Group projects

Hello everyone,

I am building a website which enables students to manage their group projects online. Basically the idea is to allow students to create private groups, invite classmates, manage files, chat, schedule meetings and follow project management templates. The point is to make their work easier by giving them tools and guides to managing their projects.
I think that group projects are always tough since you're dealing with different personalities and a lot of the time students don't know how to work with others. I'm just wondering what other people think?
thx.

Tags: group, management, online, productivity, projects

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Permalink Reply by Linda Ziskind on January 14, 2010 at 7:19pm

I think it's a great idea. Not only will you be helping the group work more efficiently, you'll be teaching your students important things about collaboration, online data management, and other technology skills vital and relevant to today's work environment. Have you looked at the suite of Google Applications that would allow you all of the functionlity you mentions. You could even use it to build a website. http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/

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Permalink Reply by Sal P on January 15, 2010 at 7:47am

Thanks for the feedback Linda. I think Google has some amazing tools, however they don't seem to give much guidance on how to use them effectively. I like Google Groups for example, however you have to build your group page yourself and then when it's built you don't get any guidance on how to use the tools. I think it's more likely that students would want a lot more hand holding along the way in the form of a simplified website and guides.
I'll be looking for Alpha testers soon if you're interested?

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Permalink Reply by Robert David on February 22, 2010 at 9:04am

I would be interested if you need testers. I'm doing preservice teacher training at Université de Montréal in Québec and this is the kind of tool I would love to put in the hands of my students. What type of tools are you using to create this web app ?

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Permalink Reply by Sal P on March 1, 2010 at 2:34pm

Great, a first version should be ready in about a month. I can email you when it's ready if you like?
The site is being developed in PHP. Let me know if you have any other questions.

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Permalink Reply by Darcie Priester on February 22, 2010 at 1:09pm

I would be interested as well. Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Sal P on March 1, 2010 at 2:32pm

Great! I can email you when we're ready or you can subscribe to my blog if you like: entertheblog.com

Cheers,
Sal

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Permalink Reply by David Bain on February 22, 2010 at 3:11pm

I'll put my two cents in. It is great what you're trying to accomplish. I've had success in the classroom using Weebly.com. Weebly basic is free and it has some great Web2.0 tools. I've upgraded and use Weebly Pro. It has additional Web2.0 tools. Weebly basic doesn't have the chat feature that you've mentioned. It is web-based, no software to download or put on a school server. My students learned to use Weebly pretty quick and did some pretty nice work both individually and in small groups. It might be worth taking a look at.

DB

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Permalink Reply by Sal P on March 1, 2010 at 2:23pm

Hi David,
Yes I have heard of Weebly and it looks like a great site. However it appears that they're in a different space than enterthegroup.com. What we are trying to do is solve the problem of group projects being very hard for students. I think the main difficulties for students in group projects are organization and collaboration.
We want to provide tools like project outline templates, task lists, meeting schedulers, chat etc along with articles on how to manage projects so they can learn to use these tools effectively.