’s a certain type of turn system for leadership of team we need to wait for some years until it is stabilized.

2. Problems in team activity As described above different assignment to each member has caused some degradation in teamwork performance since the start point of project. The time zone differences and some members’ access limits to Second Life are still weakness in performing project. For example, whenever I try to have time with them for team work I seem to be a position to get their favors, because everyone of my team is very busy except me.

3. Team’s successes Team 5 has some successes in making flag and introduction by a few meetings in SL and utilizing Wikispace. However, the team couldn’t finalize them because the majority of team Japanese group has participated in team works scarcely. In spite of several requests they involvement is very rare so far. The cause of this problem might be poor circumstances of Japanese group to access Second Life and Wikispace. During 7 weeks in project it has been very fortunate to me that I have met some of Japanese members once or twice, and French members many times, American member twice in Second Life, because some members of PUFS graduate classmates couldn’t meet their members until now.

4. Expected problems In my calculation the project is for about one month left. The problems the project has are being solved step by step, however the rate of progress is very low. In my opinion no one would be confident that the goal of project will be achieved in about one month without a springboard. Merging teams seems an immediate corrective action for current problems. But the reason that I am not much positive for it is everyone needs some time to associate with new team members. To identify and meet them in SL requires some time as much as time spent to acquaint with existing members. It is definite that communication for team work is a certain social activity.

5. Constraints As above I discussed many issues the project faces, which seem individual items. However they could be expected before initiating project. To say in terms of project management those problems identified are constraints. Technically project manager omitted verifying constraints and setting up response plans against them. And two other points missed in the project are that scope and stakeholders of the project are verified and, the other is each stakeholder should have its appropriate responsibilities and roles, and ownership from initial stage. Changes in scope and stakeholders of the project may lead participants into confused situation to loose their focuses and interests.

Thank you, Taejin Davies

Oct. 26th 2007