October 7

ETL504 Assessment 2 Part B Reflection

My view on the case study group work moved from initial dread (Simon, 2019, 23 July) through to hope for a positive experience (Simon, 2019, August 9). In the end I feel this component has contributed to my developing practice of leadership and understanding how it relates to the role of the teacher librarian (TL).

In our first group effort, members stepped up as initiators, contributors, opinion seekers, elaborators, orienters and encouragers (Roberts, 2012; Simon, 2019, August 18, ). Donna Thurling (2019, September 22) suggested that perhaps groups should have been seeded with some dominators, blockers or aggresors (Roberts, 2012).  I disagree because I think the value of the experience is the authentic nature of the situation. Negotiating with real people rather than just roles or scenarios gave insight for my practice of leadership as a TL. Evaluating real-life reactions to my initiation (Simon, 2019, August 18) or hanging back (Simon, 2019, September 9) developed my understanding of how to effectively manage teams when leadership is distributed to me as TL. Continue reading

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September 22

Cry baby, cry, make your mother sigh

After writing my reflection on my group’s process in Case Study 5, I thought it would be interesting to see what other experiences classmates have been having with this part of the subject. Here are my reflections on my impromptu blog tour from yesterday:

My first stops were to my case study group partners. It is interesting to see the same experience through someone else’s eyes. It can be a bit nerve-wracking, as comes up for our scenario-star in Case Study 6, as this includes seeing yourself from a different perspective as well. Dan’s initial reflection  reinforced my positive perception of our group interactions, but brought up the frustration of working with the set communication structures that are part of the Interact site. His second reflection provided some insight on leadership styles – both the difficulty of identifying some or expressing them in this particular microcosm and how our own pre-conceptions and interpretations of leadership styles and theories can sometimes get in the way of our recognising and identifying them “in the wild”. Deb’s post also opened a brief window on our group experience and struck a consistent positive note. Continue reading

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September 21

Time is an illusion. Case study posting time, doubly so.

With my apologies to Douglas Adams and Case Study Group 9, time got away from me and our assembled-on-time group response was posted to the forum after the Friday midnight deadline. I think this highlights one of the potential downfalls of distributed leadership. Distributing leadership depends on having an overarching, supervising main leader from whom leadership is distributed to other parties. In the case of our case study group, since we are all trying to be leaders, yet all trying NOT to assert dominance over each other, in the end analysis something fell through the cracks. This week, the timely posting of our response was that thing.

This week was generally hard for us. More than one person commented on feeling less confident about the case study material – noting the narrowing of focus. The wiki-page creator and analysis initiator this week set things up in a slightly different way, which made it more difficult for me to connect with the material. We ended up identifying 4 major deeper issue areas for five people to comment on, but people were also slow to claim topics, so there was more confusion about who was covering what. I know that I had a hard time snapping into the frame of mind for analysing the case study while waiting for the return of the first assessment, processing the feedback when it was returned and beginning to process the requirements for the second assessment. I think a single, in-charge, following-up leader/manager would have helped our process to go more smoothly this week.

On the other hand, this week was definitely a team-bonding, relationship-building success. We had a lot of back and forth conversation in the wiki comments section and I feel we are bonding more as a team. I would not be surprised if some relationships from this group continue past the group exercise, the subject, the session and perhaps even the course. Since I feel that the greatest worth in this part of the course is the networking opportunity and the participation in and analysis of the group dynamic – I actually count this as a relatively successful week.

Five down, one to go.

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September 9

I aim to misbehave

Two major issues that are coming to the fore in the case study group work process are communication and participation. I stole my title from the Firefly character Mal Reynolds as my strategy in this particular case study session was to communicate clearly to my group my paticipation parameters – basically informing them “I aim to misbehave.” Due to my commitments in my other subject (assessment due the Monday of the case study session week) and work (Tuesday through Thursday with little room for Uni on those days) I was only able to participate in this session marginally before the Friday on which the response was due. I took the initiative to share my constraints with the group as soon as the case study email was released. This provided a space for another group member to step forward and take the initiative to facilitate the work for this session. Stepping back in this way was a bit difficult for me and shone a light on how much I like to have control over a process in which I am emotionally invested. Continue reading

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August 18

Mostly Harmless

Having weathered the first group collaboration for ETL504 case studies, I have come away feeling relatively optimistic. From the posts I have read so far, it is clear that there have been various levels of participation amongst case study groups.  I have seen posts crediting between two and five participants and I am assuming that the original groups were assigned with no more than a one student variance between groups (I am guessing either four to five per group or five to six per group based on my group of five).

I feel lucky to have gotten an engaged, competent and participatory group. All group members participated in both organisational and content-based interactions. This contributed to what I feel was a solid, task-fulfilling response delivered on-time and formatted appropriately.

I thought it would be interesting to evaluate the group experience through the lens of the team roles described in Roberts (2012): Continue reading

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August 9

A New Hope

Case study groups were released today at 5pm. I am in Case Study Group 9. After sending an initial group email, I had a quick look at the blogs of my group members and did a forum search to see what they had posted so far in the Discussion forums.

I am optimistic about my group as we seem to be active participants in forums and blogs for the most part. Everyone seems to have a reasonable handle on referencing and synthesis of information as well. I am hoping that we mesh well together and can create a successful and effective team dynamic to fulfill the group case study component of our coursework.

I have created a new link list in the sidebar with links to the blogs of my group members… now for us to come up with a team name and colour scheme ;-).

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July 23

Case studies, ho!

Misgivings (half an hour to Case Study Online Meeting)

The case studies and group work component of this subject is probably the aspect that has given me the most misgivings to date. I am nervous about being required to interact consistently in a scheduled way with an online group as part of content that I will be expected to reference for my assessment task. I also have less confidence about actually knowing what is expected of these tasks. It threw me that the first case study material was basically just a schedule. Looking at that and teasing out surface and deeper problems or issues to pose solutions to stymied me somewhat.

I suppose the issues that jump out to me on the surface level in the case study are:

  • “I” don’t seem to have a plan or priority list, just a jumbled idea of things that need to get done and a diary with various meetings schedules
  • “I” have a fair amount of meetings
  • I am not confident that “I” have enough time to get done what is on this list by the deadlines mentioned

Deeper issues:

  • I do not get a real sense of a “team” or delegated responsibilities or distributed leadership from the scenario information
  • I seem to be “putting out fires” and working in a reactive way rather a proactive one

Possible solutions:

  • Set up some daily routines and workflows
  • Look at developing leadership and handing over some responsibilities
  • Perhaps create a collaborative space for gathering report information or templates that are filled out rather than getting the emails and then chasing people for missing information

Minutes (what happened during the meeting)

Continue reading

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