Debrief on the POD Exercise

3 stages of interaction called socialization, alliance building and forming a team to do the work.

The background writing for the exercise (as well as the final recommendations) can be found both as part of this blog and on the Blue Group Ning. All of this material is to be considered when evaluating my contribution to Blue's work This post is just a personal debrief of the POD work structured according to one of the questions on the sample exam paper.

Socialisation

'To get social' with people you've never met or seen for me was a real problem. Fortunately another Blue member (Sarah) had somehow 'decided' that we would use a Ning as the main communication platform and had set it up for us. After inviting everyone, she was a bit vague on what to do next. I made contact with her and suggested we use Skype on a regular Wednesday night to get a better quality communication. Because Sarah had done so much in establishing the project, I aimed at trying to establish a timeline and the various roles that other POD members would play. I published this on the Ning forum.

Alliance Building

By this time, Sarah and I had started to work on the project (as if no other people would come forward). However, soon Andrew and Tyrone replied to their invitations and supported the work that Sarah and I had done. I then published a forum posting for each of the POD questions. Over the previous few weeks, I had collected lots of bookmarks that would help us. My posts included the best links and tried to link bookmarks to particular questions. I also posted a draft set of dot points that covered the main points of question one. Sarah replied to this post with a very expanded and improved version. In the meantime, Andrew had provided his own set of bookmarks and comments linked to each question.

Forming a team

We knew a team was building when we realised that with only a week to go, we were well on track according to the schedule we had set ourselves. At the final meeting, Andrew got us using Google docs, which enabled us to edit all drafts into a final set of recommendations. It's lucky there were only 4 of us because it got a bit complicated when everyone wanted a say. At this stage, I felt I had done enough and didn't want to get in the way of the others. I sort of sat back and watched the document write and edit itself in front of my eyes. It was amazing. I thought the final doc was a pretty good version of what we all thought and did in the activity. I thought the activity was great because it gave us a real and practical way of engaging as an online community and developing a POD.