Either I’m especially tired tonight (and tired of battling a cold), or this article does not do the best job of helping the reader follow the issues of group development. The authors want to review and overview group development models.  In doing so they discuss multiple models, but I don’t feel like I’m coming away with a good sense of how they “talk” to each other about various issues.  Perhaps I need to reread the article, and I’m sure discussing it in class tomorrow will help clarify things.

Maybe just a few more connections here and there would make things clearer.  In at least one place, a connection is made which doesn’t seem to exist: this sentence used a word, “then,” which implied connection between the concepts of the sentence and the concepts of the sentences immediately preceding it:

Groups, then, are composed of a set of patterned, dynamic relations among three types of elements: people who are the group’s membership, the group tasks that make up the groups’ projects, and the group’s technology. (142)

Am I losing my mind?  I reread the paragraph that preceded this sentence, and don’t see half of its concepts discussed.  The “group’s technology,” in particular, does not arise in the previous paragraph.

I will write more on this article after discussion it with my class, since I’m feeling confused at this moment!

References

Carabajal, K. Lapointe, D., & Gunawardena, C.N. (2007).  Group development in online distance learning groups.  In M.G. Moore, Handbook of Distance Education (2nd ed.), pp. 137-148.  Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates