Individual Reflection—Ivy Chow

Our team adopted Google Hangouts (www.google.com/+/learnmore/hangouts/‎) for team meeting to facilitate collaboration during these two months of team work.  The advantage of using Google Hangouts is that it is capable of supporting up to nine persons simultaneous video conferencing.  Productivity tools like Google Drive are also helping in teamwork sharing and collaborating.  As such, our teammates who are geographically separated can meet and work together by virtual means.  With these technologies, we could arrange meetings more easily.

Moreover, with the help of Google Slide and Screen Share, we can share the latest version of the presentation materials among teammates, and each team members could give feedback real-time.  Most importantly, when the most updated version is always put online and being kept in a centralized location, the chance of updating incorrect versions in collaboration is slim.

Google Calendar also plays an important role in collaboration.  Not only teammates can check the team’s schedule, but also individual schedule.  Google Calendar has notification capability which acts like alarm clock for notifying teammates on important deadlines and milestones.

Team members are being able to work with these tools with efficiency.  They are also keeping up with schedule and update information without confusion under minimal supervision and guidance.  For example, when the document are being kept in Google Doc, team members could contribute to the same document for updating a specific part assigned to them, without having to worry about overwriting each other’s updates.   Also, we would have been using email attachment when we have not used Google Drive, as such we don’t have to waste effort on handling manual version keeping and merging of multiple copies from different individual.

Brainstorming is the major method of consolidating collective thinking during virtual meeting.  In order to ensure effective outcomes, each team members must prepare before meeting the materials which were in their expertise. Through proper division of labor, effective assignment based on members’ expertise, and brainstorming, an interim decision was made.

Each interim decision was then discussed before finalization.  Different group of virtual team would discuss the interim decisions and hopefully they could arrive with consensus on the issues.  After few round of negotiations among different groups, a finalized decision would emerge.

The first conflict was the disagreement on adopting team work technologies. This conflict was resolved by sparing extra session on demonstrating and discussing the use of these technologies and fortunately we have come up with consensus by performing workshop on them.

The second conflict was during the brainstorming process.  Brainstorming could help creating ideas, but the process would be easily side-tracked.  The conflict was resolved by requiring members to support their ideas with facts when the brainstorming was leading to chaos.

The third conflict was the disagreement on final decision after meeting. This was where we introduced iterative negotiation processes where interim decisions were refined through iteration of discussion with different combination of virtual team.  This was a timely process but we are grateful that this always led to common consensus in the end.

As mentioned before, Google Hangouts, Google Drive, Google Doc and Google Side, etc. facilitated team collaboration.  However, sometime these technologies did not work as expect, for example some team members claimed that those services are sometime inaccessible when they were in China, some even didn’t understand the operation of those technologies.  As a result they would resort to use more primitive and ineffective technologies like email, which would eventually hamper our performance.

I committed to the team with my knowledge in collaborating technologies, and my experience on management which is also helping in resolving conflicts.

I have successfully organized meeting and led the team to its full potent, and resolved couple of conflicts arise.

My major concern in sharing with the group was our cultural differences might lead to conflict in believes which would eventually end up with unnecessary argument or side-tracking on topics.

Regardless, I have not shared with the group that I think we have taken too much time on iterative negotiations during disagreement on decision.  Sometime I think I would have been more effective to resolve these disagreements when we have chance to meet in person, because there would have been changed in attitude when people are met in person.

Nevertheless, I believe the group is working very well, given that the outcome of our work is quite satisfactory.  I think outcome is all that matters.

In conclusion, I believe our group is completing a high quality project because, first we have successfully made use of technology to surmount our geographically barrier; second we resolved conflicts with our pre-determined processes and eventually come up with ideas that was a result of our fully committed efforts.

Individual Reflection—Vivian LIN

Individual Reflection—Vivian LIN

·         Team Practices:

How do your team members communicate with each other? (Content, frequency, method)

Our team members use Google mail, Google doc, Google hangouts, Wechat, phones etc.

Google mail: share our initial draft ideas of the project first, then tell every other member their phone number, wechat number and qq number through e-mails.

Google doc: Garnet Xue create a Google doc and share the article he wrote to the other 5 members. Garnet is the leader of our Team GIVE, so after discussion he draft our virtual company on the Google doc first and share the article link, we could see his article and the work assigning to us. During the whole process, we could modify each one’s work right after our discussion and everybody could see the process, like who had done modified her job, or who hadn’t.

Google hangouts: We use Google hangouts to communicate with the day class as formal meetings. First Garnet would arrange a meeting time with Cai Yun (day class student) then Garnet would told me and Ivy the meeting time and Cai would tell the rest of his day class teammates. When the time came, we 6 people would log on to the hangouts ahead, and I would write the meeting memo during the meeting.

Wechat: At the usual days, we would like to use an app called wechat to communicate some routines like “what part have you complete already”. Because we 6 people are all from mainland, and wechat is a really popular app among mainland students, just like an app called whatsapp. It’s really useful and ubiquitous, and we could all respond to each other instantly.

Phones: When comes to details of the project, sometimes we need to consult other team member or confirm the details with other member, and we want to make sure as quick as possible, we make phones calls directly.

How well do you believe your team coordinates its work across members? What works and what does not work well? (Technology used routines, etc.)

I think our team coordinates the work well across members. Garnet is the leader and assigned work to each one, and he knows all the technologies so well. What’s more important is that he is really kind and patient to teach us how to use new technologies such as Google doc and Google hangouts, because I have never use Google products before in mainland.

This is a picture of the meeting with day class. The article above our faces is the Google doc we had previously. When we had the meeting we could see the article at the same time so each one could point out his or her question regarding to the profile details. And that gave us the inspiration of our project, the virtual video class where teachers could have lessons like this.

Describe at least three conflicts that occurred within your team. How was each handled? What is talked about? What is ignored or avoided?

We team don’t have conflicts, what we had is cooperation. However we do have some conflicts with the day class, but minor ones. 

After the first presentation of our product, Frank commented that our virtual combination product lack of creativity, but our team stick to the e-book company and no intention to change. Then the day class team had a strong will to change our combination product. That is the only conflict we had between day class team.

After some e-mails and meetings, we finally reached the conclusion. Our team will not change our product, but day class will change their company background from a course video company to an HR company like monster.com in the U.S.A. So our combination product still be a course video website, but the course change from college course to professional interest course. Then both team settled.

In what ways did your use of technology facilitate your team's work? In what ways did your use of technology hamper your team's work?

Technology helps us a lot when communicate with day class team. All the Google products assist two teams to have a better understanding, efficient corresponding, and instant feedbacks. Take the final presentation for example, the day class team presented before us, so they would know Frank’s opinion and suggestion first. After the day class, Cai Yun would wechat me what Frank’s opinion and suggestion for us, and I would do more adjustment of our project presentation before our night class. That provides us convenience to have a better version of project idea and presentation.

What hamper our work is sometimes some of us would have to stay at mainland, and could not get reach of the Google products. That is very inconvenient for our communication. We could not log on to the Google mail, could not use Google search, anything related to Google is not reachable. Ivy is a part time student, and she works at Guangzhou, and I need to go to Shenzhen every weekend. So we two could not keep up with the team sometimes. And that is something very annoying, and hamper our team work very much.

·         Team Processes:

When the team first came together, were any promises or commitments made by team members?

No, there weren’t any promises or commitments made by anyone as far as I could remember. But I have bad memories, so who knows.

What I remember is that we help each other, and we encourage each other, so our team’s name is GIVE. The 2^nd class we need to form a team and create our team name and explain our team meanings, we three just know what to do right after Frank’s announcement of the presentation requirement. Ivy drafted our team logo on the iPad first, and then drew on the paper. Garnet and I searched for team meaning and name. Few minutes later, everyone done their job and combined the part together.

What commitments have you made to the group? What commitments has the group made to you?

I appreciate the whole group’s effort, and I think we had an excellent experience. Each of us tries our best to do our own assigned job and help each other if they need help. For me, although I never presented in front of a class before, my teammates encourage me a lot and Frank makes me feel warm and nice, all this gives me courage and smooth my intense emotion. So I kept practice presenting every HPC class, and it did help me a lot. I can relax when I am presenting to the whole class now, and not as nervous as I used to be. So I do need to thank you for this class for it helps me with my present techniques besides the negotiation skills with other people.

How well have these commitments been kept?

I think the comments will last forever. Because once you have the impression of one person, your minds cannot change easily. Take the final presentation for example. Our original intension is to have a virtual presentation through the Google hangouts, and stimulate a lesson form of our interest websites. However, my laptop could not join the school classroom’s projection instrument. And I do not know what to do and think of give up product demonstration part and just present with the power point slides and get it over with. At this time, Garnet brought his laptop to the platform and quickly settled everything, using his backup plan and showed everyone what our product may look like in the future.

After presentation, Garnet told me why my laptop went wrong, and helped me fix it. And I am really appreciate his kindness.

How well do you believe the group is working together?

I think our group is doing a good job. We three can cooperate well and help each other at the same time. That why our team name is GIVE, without receiving help from each other, no one could finish a tough thing alone. Under the principal of the team spirit, we could complete a target sussesfully.

How successful do you believe the group is in completing a high quality project?

I think our group will complete a high quality project successfully, because Garnet is a talented leader with all kinds of advanced technology knowledge. He is full of idea, and skillful techniques, also good at communicate with other people. If we insist on holding the idea, we would not change no matter what other people say.

Individual Reflection - Garnet XUE

During the two months collaboration, team members like to use Google Hangouts for meeting, discussing, reviewing and enjoying. Because Hangouts integrates video face-to-face chat into Google’s productivity apps like Google Drive that could highly improve team collaboration, especially within a virtual team when we're not together. Through Google Slide and Screen Share, any member can can make last-minute changes to that important presentation, get live input on his or her analysis from remote team members, or just plan a party over coffee.

Moreover, we prefer planning schedule on Google Calendar, because it can always not only remind me what to do in the next couple of days but also make team members informed by each other’s schedule.

I believe my team coordinates across members with high efficiency, contributed by that we can keep members posted timely and accurately in order to eliminate confusion to minimal level. We usually communicate with morning team For example, through Google Doc, after revising part of the assignment, members will be informed and can review the latest version anytime. Before Google Drive, we sent email with attachments to others after revise, but after couple of times revisement, it was difficult for members find the latest one in tremendous emails.

However, those productive apps require knowledge about IT, taking a little long time for adaption.

Internally, we took days to prepare a proposal respectively before meeting, and the decision on what the virtual team do are made through brainstorm. For those regrading to specifications, like who is our customers and what functions the platform may provide, decisions are lead by members who is good at the area.

Externally, before meeting with morning team, we discussed to arrive at a accepted point. Then, one of our three will go to negotiate with the morning team, and take questions back to discuss with team. After two or three circle, the final decision might be fixed.  

For the conflicts, firstly we discussed whether the virtual team focused on operating digital textbooks or on more categories. I convinced them by pointing out materials and figures to support the keyword of “NEW”, because the digital textbook market is the very niche market with inelastic and stable demand, as well as has not attract big digital book companies’ attention, like Amazon.com.

Secondly, the conflict was happened when defining the cooperation area with morning team. I compromised this time, and help to push the project going forward.

Finally, the conflict focused on how to present the virtual program. Aiming to surprise students and present it in a virtual way, I held the idea that present by Google Hangouts in a virtual way. However Vivian and Ivy were afraid that if there was any problems on facilities, we would suffer a big loss. To solve their concerns, I introduced couples of plan B, to handle all accident they guessed.

Based on the Cloud Technology, Google Hangouts and Google Drive helped my team’s work, to make us collaborate as smoothly as we worked in a physical office.

The team formed based on diversity of educational and professional background. The commitments we make to the team are at-stakeness, transparency and synergy.

We three committed equally to team’s decisions because we care deeply about the virtual project we worked and grade we would obtain finally. We promised we would devote individuals’ effort to improve team’s project.

Moreover, we all agreed that shared understanding is necessary within the team, and we promised to share suggestions with others and to open to others suggestions.

Furthermore, we preferred “better” ideas, and based on at-stakeness and transparency, we definitely could work out innovative alternatives to improve team’s project continually.

Generally, we have done all the three commitments in the couple months. In one aspect, aim to obtain a excellent grade, members would actively share their suggestions and do double-check if there were anything missed; in another aspect, without any monetary benefit, the conflicts could be solved more easily.

Group Assignment: Virtual Team, www.virtual.groupstudy.com

www.groupstudy.com

Study is not lonely missions anymore, on Group Study, you can

--Refer to points and solution from people who also read the same book all over the world.

--Share your unique insights with people who also read the same book all over the world.

--Ask for help when you come across questions cannot be solved.

--Join in study group based on couple of textbooks which belong to the same course.

--Hold online tutorials for course review and practices.

Study Group is a virtual community, users in the community are from different countries and are connected with the Internet. Comparing with the physical community, the classroom, where students get together in person to join a lecture or a seminar, the virtual community, www.groupstudy.com is a online platform where users can cooperate with other users from differenct places, even miles aways, breaking the geographic constraints and enlarge their study circle remarkbly from a classroom to the whole world. As a result, information the individual get is significantly more than he or she can in the traditional classroom.

The key requirement to build such a virtual study group is the initiative to share. Goes around, comes around. Merely when all users are positively post their insights, points and solutions on textbooks they read, the basement of the virtual platform could be consolidated and users could be attracted to return. That is the recycle we expect.

Who is our target customers?

Anyone who need a textbook to study a course.

Anyone who will not pay for the expensive textbook.

Anyone who is annoyed by heavy books.

Anyone who need help to complete the study.

Anyone who prefer to highlighting his or her talent in the world.

Who are we?

A startup company, a professional digital textbook provider, based on a virtual office on the cloud, and connected talents from different cities.

The virtual organization consists of four teams, Operation, Development,  Marketing and IT. Operation team is in charge of strategic planning issues like product pricing, categories management, users discrimination, as well as content maintenance. Based on figures and information obtained through Google Analytics, team members are able to build pricing model, setup reasonable user level and corresponding payment plan. Moreover, they can recruit volunteers online, and assign them to different categories for notes archive, sorting content posted by users.

Development Team focus on products issues, ranged from pre-negotiation with publishers to digital textbooks creating and launch, and also including platform experience design and optimization. beside those, they also go to find opportunities to cooperate with third parties in the format such as co-branding, mutual recommendation and so on. All of their design work will be completed on Google Cloud, and then the initial creation will be brought to IT team for coding, testing and launching.  

Marketing Team is responsible for customer relationship management, advertising & promotion planning, Google Cloud provide a whole new solution for customer relationship management, especially for online business. Thanks to the unlimited storage space, users’ behavior on Group Study's platform can be exactly recorded, and all the data will be processed by Google Analytics to enable marketing team to understand users preference and to find out items need to improve. In one aspect, they feedback to Development Team for improvement by Google Keeper; in another aspect, they can quickly respond to both of users’ expectation and complaints, in order to keep and increase retention.

IT Team is responsible for the whole platform running smoothly. But nowadays, the IT nerds will never work as they did years ago. Coding is not an individual assignment anymore, while it has changed to be a highly collaborative work by cloud technology. Working together on Google Cloud, IT Team can easily initiate a crowdfunding to “outsource” some work, and track process on Google Code. When Development Team complete the initial design, IT Team’s Google Calendar will automatically add a new event, meanwhile send alert, then IT Team is able to continue the coding work on Google Code, testing and launching on Google Cloud.

Among different team, members also collaborate on Google’s Business Solution. There are Google Doc, Form and Presentation, which enable staff miles away to edit one documents or presentation simultaneously by holding a virtual meeting by Google Hangouts, chatting “face-to-face”.

Because works in GroupStudy are projects going, the way by creating each book or each user experience optimization to be individual projects, we are dedicated to make it a lot easier and quicker for people to update what is going on (and what is not) in a project, in order to improve communication around assigning, organizing and completing tasks. That not only helps members work more efficiently -- but it helps manage expectations for teams when projects do hit a snag and get delayed.

Therefore, we go to Google Calendar, to schedule the project in an individual public calendar shared among teams with events created and assigned to corresponding members. team leaders is able to track each member’s progress on his or her Google Task. If there are any information need to let others know, people can write down notes on Google Keeper, and setup alert to ask others for help.

Why Virtual?

Minimize operation cost.

Shall we meet in a physical place and sit together to work? The answer is definitely yes a decade ago. However, nowadays, people should reconsider the question. Before Google Drive, we would probably email a document, and a collaborator would review it and send it back or people would get together in a meeting room to discuss and then back to his or her desk to work on his or her assignments. Currently, on Google platform, people could communicate with others in a “face-to-face” way and edit a document in real-time. By checking team’s Google Calendar, any member could find a collaborator who is available for help, and team leaders could censor the whole progress and reassign tasks to guarantee the project going as scheduled. As a result, we may find that the expense for renting an office in downtown and for traveling to a city for team meeting can be eliminate. It is possible especially for a company producing and selling virtual products, like GroupStudy.

Expand source of talents.

“There is not the right person in the city!” More and more employers complain this when they start a new project. Meanwhile, they cannot afford the huge expense like relocation compensation, accommodation and more attractive salary package to hire a “right” person in another city, even another country to handle tasks at their office. As for GroupStudy, there are too many specific work to be dealt with by current employers. However, the situation is significantly improved by Google’s virtual collaboration platform, which enable us to initial a task on crowdfunding platform and then select people for collaboration. In one word, virtual collaboration make it possible for companies to do business which was given up before due to lack of the right people. Moreover, it also highlight value of those talents in a new level -- the value created by their talents expands from local to the whole world.

That’s why GroupStudy must run as a virtual organization. The success of teams’ virtual collaboration ensure the success of GroupStudy’s business, the one that focus on the real-time communication, collaboration and sync based on e-textbook give it the edge.

What is our product?

Where to sell?

Our products, the Digital Textbooks are available on our Cloud Platform, which can be visit by inputting our website address on your computers, or by download our APP on either iTunes Store or Google Play.

How to supply?

Publishers upload the digital files of their books, and then our engineers will integrate them into our platform by optimizing format and display. Marketing team will create introduction and pictures then launch the finalized textbook on platform, ready for users to pay for download.

Anything special?

Group

Users can create a new group and invite others to join in and can join in a group which they are interested in.

Notes

Add notes -- not only marks like underline, highlights and tags, users can use digital pens to handwrite notes in the notes area and insert pictures, audio and video.

Share notes -- users can choose which users can see his or her notes. Permitted users can see the notes when they reach the corresponding part of the book. Second, users can tweet the notes update notification to specific users or groups, and can subscribe notification from specific users.

Save notes -- users can choose where to save the notes, local or cloud. Individual user’s notes that saved on Cloud can be synced between all devices signed in.

It’s an Attractive Market

Anyone in the world who needs to study.

No one can complete the study by just only reading a book.

Therefore, all people need help from others who are good at the area or have unique insights about the course. That is why we can say the demand is unlimited.

By looking around the ebook market, Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iBook take more than 80% market share, but they heavily focus on best sellers. The digital textbook market still remains as a niche market waiting to be developed.

Therefore, we will not build a super bookstore like Amazon, but our plan is to startup a Professional eTextbook Store, putting all of our resources on the single category.

Price of eTextbook could decrease by a significant amount without harm profitability of authors and stores. Take the book, “Principles of Corporate Finance by Franklin Allen” as an example, its Kindle Edition sold in Amazon.com at the price of $137, merely a 4% discount of its printed edition. In contrast, the difference between printed and Kindle edition of best sellers is usually keeping above 30%.

Under a lower price, the sales of eTextbook are highly expected to show a rocket-up increase, contributing from the affordable price by most students who currently used to borrow or buy from others.

The Internet makes the world flatter, forcing information to be more and more available for anyone on The Internet. By visiting Amazon.com, people in China can buy anything sold in the US without relying on their local dealers and suffering from high price. Thanks to Kayak and Booking, travelers can get economical rates for flights and hotels without relying on local tourism agencies. For those who dream to join in a bigger class at home involving students living different countries, the Internet, the very technology, can make their dream come true. Supported by latest technologies in IT area, like Cloud Computing and Storage, WIFI and mobile Internet, there are more magic functions mentioned above to make their dream come true in a higher level. That’s why our project must be operated on a virtual platform.

About Demand: How to fulfill readers’ needs?

FAQ

If I bought a book by my iPad, may I read the book on my Mac Book without charge extra money?

Actually, our business is similar to Amazon’s Kindle or Apple’s iTunes. Your purchase records are saved under your account – on the Cloud, and you can read all materials bought by your account in any devices installed our APP.

May I make annotations in your eTextbook? I like to make annotations on pages when I reading, so I prefer printed books.

Of course you can make annotations, and you will have unlimited space to make notes, comments and marks in the format of audio, video, picture, handwriting and typing words. On tablets, you can write by digital pen or type notes on pages, and you can also add pictures taken for notes on whiteboard or papers in eTextbook. Moreover, you can even record professor’s lecture and insert the video as notes on the corresponding part of textbook. All the notes are stored on the Cloud, sync between different devices.

May I share my notes or contents with others?

You can share anything you prefer with friends. First, you may decide whose notes will display when you go to the corresponding position. Second, you may decide who can see your notes. Thirdly, you may share part of book’s contents or your notes through Facebook, Tweeter, Weibo, LinkedIn and so on. Fourth, the golden members and above may open a discussion for points on textbook, and decide whom the discussion open to. Other users can be informed by organizers’ notification and join in the discussion, or for a public discussion, users may find the discussion when he or she reaches the corresponding position of the book.

Users can get credits when they indeed devote to others. Goes around, comes around.

1.  Users who create animations, graphs, charts and other multi-media content to further explain theories, phenomena and other contents mentioned in eTextbooks, and obtain endowment from at least two registered professors.

2.     Users who successfully recommend new users signing-in.

3.     Users whose notes were shared more than 25 times.

Online Education -- The way to cooperate with Upstairs

But, to achieve a further expansion, we need to attach these e-textbooks closely to course, because classes are such stable communities that attract and hold students to study as group, then keeping the demand for both textbooks and knowledge share, which is perfectly met by www.groupstudyvitual.com by its characters like very affordable price and super function of share.

However, due to the geographic limitation of the offline classes, www.groupstudyvitual.com cannot achieve significant amount of users. Therefore, we weighed efforts on cooperation with Upstairs. By co-branding marketing, sharing users and optimizing user-experience, we can obtain the effect of “1+1>3”.

1. co-branding marketing

Those websites users are from not only a country but maybe from all over the world, a virtual mean by using internet is the best way to connect the users. When promoting our brand worldwide, the best way is to have a co-branding marketing. Both registered users of the two websites have mutual product discount in the two websites. For example, our website has 3 levels of users, gold user, silver user and regular user. The more they pay the higher level they will be—gold is the highest. So our gold user can have certain percent discount, the same discount they will have in the www.gruopstudyvirtual.com and vice versa. The same will conduct on the searching engine, when users search for the Financial Accounting course video, pictures of the related textbooks which link to our website will come along with the course video and vice versa also. We can even promote a joint credit card together with a bank in the future to make our names more bundled, so when people know one brand, the other brand will definitely come into their mind at the same time. By carrying the co-branding marketing, the two website can achieve the most effective of publicity in a lower cost.

2. sharing users

As our job is to deal with the eager-learning customers who locate in every corner of the world, and make sure their minds can be shared promptly, we have to use the virtual mean to fulfill the multi-shared environment. Otherwise things like user preference, browsing habits, and operation custom cannot be accomplished or will be achieved in a much higher cost. So sharing users can make our job easier when developing new customers and tracking habits of old customers. Users can use the same ID and password in both websites if they like, users’ basic information and even further information like purchase lists, behavioral habits and preferences will be shared in the meantime. Collecting this information requires great manpower and material resources, so by sharing users we can lessen the cost but well serve the customers.

3. optimizing user-experience

Sometimes users will have questions after watching the teaching video, at this time they can turn to our website for solving course questions and do some after class exercises, the more important thing is that they can share their views towards the course. By doing so we can not only optimize the user-experience, but also complementary to each other’s website. Helping each other to complete system optimization and testing work, we need to accomplish the task by virtual means so that we can overcome the shortage of technicians and limitation of the distance.

Team UPSTAIRS Background: an HR company like monster.com in the U.S.A.

-       Employment solution for people seeking jobs and the employers who need great people.

-       Operates both online and offline.

Our Cooperation Product: www.professional-interest-class.com

It’s an online hobby class,

Targeting Customers:

White collars, college students and housewives.

Courses including 7 types:

Handcrafts;

Cooking;

Music & Instrument;

Beauty & Makeup.

Brief History of China;

Antiquities Appreciation;

Ancient Chinese Architecture Introduction.

Implementability

Team UPSTAIRS will provide teachers who are special good at those related skills, and we will maintain the website operation part, like update the videos, attach funny and easy eBooks to the video course, and maintain the notes part so that the students could add, share, tweet and save notes to stay close with the teacher and other students in the same course.