BSU EDTECH Student Blog

Synchronous Collaboration

It was a pleasure collaborating with Evan on the evaluation proposal project.  We accomplished most of our work in a two hour Skype session, while jointly editing a shared Google docs file.  The Skype synchronous environment was a welcome break from the emails, discussion board posts and blog entries that dominate the communication formats in this and most distance education programs.  It facilitated brainstorming activities.  Evan and I added to each other’s ideas as they were being formed and articulated.  For example, when we discussed the budget for mailing expenses, I suggested looking at bulk mailing rates.  Immediately, Evan thought of the cost saving benefits of using Survey Monkey.  If we had not participated in a synchronous discussion, I doubt all of the various ideas we developed would have come to us individually.

As new ideas were introduced, we decided whether the work required to revise our proposal was worth the effort.  Using Skype and a shared Google docs file condensed the amount of time we needed to discuss and agree on a variety of proposal ideas.

The proposal writing activity brought back memories of my past system design assignments and grant writing proposal projects, mostly due to aligning and detailing budget items to each major project task.

Perhaps, because I looked ahead to the assignments in the next module, I realized the evaluation proposal assignment did not include the use of rubrics.  I look forward to learning more about rubrics in the coming weeks.  My current knowledge and skill set of rubric development for assessment and evaluation is limited to the use of RubiStar, a convenient online tool for creating rubrics from subject-matter templates.