Jordan Specht

Sydney Hickey
Abby Kemp
Genevieve Showalter
Christian Gonzalez
2-5:
1. Our communication method is iMessage, we all put our phone numbers in a group chat so
everybody is communicating in one convenient spot. The communication will mainly be online
and for the most part asynchronous.
2. Requirements for our communication system are a mobile phone and a connection to the
internet.
3. The communication tool is iMessage and everyone has the application.
4. Be specific when addressing a certain person, and send an iMessage when something has
been changed to our document/project.
2-6:
1. Our team will be creating documents to submit electronically on Canvas.
2. Since we will be primarily using Google Docs, we will be utilizing cloud based applications.
3. Google Docs/Drive is our content sharing method.
4. We created a Google Doc to share our created content and it can be viewed here:
https://docs.google.com/a/students.clark.edu/document/d/1n0iZUlVlUB0kV2qwcvn4ig2c7PhBiH
X869s_gMEJ2os/edit?usp=sharing.
5. Don't make drastic changes to the document without contacting other group members first,
and for minor changes alert the group when they are made.
2-7:
1. Our team decided to manage tasks by delegating each person a task either in person or over
the group message, depending on if we have a chance to meet weekly. The only data that is
stored on the task list are the assignments delegating the work.
2. Our team decided to use Google Docs in order to manage tasks and sharing.

3. We created a Google Docs to divide up questions and clearly assign tasks to certain people
with labels.
4. As a group, we all agreed to designate tasks based on each individual member's strengths
and weaknesses, to ensure the best results. When it comes to managing tasks, we decided that
is important to finish the initial task by the deadline delegated by the group, which will be before
the class due date. That way we have an extra day or so for everyone to give feedback and edit
the document so it becomes a collaborative effort.
2-8:
A. What is collaboration?
Collaboration is when a group of people work together to achieve a common goal. This
is often confused with cooperation, in which people work together to get a job done. The primary
difference between collaboration and cooperation is that collaboration revolves around iteration
and feedback, and often cooperation is a key component to collaboration. It's important to note
that collaboration is not only a process, but it is also an outcome that is a result of many people
working together, not just one person. A group of people may be working together, but if one
member does all the work and receives no feedback then the project was really done by one
person and the lack of feedback would not enhance the project.
B. What characteristics make for an effective team member? Review the survey of effective
collaboration skills in Figure 2-1 and the guidelines for giving and receiving critical feedback,
and discuss them as a group. Do you agree with them? What skills or feedback techniques
would you add to the list?
An effective team member is someone who is not afraid to think out of the box. We
defined thinking out of the box as providing ideas that arent necessarily the most popular or
traditional ways of doing a task, but can end up being a new innovative way of doing so if given
enough thought and consideration. Another good characteristic is someone who provides
constructive feedback and criticism in a respectful manner. Providing constructive criticism
should involve no ill-intent and whoever is giving it should only look to help their partner improve
in whatever task he/she is doing. Being responsible for yourself and your tasks is an obvious
trait that every team member should have. Nobody wants to carry more weight in a project for
someone else, each team member should have an equal share of responsibility and not have to
worry about doing other team members work. In general, being a good and respectful person
towards your team will make an effective team member; always listen to what others have to
say, get back to your team in a timely manner, follow through on commitments, and be openminded with others ideas.
We all agreed that these skills would make for a very effective team member, however,
some skills or feedback we thought of adding would be to use reputable resources to support
personal opinions because adding biased feedback isnt effectively collaborating.

C.
What would you do with an ineffective team member? Define and and give five
characteristics of an ineffective team member. If your group has such a member, what action do
you, as a group believe should be taken?
It can be an unfair and daunting task to manage ineffective team members but often
times it is necessary. It is best to be proactive and begin building a fluent team, however it may
be an unavoidable situation. We all come from different backgrounds with varying experiences
that make up our individual morals and social habits; sometimes, there is just no avoiding being
put on a team with an ineffective member. Figure 2-1 on page 39 of the text offers the Twelve
Most Important Characteristics for an Effective Collaborator; none of which can be either taught
by other team members or made up for. Either a person is enthusiastic about the project or they
are not. They either speak their mind or they do not. It is not the job of the rest of the team to
force an ineffective team member to be open minded, think outside of the box, follow through on
commitments etc. The best way to handle an ineffective team member is to fire them. In a real
professional environment, an employee who is ineffective as a collaborator will be let go. For
our purposes in this class, our group would try to communicate with the ineffective team
member in an effort to reel them back in. However, it is a waste of the groups time and energy
as a whole to try to create an effective team member on top of accomplishing the common goal.
If the trouble member still seems to be dispassionate, unwilling to follow through on their
commitments, unable to communicate in a timely manner, unwilling to participate in difficult
conversations and speak their mind, the group would simply delegate their tasks to others in
order to assure it gets done and then move on.
D.
How do you know if you are collaborating well? When working with a group how do you
know if you are working well or poorly? Give five or so characteristics that indicate collaborative
success. How can you measure those characteristics?
I believe that our group has been collaborating well, we first established the components
of our new collaboration system that would best suit our groups needs. The fact that we
established a preliminary deadline for our assignment gave us time to all get a chance to give
feedback to the work that everyone submitted. By doing that we had the chance to get the best
answer without having to spend more time than was necessary. Since everyone finished their
part of the assignment within the allotted amount of time as well as give feedback to others I
would say we are working effectively and efficiently. I think the five characteristics that would be
proof of our good collaboration would be that everyone would respond back to each other within
a reasonable amount of time, we were all perceptive listeners in our face to face meeting, we
also provided and took negative feedback appropriately, we self-managed ourselves, we were
able to follow through on whatever commitment we made to this assignment. The way we can
measure our timely responses would be by knowing that everyone would respond to a text or
google doc submission within a few hours. As for knowing when someone is a perceptive
listener you can tell by someone being actively involved in the conversation and someone who
is not asking questions that were already addressed. We can measure the negative feedback
given and received properly by the quality of our assignment. I would say we were low
maintenance and that we could see that by the fact that everyone did their part of the

assignment and everyone provided feedback as we had established that we would. For
commitment I think that the fact that everyone did what they had committed to is a clear
measurement of that.
E.

Briefly describe the components of your new collaboration IS.

Our groups new collaboration IS definitely proved itself to get the job done with
simplicity, and the decisions we made when it came to the five-component framework is the key
to our success. Our textbook goes over a model of this framework on page 11. Lets describe
these components:
Hardware
For hardware we stuck to the resources readily available to us to
utilize without hassle, which included computers and smart phones. All group
members had access to this hardware and all other components of our system
could be designed with only these two types of hardware.
Software
We used the following software: iMessage application and cloudbased Google Docs/Drive. The iMessage application on our smart phones
allowed for asynchronous communication between the entire group so everyone
could be aware of what was said. Google Docs not only allows us to create
content (a document) simultaneously in a group effort, but it also provided us with
the ability to answer the questions for the assignment and made it easier to give
each other critical feedback. Google Drive allows for constant online saving so
the document is not lost due to saving issues.
Data
The data component of our system includes all the words,
sentences, paragraphs, and basically all the answers we have provided in the
document you are reading from currently. All of this data comes together to
create the group project we have here.
Procedures
Questions 2-5, 2-6, and 2-7 all have a part dedicated to the
procedures we use when handling a certain part of our IS. For communicating
there were procedures on how best to contact someone or add clarity. For
content sharing there were procedures to make the sure content was formed
collaboratively. When it came to task management we made sure the procedures
supported the purpose of adding ease and organization to the way we created
the content as a group.
People
The other four components of this framework are indeed vital to
the IS, but what value do they have if our team wasnt present to utilize them?
This leads many to strongly believe that a systems most crucial component is
the people. Our textbook reads on page 13 that, the effectiveness of an IS
depends on the abstract reasoning of the people who use it, which supports the
idea that our team is the component that acts as the heart of the system.

F.
Describe what your team likes and doesn't like about using your new collaboration
system.
Likes:
When it comes to what our team enjoyed about using our IS, the factor of convenience
and simplicity played a huge role. When you have a team with 5 group members, the idea of
trying to find time to all meet up can be very discouraging. Texting was chosen because it had
the flexibility of an asynchronous method yet was quick compared to other methods like
emailing since most members did not regularly check their email. The communication method
also allowed for people to be more open than a face-to-face meeting that gives off an
intimidation factor for people. Another part of our IS that all the members agreed was quite
likable was the use of Google Docs. This software enabled collaboration without the stress of
making sure the document was safe and the chaos of trying to email the document back and
forth with different versions of that document thrown about with no hope of simple organization.
Everyone had access to the document at all times, the document was constantly being saved in
the cloud, all versions were accounted for (with the most recent version being the one readily
available), everyone could work on the document simultaneously if desired, task management
was organized with little effort needed since the pages/questions were divided up for individual
work, and critical feedback could be quickly and effectively exchanged.
Dislikes:
While discussing what dislikes the group had when it came to using the IS, there were
noticeably less complaints than there were praises and those that did come to mind were not
glaringly apparent. We did agree that face-to-face had its advantages when it came to clarity, so
the lack of it in our communication method was slightly worth a disapproving assessment.
Another complaint involved the amount of texting required to effectively communicate with a
team of 5, because when any confusion or explanations occurred it resulted in very long text
messages that were cumbersome to write out. Some of the situations could have been handled
faster and with less struggling if dealt with in person. The last problem we came across as a
group using the iMessage was that some people had the contacts inputted into their phones
incorrectly which led to confusion when addressing individuals and it ended up being the wrong
person. This problem, however, was due to human error so iMessage had no technical
difficulties as a result of a problem with the software. Other than the fact that our communication
was lacking face-to-face and texting had some small drawbacks, there was not much else to
critique without exaggerating to make the dislike strong enough to voice.

WORKS CITED
Kroenke, D. / Boyle, R. (2015) Collaboration Information Systems. In Using MIS (8th Ed., pp.
35-67). Pearson.
McKeown, L. (2014, November 27). 4 People That Should Be Fired If You Want Your Company
To Succeed. Retrieved April 19, 2015, from

http://www.businessinsider.com/people-that-should-be-fired-2014-11