In high school, I was part of a college preparatory program called I-LEAD that stood for the Institute for Excellence in Academic Development. This group followed the Input-Process-Output Model. In terms of input the personnel includes the students from high school that were also members of the program. I-LEAD was comprised of about 60 students from six Catholic High Schools in the Bronx and Manhattan. The students bring to the program their intellect, skills, and motivation. To be a part of the program they need to feel a sense of accomplishment and they need to see results, like better test scores and acceptances to colleges. The goal of the program is to accelerate in school, as well as outside school, by taking part in summer programs, extra classes, and extracurricular activities. To accomplish this goal the program needed the resources and funding from several sources, as well as teachers and staff to oversee progress.
In terms of interaction processes the interaction patterns, conformity, roles, territoriality strategy, and action agreed with the findings of Kiesler and Cummings. For example, contributions were greater when the program members were in the same place. This is because they had more pressure on them from teachers and staff, and the members tended to help each other which allowed them to each contribute more. However, for competition strategy it did not agree. Kiesler and Cummings said that there was less competition when they are in the same place. I found that when members were in the same place there was more competition because they were able to see each other’s accomplishments and it motivated them to speak up more or do more work.
In terms of output, the program completed its task. About 98% of the members went to college and completed the summer programs and extra classes and activities. Mostly everyone used the resources wisely and saw accomplishments. I think that if brought together again we could all work together because we spent four years learning about each other and getting to know one another.
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It was a good idea for I-LEAD to have all the members gather together and talk about their accomplishments at times. Kraut(2003) says that the presence of others seem to increase a person's concern with what others think and increase involvement with the group and the group's activity. Face-to-face meetings contributed to common group identity and motivated the members to be more active in school and outside school.
ReplyDeleteI would be interested to know if you used any collaboration technologies for I-LEAD and how it turned out.
I would be interested in knowing the type of competition that occurred, whether it was friendly collaborative competition or competition to excel past others. Depending on the tasks at hand, the environment could be dramatically different. A harshly competitive environment could easily be imagined, however by orienting the students to face advanced classes and programs, I-LEAD was able to create instead a collaborative network of motivated intelligent students. It sounds like this I-LEAD program has been a great tool to you.
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