A GUEST POST from the Tipperary Institute project management Skunkworks.
Several things become very obvious when working within a group. On one hand, there are things you expected along with things you did not. Things you thought you knew quickly become things you don't know. On the other hand you can find a subject you like and become quite good at it. As a mature student in a creative multimedia project group, I mingle with men and women of mixed ages and differing backgrounds. Most of us are mature students and we find it can be difficult to touch base outside of the classroom. We have, however, achieved several important initial goals by using a number of tools. Our success goes beyond diligently managing our e-mail. We attribute part of our success to Skype. Free online conference calls through Skype have proven invaluable to us. Skype is free, easy to use, and can be done from the comfort of your own home. Google Talk and Google Groups have both been useful too. The great thing about these forms of communication is that if you use text it will save it for you and you have your transcript ready to drop into your weekly or monthly diaries.
Like it or not it is completely necessary to meet or communicate outside of college hours. As mature students, we have families to raise and obligations to meet. We all come from different backgrounds, men and women from different socio-economic levels. Finding this time to communicate outside of college is difficult, but doable with the clever use of free information communications technologies.
As we achieve the first benchmark in our 12-week project, I am already sold on the need to leverage simple communications tools for best effect. Learning this fact, in the early stages of a group project along with two others, could prove to be a major finding of our third year multimedia project.Barry Doyle is a third year creative multimedia student in Tipperary Institute, working on an element of intelligent digital signage.
