X-Culture: A Nice Finished Product

Guest Blogger: Jessica Hook, Nathan M. Bisk College of Business student

Overall the x-culture project went pretty well. My team and I were able to finish the necessary requirements, in time, and have a nice finished product. We ran into very few problems. The only hiccups that occurred were people waiting until the last minute to submit their parts, one teammate not participating, and a lot of plagiarism.

When we submitted our first draft of the report we had 39% plagiarism. When I looked at the paper, four out of the ten sections that we had were completely copied and pasted from website. The parts did not even read properly. When I confronted the members of the group that did this, they said that they had to copy it. It was not cited at all or reworded. I think that in certain parts of the world plagiarism is not looked down upon.

There we had two teammates that joined our group during the duration of the project. Each of the members that joined into the project did their part and caught up on the work that was already completed and were able to get up to speed very quickly. There was one member that was from Thailand that was part of the group from the very beginning and never responded to any emails of any other forms of communication. They emailed one teammate asking for a part just two days before it was due. We assigned them one sections but never received anything. We had to do the section at the last minute because of this. So in conclusion, only five of the six teammates participated in the project.

During the project I made it a point to submit the materials needed a couple of days before the deadlines. My other teammates also said that they would submit their needed sections a couple days before the deadlines also, but unfortunately I am the only one who kept my word and submit my sections on the dates that I promised. I understand that we all have busy schedules and many things going on in our lives besides this project, but when other people are relying on you to do something you should always keep your word. This made things a bit difficult during the duration of the project.

Besides these minor problems the project ended up going quite smoothly in the end. We were able to put all of our parts together for the final product without an excessive amount of plagiarism and on time. I enjoyed the experience from the project but it was a bit difficult to communicate because our only form was through email. This is the one thing that I would change for next time because we made it difficult for ourselves. I look forward to doing something like this in my future career.