I have not had a lot of luck with group projects. I tend to cringe when I find that I have a group project as an assignment. It is hard to rely on other people that you know nothing about. Group projects are especially hard for me because I work fulltime and have three young kids. With the kind of work I do there are never any team projects so the only experience I have so far is through school work.
My best experience would have to be a couple of years ago. I was in an English course at UAA and almost all the assignments were group assignments. What made these assignments easier was the fact that we had the same group throughout the course so the group members figured out each other’s strengthens and weaknesses. This group was the best group I participated with because everyone was willing to meet often and put in 100%. We created outlines of what we wanted in our projects and assigned each person a part of the project. We checked on each other often and critiqued each other’s work. We received an A for every assignment we did in that course.
My bad experiences are pretty much the same. My most recent bad experience was mainly due to having little time to do a project and not having everyone participate who was assigned to the project. Doing a group project is pretty difficult when you have people in the group who live in different areas of the state and out of state. Our only lines of communication was through emails and phone calls/texts. This project consisted of only three people and when one member choose not to participate in puts a lot of weight on myself and the other person. We were able to get the project completed but it was a couple of hours late because of having to pick up the slack of the third person. This isn’t the only similar experience I have had like this, but what made this experience worse was the team member who did not participate tried to put the blame on the other members.