While research is already a feared component of college, it is a whole other ball game when you factor in doing a research project with a group. The research project of our group began when we decided on a topic. The group itself was formed because the three members sit in proximity to one another in class and we have established a friendship with one another. We realized we have several things in common and would easily agree on the same thing. This actually proved quite the opposite because we were stuck between doing a radio or a game. One member of the group wanted a game but another wanted a tool. The game was a good choice because everyone plays them and is fairly knowledgeable about them. However during the initial formation of groups in class when students were deciding what they would want to do for a project, many of them were leaning towards doing a research game. This triggered our group members to choose a resource instead. Having decided on a research project, we began researching our topic but as we progressed though the process, we realized that the idea of a radio would not be viable. Running out of time, we decided that we go back to the initial suggestion of doing a game.
The more we looked up topics and ideas, the more confident we grew in choosing a game. Now in modern society when someone talks about a game, they refer to a video game.  However, doing research is still the same now as it was 10 or 20 years ago, same concepts of narrowing your topic down to a proposal, a research question, annotated bibliography, outline and so forth. In that sense we decided that we should do a classic board game instead of the modern flashy and fast video game type. “Life” is a game for the family and working in a group you are like a family having to work together to resolve or in this case come up with something together. Besides we agreed that a video game in itself could be somewhat of a distraction meanwhile that’s what we are trying to avoid, it would be hypocritical of us.
In implementing our project to a presentation we considered the traditional concepts of using index cards or using the versatile tool of PowerPoint. Being that the classrooms are well equipped to accommodate utilizing modern tools we decided on making a PowerPoint presentation. With this tool offering so many options we wanted to avoid going off on tangents and instead to keep the presentation “short and sweet”, just enough to help provide us with a guide and at the same time a visual stimulus for the class to follow along. Given the fact that our group is presenting on the second day of presentations, we had the benefit of learning from our classmates’ mistakes but at the same time the challenge of emulating the set standard.
From working on this project as a group, there were a few things to be learned from the experience. The first and foremost was that you have to mobilize quickly and set a deadline for all components of the project that you want handed in from the members. Second you need to have more time to do a project of this magnitude so it can be given the attention it deserves. When we started working on the website, the members found themselves wanting to add this and that and so many things that were all great ideas and content but given the time had to be dismiss. Granted that the project focus was not entirely on creating a website, it would have been nice to go all out in creating it. The time constrain on a project of this nature makes it very difficult to elaborate on the creativity aspect of it because there was not enough time. We still wonder if it was because we took some time to mobilize or if it just was bad timing because of the fact that it cut into finals week. Regardless, the project was fun to work on as you were given plenty of leeway and minimal constrains in which direction you wanted to go in.
