Peer Reviews

Based on the peer reviews I have received from everyone I have worked with I have determined that many people have the same perception of me.  This perception matches up with what I expected based on what I have provided in discussion throughout the course of the semester.  At the beginning of the semester when we were in subgroups that we didnt know much about I offered a bit of opinions but mainly listened and would generally go with the ideas we came up with.  At the end of the semester when I was in a group I had alot of interest in and was knowledgable about the subject I offered many more opinions and we all collaborated our ideas to make our wiki page.  I noticed that my feedback matched up with this as well.  It was vague and usually had comments like “joked around a bit” and “good contributor”.  These comments are vague as opposed to comments I received when I was in a group I had more interest in.  I received more complete comments on what my participation was.  According to the receivers fact that the receiver is totally in control I would say that is correct.  When I received my feedback I already had a set perception of what feedback would be good and what would be bad.  I was in control of receiving good feedback from my Sports group because I worked very hard throughout the project.  I was in control of receiving minimal feedback from other groups because I did minimal work.

Answers to questions

4.I find that setting goals is a vital part in achieving anything.  It is important to set goals in order to evaluate progress being made.  I feel that in this class we have all had goals that we have set to get this wiki up and running.  We set numerous smaller goals in order to achieve the larger goal which is the completion of the wiki.  I feel that if we did not set goals we could not achieve our purpose.

 

10.I strongly feel that our group is made up of all the roles necessary to achieve optimum productivity.  A few people have stepped and become leaders in and many people have been voicing their opinions.  It took a few weeks for us to battle through differing opinions, but I feel that it was a necessary step to take in order for us to grow more as a group.  It allowed us to clearly define our roles as individuals working as a part of a group to achieve a goal in this class.

 

11.I say that we are generating effective work.  In my sports group we have clearly defined roles as to who is going to do what for the wiki.  We have worked very well together and our page seems to be coming along great.

  

15/16.  I have played many roles during class.  The opinion giver, information seeker and giver and also the follower.  In my sports sub group I have voiced my opinion on how we should go about creating our page.  I have asked for clarification on a few instances and have also provided a lot of information pertinent to our group.  In the informed consent group I have played the role of follower more frequently.  It seems I did this because of confusion at first and then Eric and Steph seemed to be working on the same page together and everything sounded great so I just went with the plans which they came up with.

 

18.  In the informed consent group I act as a follower because I have been resisting to try to understand exactly how we are evaluating what we are studying.  I was very confused and basically didn’t want to understand exactly what the purpose of the group was so I tended to just agree with everyones ideas.

 

Long Term Goals – Informed Consent

Meeting at the beginning of class we discussed what our goals should be to get this consent form drafted.  Steph suggested that someone put all the links from the course of the semester about the informed consent onto 1 page to make it easy to find.  Eric voluntered to do that.  We decided that we should begin to design ideas of how to actually draft a consent form.  Steph said that we need to do more research and develop these ideas over the course of the week.  When talking about a survey for the class to complete to evaluate the class, Mike suggested that we use a scale of 1-5 because typically people do not like to write suggestions or answers to surveys.

Informed Consent Group

The informed consent group did not meet during the previous two weeks to discuss what we needed to accomplish.  Eric tried to reach out by posting comments.  We met at the beginning of class to discuss our goals for the next week.

What to do

It does seem as if our class has made alot of headway in what we want to do for our Course Wiki.  Although it have not been in the last couple classes, I have been keeping up with everyones posts and am looking forward to being able to help out this week when we meet again.  In reading what one student said that everyone should contribute by having his or her own page of experiences.  I feel that this could be a good idea because many people seem to want to contribute in some of the same things i.e clubs around campus, but people can have very different attitudes towards a certain club,  It is out job to inform incoming students of everyones opinion when it comes to these things and by having many different voices about them will show this.

Course Wiki

I am a Senior at Umass and very interested in Sports.  I have participated in all kinds of intramurals and have attended numerous sporting events.  I think that the best way I can contribute would be something that involves this aspect of the Umass environments.  Talking about intramurals, great places to play pickup games off campus, attending games.  These and anything else that will get incoming students more involved.  I feel its a great way to meet alot of people and with Umass now beginning to go back to its hayday in basketball it would be good for incoming students to have a passion for the games.

Wicked

I have chosen to write about the word “wicked”. I feel that especially living in Massachusettes the word has evolved and taken on a new use for itself. I never really put much thought into the word itself. I have always used it freely when trying to explain myself. For example if im eating a meal and I really enjoy it, I would say that this food is “wicked good”. A contrary example would be if im am not feeling well I could say that im “wicked sick”. Both uses are demonstrations of how a person from the Boston area uses the word.It wasnt until my freshman year at college did I really comprehend that the way I use the word is not correct among other places. A friend of mine, who was an exchange student from England, would always say that Im using it incorrectly. He would use “wicked” to describe a behavior. For example, if someonewere acting extremely mean in a situation, he would say that person was acting wicked.  A thing that confused me was that he would also use the same word to describe excitement. For example, we were watching the X-games and he saw a skateboarder do a spectacular move in the air. He described seeing that as “wicked” also. His uses were much different from the way I used the word. Funny enough we both confused eachother when using it. I suppose that it is all a matter of how/where a person was raised and the familiarity of the way in which you use the word that will define it for you. 

The word wicked is derived from the word wick, which is an adjective of the word wicca meaning wizard or a male sorcerer. It was used to describe mischief and evil. This is all from Old English and is commonly thought of as the proper way in which the word should be used. It wasn’t until the 1980′s where we saw the word evolve and take on new meaning, such as in the way we in Mass. use it today.

No Mas Farc Protest

I am writting this blog on Monday morning before the No Mas Farc protest.  I guess this means that I will not be attending.  I dont have much interest in a protest like this nor do I want to make the drive to Boston to attend.  I am in a depressed state right now after the loss in the Superbowl.  I made a decision to sleep in and attempt to foget everything that happened last night.  I am sure that this is not a decision that has much relation to this classes subject matter and at this point I dont care to much.  I am sure by next week I will regain my senses and have a blog that relates more to the subject matter, but as you can see my mind is elsewhere.

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