An English teacher in Argentina describes her experience collaborating on a group project for an online education course. Her group was tasked with creating a 2-page document on how politics influences teaching. Only 3 of the 8 group members actively contributed to the shared document. The others made excuses for not participating and complained about the final product. Despite being short-staffed, the 3 active members were able to complete the assignment on time by effectively communicating and combining their work.

1. EXAMPLE OF CO-OPERATION AND IN-OPERATION
I´m an English teacher at High School in Argentina. I live in a small town called “Arequito” that is in the
mile of the country. I`m studying another on-line course (a postgraduate about technology applied to
education). This course is divided into different modules and in each of them we have different peers
(more or less 80) from different parts of the country-of course all of them are “teachers”, including me.
In the module called “Educational Policy Framework”, we were put into groups of eight members
(following the alphabetical order of our surnames-at random) and we were asked to develop a document
as regards how does politics effectively influence or not on our daily job at school and in front of the
students in a classroom. For this assignment, the tutor gave as a “wiki document” to share all our
knowledge and then create -all together- a unique document of 2 pages, and she gave us a whole week to
resolve this task.
Worst collaboration (in-operation): Five members of the group didn´t write anything on the wiki or add
some isolated ideas out of time and even worst, they disagreed with the final document because they
weren´t included. Besides, they complained all the time because of internet disconnections and so far and
so on. For me, only excuses!
Best collaborations (co-operation): The only 3 members of this group (me included) that worked on the
wiki document really read what the other wrote, we made the necessary corrections and we decided the
content and presentation style using all the means of communication available (FB, Class Chat, email,
Internal message system within the module, cell phone, etc.)
ANALYZING MY EXPERIENCE:
C: all teachers but with different motivations.
E: some only wanted to pass through the module like a ghost, not worrying about
doing it the best we can.
N: of course some did it with responsibility and the rest … just nothing
T: those that didn´t participate wanted to keep sitting in their comfortable chair. At
least I guess so.
E: we are all different persons with different experiences, geographical and social
contexts.
R: probably what happened in this group could happen in any other group we join.
As regards CD, I want to say that in the case describes, most of the teacher are only studying to take the
title and the corresponding points to their curriculum.
Of course some of those who effectively participated in the assignment showed different creative levels
(depending mainly on the subject they teach).
In structural terms and in accordance to creative differences, this help us to solve the problem and to
continue with the work no matter if some were not willing to do it and to do it in the better way only 3
instead of 8 minds thinking could do it.
In my example, the failure was not having had the possibility to work in group (I mean all its members),
but this then turn into success because less people could do the assignment intended for more people, we
did it on time and we passed it.
THREE THINGS I MIGHT HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY:
1) Insist more hard to all the members of the group to be part of the assignment
2) Be more kind to those that showed despair or lack of interest
3) Explain the rest the importance of do all the assignments
In the future I`ll probably be more creative –in terms of finding the way to encourage others to see an
assignment as a challengue and not as an imposed obligation.
Mariel G. Ferrer
Arequito – Santa Fe - Argentina