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RUNNING HEAD: ASSIGNMENT ONE PART FIVE

Team 2, Group 1 (Assignment 5)

Sylvia Chris
SLIS, Kent State University
Information Landscape LIS 60010
Dr. Catherine Closet-Crane
12 February 2017
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RUNNING HEAD: ASSIGNMENT ONE PART FIVE
Assignment One has consisted of working in a group in order to create an

information resource that would be accessible to information users. A great deal of

information is now found online, with the new generation of news consumers searching

for information through search engines and databases (DeSaulles 2015). The process

began as the members of Team Two began communicating with each other through

various discussion board posts, then through Blackboard IM and email. Initially, the

conversation focused on our expectations for our group, and many concerns were

expressed in regards to completing a group project online rather than in person since it

was a new experience for the group members. However, the voiced concerns were

utilized in the creation of a group contract, which outlined the procedures the group

would take if any issues were to arise amongst group members in relation to the project.

The next step in the process of creating an information resource , which ended up

being a website that was formatted as a blog. was to divide the group into three

subgroups (resource and identification, information preparation and presentation, and

information delivery and distribution). This was accomplished by utilizing our discussion

board and having everyone post which group they felt they would be able to contribute

the most valuable information to. I was part of group one (resource and identification),

and we followed a similar process for our group meetings as we did for our team

meetings. We used Google docs and Google sheets to organize our information, and our

weekly meetings were held through Blackboard IM where we would review the

information we had gathered to make sure it was legitimate and would be helpful to

group two.
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As an individual, I contributed to the process of finding information by utilizing

the resources I had available to research Ohio breweries. I focused a great deal of

attention on the breweries in Northeast Ohio, because that is where I am from and I felt

confident about researching breweries from that area since I already knew a little bit

about them, before I moved on to other parts of Ohio. To make the collection process

easier, I created a spreadsheet on Google Sheets that was color-coded based on the

location of the brewery (Northeast, Central, etc.), and it was also alphabetized based on

the brewery’s name. The document also allowed group members to input information

such as how many types of beer the brewery served, whether or not they serve food, the

year they were established, the city, address, and overall rating of the beer from

beeradvocate.com. My other group responsibilities included taking notes at team

meetings, attending all group and team meetings, making an outline for our group

assignment, and filling in the information for the group assignment with the other

members.

Despite team members being initially concerned about doing a group project

entirely online, we had relatively few challenges to face and the ones that we did face

were mostly beyond our control. The first challenge we faced was trying to work around

everyone’s schedules because we all go to work as well as school and have families and

other obligations in our lives. However, this was addressed immediately and we

discovered that we could all meet later in the evening, around 9 or 9:30PM Eastern Time.

Our final challenges were often extenuating circumstances, but they thankfully did not

happen very often. For example, one night, a team member had to miss the meeting
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because her child was sick and another member was stuck in a snowstorm coming home

from work. We were short two people, which meant that there was possibly less

information shared. There were also occasional issues with technology, such as

computers lagging or Blackboard IM freezing for brief amounts of time, which meant

that people missed information that was important to the project. Another example was

that for the first meeting, my laptop camera and microphone were not working and I had

to communicate through typing, which was difficult since the conversation was moving

very quickly.

Finally, we faced the challenge of ensuring that our information fit Cox’s (2014)

business value of information. The demands of making sure that the information

(website) was completed and ready by the due date (timeliness), making sure our

information was relevant (appropriateness), ensuring that our information was correct

(accuracy), had enough detailed without causing information overload for the user

(brevity), and making sure our website was formatted in a way that was easy to read and

navigate (presentation) proved to be more difficult than initially anticipated.

However, we were able to overcome these challenges to the best of our abilities.

As stated previously, we worked with each other until we found a time and day that we

could all be online. When group members were unable to attend meetings because of

family or the weather, we made sure they had the notes from the meeting to review, and

they were able to talk with their group leaders about any other information they felt they

might have missed. In regards to the inevitable failure of technology, we were all able to

remain patient and wait for the issues to pass. After the issues had passed, the information
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was reiterated and team and group members were able to ask questions in order to clarify

the information they had missed.

If I could redo this group project or do anything differently, I am not sure that I

would. Team Two had a great amount of chemistry and passion, so the project felt more

enjoyable than initially anticipated. My only recommendation would be that the group

leaders would have sent the other group members a carbon copy (cc) of the emails they

were sending to the other group leaders. It just recently occurred to me that I really did

not know what the group leaders were discussing regarding the groups until we had our

weekly group meeting. However, group two’s leader (Athnie) was exceptional about

relaying information to us; I just wish we could have gotten the information sooner so we

would have known what exactly was going on and what the other groups needed from us

in their own words. This can be seen as information by consensus, because, looking back,

I might have wanted to be part of group leadership. Buckland (1991) discusses consensus

as being important because the group leaders could have decided that something (like a

certain piece of information) was crucial or unimportant without consulting other group

members first. This had the potential to result in a dictatorship over the group; however,

group leaders did share and take feedback from other group members - just not as

immediately as I would have preferred.

Overall, I learned what it is like to work successfully in a group entirely online,

and what it means to work as a system. A system consists of interrelated elements (such

as subsystems) that work together to create something whole (Cox, 2014). The process

was not something I was initially familiar with, but as the project went on, I could see
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that we were following an information system process. Group One captured the

information, which was the first step in the process, and we also stored information so

that it could be accessed, and shared the information with the leaders of the other groups

so that the information could become an accessible website for information users to learn

about Ohio breweries (Cox, 2014). I can say with a great amount of confidence that I

learned how to work in a group in a way that was positive and educational, and that my

apprehension about working with other students through online means has been reduced

significantly.
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References

Buckland, M. K. (1991). Information as thing. ​JASIST, 42(5): 351-360.

Cox, S. A. (2014). ​Managing Information in Organizations: A Practical Guide to

Implementing an Information Management Strategy. Palgrave Macmillan.

Chapter 2: 27 – 52.

De Saulles, M. (2015). New models of information production. In ​Information 2.0: New

models of information production, distribution and consumption (2nd ed., pp.

15-48). London: Facet Publishing.