Live Sessions

" At any given moment every group has a particular participation pattern. For instance, it may be all one-way, with the leader talking to the members; or it maybe two-way, with the leader speaking to the members and the members responding; or it may be multidirectional, with all members speaking to one another and to the group as a whole... The studies do not indicate that any one given participation pattern is always best; it depends upon the requirements of a given situation. But many studies show that on the whole, the broader the participation among the members of a group the deeper the interest and involvement will be" - David Jaques, Learning in Groups

Small trivial questions that come up during group projects have the ability to set the project off course. In effort to address these questions quickly, a solution that the GSN Team has implemented is having live coding sessions. While these sessions were originally implemented to take care of smaller questions, there are other benefits that also came out of them.

Not only is the team able to get answers and solutions for these smaller questions, but the amount of time that we spent waiting for a response is rapidly reduced. Previously when we had an issue, we would either email, or attempt to call others in the group in effort to get to a solution. However the delay in response sometimes went from bad to worse very quickly, with some questions being on hold for hours, or days. 

The overall sessions don't last for more than 3 hours, however the output of work that we completed in the time, had put us ahead for the rest of the week. In scrum terms, our teams velocity was increasing due to the meetings this meant that we can spend more time refining what we have completed in effort to get the product closer to what the client requires. 

The last benefit of working in these live sessions is that it allows us to gauge the strengths of our teammates, and leverage those strengths, while still working on the areas of improvement. This learning aspect of the session is very useful, and allows the team to grow at a much quicker pace. However it also alleviates any issues where one individual is doing the majority of the work for the project, the tasks can be divided in real time, and any objections can be addressed right away. 

Reference:

Jaques, D. (2000). Learning in Groups: A HandBook for Improving Group Work. Retrieved October 28, 2015, from https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=EbWA1qSGQ20C&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=group work&ots=nI-9pDz9ZR&sig=d_9aYatgzqlSR8pkmbx_ilAmFrE#v=onepage&q=group work&f=true
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Learning Lab. (n.d.). Retrieved October 28, 2015, from https://emedia.rmit.edu.au/learninglab/content/groupwork-tutorial