At the project onset, questions would surely arise surrounding: Who would coordinate our efforts? What topics would be discussed? What delivery method would we use? What roles would be assigned to each team member? How would we present our thoughts, to promote an equal collaboration effort among team members? Could we come up with a realistic timeline? As questions mount without immediate answers, it's clear that this first team interaction would be a bit awkward and clumsy until a group dynamic could be established
The structure of U of P Online presents the problem of team member accessibility, as our final communication issue. The technological limits of the U of P servers and purely text based communication were things the team could not avoid. Depending on the U of P servers to be up, live, and functioning optimally is sure to be an obstacle. The experience of frequent/continuous postings may sometimes prove problematic, extremely slow, and occasionally unsuccessful. The receipt of posts and emails in a timely manner is crucial to our coordination efforts but it will certainly become evident that other means of communication are necessary. .
In order to resolve the issue of communication online it is important to be familiar with existing tools and while exploring other communication. To get around the lack of face-to-face discussion, we thought it best to expand our range of communication options to facilitate a more rapid exchange of information. These methods include: conference calls; instant messaging/chat rooms where written information can be clearly exchanged and logged; and independent, direct phone and e-mails between team members. By taking advantage of instant messaging to establish online meetings, the team would always knows who is online and participation is more equitable. This makes our communications more real-time and considerably more effective than the somewhat slow and disjointed Learning Team newsgroups of U of P.