Exercises
Review the three scenarios at the beginning of Chapter 1, “Planning Your Collaboration.” How might each of these groups’ problems have been alleviated with a task schedule?
Think of a time when you were involved in a group project. Did this project have a project manager? If so, was this person effective? If you had had the type of project manager described in this chapter, how might any problems that your group experienced have been prevented?
Read Appendix B, “Sample Meeting Minutes,” which contains three versions of the meeting minutes from one four-person team. All three versions contain the same information. Which version do you think will be the most effective for keeping the team on track? Why?
The videos in this textbook are directly based on the interactions of actual student teams. Before you complete any of the video exercises, take a moment to watch the introductory video on the Team Writing Web site, which describes how the videos were produced and created.
View Team Video 3: Jamaal, Jim, Don, and Tonya. Then, answer the questions that follow.
This group of students is preparing a proposal to irrigate a third-world country. To the best of your ability based on the information you have, create a brief set of meeting minutes to follow up this group’s discussion. What important information has this group failed to discuss? What issues does this team need to take up at its next meeting?
What collaboration method does the team in this video seem to be using? What problems do you anticipate if the team continues to collaborate using this method?