Assignment #3-Comments
I found assignment #3 to be very interesting and overwhelming at the same time. Like most of you, I spent hours trying to perfect my elevator pitch as well as my venture pitch- working out the glitches and essentially trying to gain your “investment”. I am very proud of what I created and I know that most of you are too, as this assignment was not only time consuming but also may have involved some to feel beyond their comfort zones- much like it did for me. However, I completed this assignment and was very eager to view all the other products and services. I really enjoyed watching everyone’s pitches, I can tell that everyone worked very hard to complete this assignment and put a lot of effort into it- this should not go unnoticed.
However, I am very surprised with a lot of the comments made about the pitches, and actually cannot believe that some people would go to the extent they did.
Deb had made a really good point on Davids post about “Elevators….don’t have PowerPoints” (which is a completely different issue) and said, “ I am all for constructive criticism – constructive being the key word. Constructive criticism will be incorporated into each of our marks with comments on how to improve when David sends out our final evaluations.” Deb made a very good point- constructive criticism is to be made by David.
I realize that this assignment was intended for others to view and add their thoughts as well as point out ways to improve the pitch, however is it truly necessary to put a product, or invention down? Especially knowing that so much time and energy was spent trying to not only complete this assignment, but also achieve a reflecting grade from David. I completely understand that my pitch as well as others may not have “gained” your investment, but does that honestly make you want to negatively vote the pitches, especially considering you could have positively voted one?
Please let me know if I am way off base, but to me it just seems unnecessary to actually vote negatively considering the circumstances, along with endless amount of time and energy put into this assignment. I get it and completely understand that not everyone is going to agree or even like something, but I think some people just went a little to far.
Thanks,
Jenaca
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mcquaid 4:09 am on December 1, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi, Jenaca.
I don’t think you’re really off the mark. You’re just being honest in giving your view of how the course is made at this point – I’m sure David V. will take it as constructive criticism, too!
I don’t think anyone needs to vote anything down, either… it’s not a constructive evaluation (although I found it interesting to see how David WP’s last post started garnering negative votes, then the post’s category was taken away so that no votes were shown… obviously he must have touched on some people’s nerves if they felt like voting his post down). We have all put a lot of work into both parts of our pitches, and, as much as I wait with some anxiety, I want to see what everyone says of my pitch, good or bad. I hope reviewers do for me like I have (I think) done for others – try to respectfully give the good points and to-work-on points, while keeping (hopefully) an overall positive tone. The thoughts of ten of our peers are pretty invaluable – I’m glad to get them, “good” or “bad”. I’m hoping to finish my three big posts tonight, and then applying votes to them as well as others whose elevator pitches I fancied but didn’t have to review. I won’t be clicking any “down” arrows as I go.
Cheers,
Stephen
verenanz 5:15 am on December 1, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Good for you Jeneca! I totally agree with you…we are here to learn and make mistakes…If we had already made a milion dollars off of our product, we’d have the marketing money to put into making a “different” marketing product. Instead- we have put in our own sweat, blood and tears (it was a rough week) and I appreciate your comments.
I am in China and I am dying to see the video pitches next week! I can’t access any of them from here! I am so impressed with the quality and efforts of the work I have seen (through written pitches) but it isn’t the same without the videos…..You don’t know what you are missing..until it is gone.
Thank you for this note Jenaca.
Verena:)
Everton Walker 6:52 am on December 1, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi All,
I totally agree too! Obviously, we are not experts yet and therefore our efforts should be treated accordingly. Putting others down doesn’t help the situation after such hard work.
Everton
jarvise 7:59 am on December 1, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Jenaca and all,
I definitely hear what you are saying here. I had a really hard time voting down a few of my assigned pitches, but felt that I had to within the confines of the assignment, and felt really bad afterwards. I understand the rationale behind doing it (in the real world, those putting forward pitches would have to face rejection) but you make some good points regarding this being a learning forum and a learning community. It seems as though we can place our critiques and positive comments in the comments sections, while not having to vote down a pitch. It would still be evident which pitches are garnering the most positive support by only using the up voting options. Its difficult in learning communities to impose negative feedback on our peers; part of what fosters a good environment for learning is the feeling that you are supported (though not unquestionably) and safe taking risks.
Interestingly, at the start of the course I had asked about the pulsepress feature not being made available for individual posts (outside of the initial forum) and David had expressed that it was not on there so that people would not feel hurt by having their posts voted down. This makes sense, since the bulk of the course would have functioned to support community. Perhaps enabling it for this forum moves the focus from one of formative assessment to one of summative assessment.
There are definitely pros and cons to having it enabled for this forum. I can see both sides, and I’m not sure what I would do if I were designing the course.
Isn’t ambivalence the best?
Emily
David William Price 11:43 am on December 1, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I really didn’t want to vote on anything but I interpreted it as a requirement of the assignment. As previously mentioned, my encouragement of people to do face-based elevator pitches, a comment and nothing more, was voted down prior to my removing it’s week 13 tag. I removed the tag because I didn’t see how voting comments down made any sense.
David William Price 11:46 am on December 1, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Actually, I’d add that I didn’t vote on anything until I saw people negatively voting on my pitch…. and my comment. So I thought I’d initially misinterpreted the voting requirement and went back through it again.
Allie 8:50 am on December 1, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Jenaca,
I’m really glad that you posted this, as I was feeling a little troubled all yesterday. I’m grateful for your leadership on this – and Deb G’s too. I had been considering suggesting that perhaps this component of the course should be private posts, only viewable to members of the class. However, I wanted to sleep on it.
Something that is concerning me is that some students’ professional identities are attached to their work in ETEC 522. This could be very beneficial in some ways – but I think that when people’s work is being slammed, then this could negatively impact them in their careers. This is especially the case for those of us who are early career or changing careers.
More positively, if you go to the blog dashboard, and click on all posts, you can see the positive and negative votes for everyone’s posts. I was really heartened to see that while people are voting positively, very few people are voting proposals down. Crowdsourcing at work!
A
David William Price 11:45 am on December 1, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
How do you feel anything is being “slammed”? I applied Vogt’s pitch criteria that we were given in week 2 and I simply encouraged people to do face-based pitches because they would be expected in the business world. I guess no one watches Dragon’s Den.
Angela Novoa 10:38 am on December 1, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Jenaca,
As some have mentioned in this discussion forum, I agree. I think that suggesting not to have the option of voting negatively is appropriate. One of the things that challenges us (and in my case at the same time motivates me) is that we are asked to accomplish goals in a professional manner. This does not imply that the product will be perfect, but it does imply that we must do our best to succeed. And from my experience in MET, I think that we do our best. So, I think that voting negatively on the work of others could be negative not only on the students’ perception of the effort spent on the assignment but also on what Allie mentions: as our professional identities can appear on the Web linked to ETEC 522’s postings. This could negatively impact in someone’s career.
In addition, I would suggest that this activity (as an activity of peer evaluation) could be held before submitting the assignment. It would be very constructive to receive feedback from peers before submitting the pitch. In some courses (ETEC 532 and ETEC 531) I remember we did a similar activity before the due date.
Angela.
David William Price 11:51 am on December 1, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I wasn’t surprised or upset that people voted negatively on my pitch (the negative votes on my comment about face-to-face pitches was totally different – a comment isn’t designed for voting, it’s just a point of view).
As Vogt said, most pitches fail and people evaluate pitches for many different reasons. I didn’t see Vogt’s criteria applied to my pitch explicitly, but I accepted that regardless of the comments people made, MOST people did not like my pitch based on the voting. That means I did not connect with them. That makes me go read the comments and think about how I could change that.
I have no concerns that people voting my pitch down will affect my career. I think it is far more likely that if any judgments will be made, it will be based on how we respond to critiques.
Angela Novoa 10:41 am on December 2, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi David,
I get what you mean. Maybe we did not understand the purpose of voting from the beginning.
Angela.
Julie S 10:41 am on December 1, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Jenaca,
I think you have made a good point here about constructive criticism. I am working on my participation portfolio right now and looked at the category called “constructive response”. This is what it says:
Constructive Response – Actively follows discussion threads to provide constructive responses that celebrate, elaborate and encourage the contributions of participants
I think that there is nothing wrong with the voting up or down but the feedback to our peers should be done in the spirit of celebration, elaboration, and encouragement. This is not an MBA program. This is an Educational Technology program where we are experimenting with technologies as we learn about new ventures and how to present our new ventures for funding. I know there is a difference in what I focussed on in this project than I would have if it would have been purely a venture program.
Jim 4:53 pm on December 1, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
There should be a ‘like’ button for replies such as this… 🙂
bcourey 6:25 pm on December 1, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
me too…like,like, like
Juliana 1:46 pm on December 1, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Jenaca,
I just wanted to chime in here. As Emily mentioned above, I don’t like voting people down either. I would rather give positive votes for the ones I was for and withhold my vote for the others. I think that would still work.
Juliana.