Proposal Rough Draft and Progress Memo
The “Proposal Rough Draft” was the first major graded group assignment. We also handed in individually completed progress memos with this assignment.
The goal of the “Proposal Rough Draft” was to “clearly show the type of proposal [we were] working on, [our] topic or issue, [our] audience, [our] goal, and the strategies [we used] to achieve this goal”. This assignment was also used to show Dr. Fricke that we were actually working on this project and not waiting until the last minute to complete it. The purpose of the progress memos was to allow us to tell Dr. Fricke about our individual progress and any issues we might have been experiencing with our group members or the project itself.
The only real issues our group had was communication and finding time when everyone could meet. Several times e-mails or text messages were sent out but were not received by everyone. I am not aware of the reasons for this problem. Communication did not give us very much trouble though because if one person did not receive a message they would find out shortly after from a friend in the group. Finding times to meet however, was a slightly larger issue. Everyone in our group is active in extracurricular activities and therefore have very busy schedules. Once we talked through our availability, we were able to find a time that suited everyone. So, availability was only an issue for the first meeting.
This assignment probably took the most time to do. It required a lot of planning and collaboration. Initially, we wanted to turn in our project early, so our rough draft was almost entirely complete. We decided against turning the final in early, however, since Dr. Fricke was available during his office hours to go over the rough draft before the final product was due. Gathering our research took a lot of time, but I think it was an important aspect of our project.
During the time it took us to gather all the information we needed and to write the rough draft, our group became pretty close. We became more comfortable around each other and sometimes even got a little sassy with each other. One of our meetings was held at my house. I ordered pizza and the group stayed after we were done working and just watched TV and hung out.
Overall, this assignment was enjoyable. I think this was becaues our topic was fun to research and talk about. I also attribute our getting along to the speedy completion of this assignment.
