Wiki-Project Self Evaluation

The first contribution I made to the page was posting the first draft of an outline, which was generally accepted by the other members of the group and only slightly changed later. The outline was e result of proposals by Joseph and Harris together with what I considered important, especially the section on CMC and the language skills. Following Joseph’s suggestion, I also thought it was necessary to have an introductory section that explained the most important terms for an understanding of intra- and intercultural CMC, since our page is mainly designed for people who have not done detailed research in the field, yet. The content to sections 1 and 2 was posted by me on April 12th. In the introductory section I tried to keep the explanations as concise and informative as possible and just added some logistical considerations for teachers to the basic descriptions of the terms. Since much of the research in CMC (including the article I summarized on the discussion board) examines to what extent CMC enhances language proficiency, I thought it was necessary to include a section on the links between CMC and the four skills. This section, then, was intended to be a little more theoretical. I tried to include the knowledge I gained from reading the relevant articles for class. The problem was that I could not really find articles that dealt with CMC and reading proficiency, so this part of the section consequently appears less theoretical. In the practical applications section I wrote two short paragraphs about the possibilities of Email and Electronic Message Boards on April 25th. The information I give there is mostly based on two articles in Teaching with Technology that I had to concentrate on in my article presentation. I also added some pictures to illustrate the respective technologies. On April 26th I decided to add the references to those articles on the page. Finally, my personal experiences paragraph is rather short due to my limited experience with CMC in teaching. However, I think this is an interesting section for people to read as it personalizes our page. Overall I would say that our page gives an interesting introduction to intra- and intercultural CMC for people who have not done research in the field yet.
The only revision I made to the page was to move Harris’s contribution about his teaching background that he initially put in the first section to the end. I thought it would fit better in the personal section where he had already posted his experiences with CMC.
At this moment our page is not complete as examples for synchronous CMC applications are still missing. I figured I have contributed enough to the page and give Joseph the chance to add some content as well. If I had to evaluate our group work I would say it was not optimal given that not everyone contributed to the page equally and that our page is not finished right now. A little more real-life communication among the group members would have been beneficial, I guess. For this lack of communication all group members are equally to “blame”.
As for my contributions, I have met every deadline and posted everything that was due on time. Also I would say that my contributions were crucial in the development of the page with regards to structure as well as content.
I would give myself an A and the group as a whole a B.