Collaboration Technique

Group method for collaboration:

Our group collaborated primarily through Google Drive and e-mail communication. Our group initially met at the University to divide content responsibilities amongst the group. The division is listed below:

Junaid was in charge of the introduction, history of data mining, and current trends in loyalty programs.

Michael was in charge of privacy issues and steps taken to mitigate privacy concerns.

Stephen was in charge of laws and legal issues with data mining, conclusion, and compiling references.

A file labeled "BITM Term Project" was created on Google Drive that over time held most of the group's materials for the project including drafts, citations, outlines, references, and guidelines. Also, drafts and presentation material was e-mailed back and forth between group members with each person using "reply all" when they had a comment/suggestion or update. All group members used Microsoft Office Products (Word/PowerPoint) because all group members had access to those programs.

Recommendations/Suggestions for future groups:

The group recommends at least a couple in person meetings or trying to work on the project while being in the same room. Due to each group member having a different schedule and everyone working full-time the group never had meetings besides brief one's at the end of class. However, the group acknowledges that a couple meetings/working together at the same time on the project would have been more productive and led to more cohesiveness throughout the paper.

The group recommends investing time at the beginning of the project when it is time to select the project. The group selected its topic without doing enough research into the topic and found out too late into the project that there was not as much information available on the topic as originally thought and the difficulty of the project increased because of this.

The group also recommends reevaluating the workload assigned to each individual at least once during the project. Looking back it is apparent that Junaid's portion required substantially more time and work than either of the other two pieces and some of the workload should of been taken off his plate but was not.