Midsemester+Analysis+and+Synthesis

I. Identify five or more experiences that have been most useful to you as a team in your understanding of Educational Research. Please list them in the order of most useful.

II. Identify five or more of the most helpful things that will enable your team to complete this course successfully and explain how each of the identified points relates to what it means to be successful.

III. Describe what your team might do differently in order to improve over the remaining weeks of the semester and explain why.

Agnes
 * 1) Identify five or more experiences that have been most useful to you as a team in your understanding of Educational Research. Please list them in the order of most useful.
 * I think one of the most useful experiences we’ve had inEDS250 is making us more strategic thinkers in our approaches to understand methods of research
 * As researchers, we make firsthand observations of activities, sometimes we want to engage our personal feelings in those activities, enabling us from identifying the research problem. David Silverman pg 541in text state it best e**very way of seeing is also a way of not seeing,** but if we focus on criteria for judging inquiry we will be ok
 * We engage in self-directed and peer-assisted learning for varying criteria for determining the truth
 * We were involved in pragmatic and real-world learning strategies to enhance rigorous techniques for quality analysis
 * We did not have a clear understanding of our task, used methods which made use of resource-based, problem-based learning, and theoretical qualitative inquiry
 * 1) Identify five or more of the most helpful things that will enable your team to complete this course successfully and explain how each of the identified points relates to what it means to be successful.
 * What our purpose, whose our audience, what question will we used to guide our inquiry, and lastly what resources methods will we used to support our question(s)
 * What criteria will we used as a group to judge the credibility of our findings to tie it back to the problem
 * Only focus on reviewing literature that supports our hypothesis
 * Identifying and understanding your team values is the first step toward understanding your current position and helping our team make adjustments to achieve good research.
 * Identifying understand theoretical framework, theory-testing sort of studies to guide our research.
 * 1) Describe what your team might do differently in order to improve over the remaining weeks of the semester and explain why.
 * To describe what our team might do differently is a difficult question for me. I do not know how to answer this question because, I think as a new team, we as a whole have a lot of strengths and weakness. I also think as a team we’re still trying to learn how to work as a team. We’re still emerging together the pieces that build on our relationship as a team.

Irene

I.Identify five or more experiences that have been most useful to you as a team in your understanding of Educational Research. Please list them in the order of most useful.

1. Establishing team rules and guidelines at the outset provided the foundation for our team values, development, and collaboration.

2. Coordinating a team effort in dividing the reading assignments instilled a sense of team spirit, provided individual relief on class workload, and offered an extended learning experience through multiple perspectives on the course material.

3. In-class experiential activities afforded the opportunity to demonstrate our understanding of the lecture and text content, practice our skills of application as individuals and a team, and receive immediate feedback from the instructors and our fellow cohort members.

4. One-on-One (Team) dialogue with instructors offered an open, safe, informal venue to ask questions, obtain clarification, receive guidance and assistance, and to develop our relationship with the professors—learn about their perspectives, their realities, their experiences. In turn, that created a better understanding of their teaching style and how they deliver the course content.

5. Out-of-class experiential assignments tested our team abilities to communicate effectively, collaborate respectfully, and create meaningful, useful, and professional work products in a timely manner.

6. Rosalind Van Auker’s presentation was critical for those of us who had no prior knowledge of CSUS library on-site and on-line resources and services. It was also an excellent refresher course for seasoned researchers. Rosalind demonstrated the basics and shared her years of expertise through recommendations and time-saving techniques to assist us in finding relevant and useful information for our research endeavors.

II. Identify five or more of the most helpful things that will enable your team to complete this course successfully and explain how each of the identified points relates to what it means to be successful.

1. In order to effectively participate in class discussion and activities, it would be helpful for our team to share what we have read and learned from our individual and collective reading prior to class in order to ensure all team members: (1) are completing the assigned reading; and (2) assisting one another in understanding the course material. Learning from each other through open discussion will improve our team building, while also making meaning of new concepts.

2. Encourage each other to arrive at class prepared and ready to engage in class discussion and activities. Having to conduct assignment housekeeping takes valuable time away from the class learning experience and impacts the exercise at hand (i.e., less time to complete the task, less understanding of application).

3. Team dynamics emerge and evolve over the course of time and the demands of the class work. It will be critical to keep the lines of communication fluid and to conduct team and individual “check-ins” to allow each member a voice and to ensure our team rules and guidelines are being adhered to, are still appropriate, or need adjustments.

4. Review of Literature can be a time-consuming, daunting task. If we create an inventory of our collective research materials--and develop a process to accurately maintain it--we can save research time and effort, and limit duplication errors.

5. Logistics creates an added stress to team communication, collaboration, and work products. If all members are included in each e-mail communication, and our wiki-space use is maximized, our information can be delivered in a timely, efficient, and effective manner.

III. Describe what your team might do differently in order to improve over the remaining weeks of the semester and explain why.

Our fast-paced learning environment impacts team dynamics by limiting the time to gain a sense of membership inclusion and to develop a collaborative spirit toward team goals and practices. Allocating time off-site for team-building in an informal, relaxed environment would nurture the team spirit and allow the members to connect personally, learn about each other, and to respect one another as individuals and for the value they bring to our team.

Gene Identify five ore more experiences that have been most useful to you as a team in your understanding of Educational Research. Please list them in the order of most useful.
 * 1) My first experience that has been most useful is when I learned how to work in a group and what each member has to bring to the table.
 * 2) The second experience is when I discovered that you must look at your group work before searching for new information. I made that mistake and worked hard on some new information and at the end found out it was the same as another group member.
 * 3) Third experience is when I have been able to look at myself and try to work extra hard to work as a team.
 * 4) Fourth experience is when our team has learned we have no choice but to work as a team. If we don’t then the team won’t run like a machine.
 * 5) I have learned a bunch of new tools such as Qualitative data and that it has three elements. One: Rigorous. Two: The credibility of the researcher and Third: Philosophical belief in the value of qualitative inquiry.

Identify five or more of the most helpful things that will enable your team to complete this course successfully and explain how each of the identified points relates to what it means to be successful.


 * 1) First helpful thing I believe our team must work together as a team and really it’s just like a marriage.
 * 2) Positive attitude is a great helpful thing to re say in any team or group and will help us build a much stronger group.
 * 3) Flexible with other group members.
 * 4) Talk on the phone and other ways to work from home.
 * 5) Lesson to other group members.

Describe what your team might do differently in order to improve over the remaining weeks of the semester and explain why.

I believe our team is able to take a bigger risk on what we are learning and trying to absorb as much as we all can. In return I believe our team is getting the idea on how to research and use the new tools.

Jose

I.I truely do not know whats been useful to us as a team, because we as a team has never asked ourselves that question.

II !. Being able to work as a team 2. Helping those who are slow in understanding the material 3. Understanding and respecting each members level of comunication 4. Making sure that we all understand our assignment before we leave the classroom 5. Maintaining a positive attitude.

III.Reliability is crucial for each team member, in order for the team to be successful. Second is comunication, there are always individuals that does not shy away from making there point, what makes them unique is the way they present there argument, in a respectful, positive and confident way. Third will be the ability to listen, in order for a team to function well it has to have good listeners. Fourth is to be a good participant, one that makes him/herself availlable at meetings becoming fully engaged at the meetings, and lastly I will have to pick "problem solver". It is important that when a problem arises that the team players put it on the table so as a team a solution can be found.

Martie

I. Identify five or more experiences that have been most useful to you as a team in your understanding of Educational Research. Please list them in the order of most useful.
 * 1) Team research requires constant communication with each other. We have learned the importance of including each other in all communication so that we all have the same information. Email has been the method used most often, but a wiki page has allowed access to all for storage of our information.
 * 2) We have learned, and will continue to learn, the strengths that each of our team members can bring to the table. Before the semester is over, it is my hope that we can share our strengths and allow others to grow.
 * 3) The presentation made to our class regarding online research through the library provided more than one useful tool, even to those of us who have already been conducting online research through the library’s website.
 * 4) The requirement to determine group rules before any work began was helpful and always available to us if we need to return to them as reminders.
 * 5) Truly working as a team to complete our reading assignments allowed each of us equal responsibility for the reading and the sharing of the information. The act of sharing relieved a huge burden of reading all of the material.

II. Identify five or more of the most helpful things that will enable your team to complete this course successfully and explain how each of the identified points relates to what it means to be successful.
 * 1) Continue to communicate with each other as a team, not individuals, which will allow us to each have access to the same information or knowledge.
 * 2) Remember to look at the rules of groupness if we are feeling tension or disagreements within the group. We agreed on the rules before we started any work or had the opportunity to feel tension so they are a good place to return to if needed.
 * 3) The opportunity to have group time for work during class would be helpful, even just 30 minutes of uninterrupted time on our Friday evenings would allow us the time to determine the work to be done for the week and distribution of the assignments without a delay for later communication.
 * 4) When we are meeting as a group we can allow our facilitator to keep us on task while she allows each of us to have a voice in the discussion.
 * 5) Each member should continue to honor deadlines. The deadlines have been set by the group to allow sufficient time for review prior to submission of any assignment.

III. Describe what your team might do differently in order to improve over the remaining weeks of the semester and explain why.

We are working well together and will be successful in completing our final project and learning about educational research. To extend the learning, we should each acknowledge our strengths and coach our team members in those areas so that we will all increase our knowledge, skills and abilities.