There are great benefits of working in collaborative teams such as enhancing communication, leadership, and teamwork skills. Working in groups is also useful when trying to understand a concept or when studying for an exam; groups can enhance the depth of learning and student engagement. Unfortunately in my academic career I’ve had more negative group work experiences than positive.
Negative
I had a difficult time working in groups at the beginning of my college career, especially when I was in lower level classes. Many of my peers that I worked with were often uninvolved or uninterested. I had one class project in particular that was especially difficult. My group members would rarely show up when I would set up a meeting time, failed to follow the work schedule, and failed to communicate effectively. It was frustrating being in this group because of the lack of effort by my peers. I ended up doing 75% of the work for a semester long project; I couldn’t wait for that class to be over. The work that was submitted (late) by group members was poorly written and contained inaccurate information. When I attempted to critique the work of the members they ignored my suggestions leaving me to rewrite their portions. It was a very stressful experience and caused me to dislike group work.
Positive
After I started registering for upper division classes my group work experiences started to improve. I started collaborating with students who were dedicated and focused on the coursework. Last year I had an amazing experience working with a group in a drugs and behavior course. We were supposed to write a research paper and create a film of the information we collected. It was a large project but it went so smooth because of the team’s ability to communicate effectively, organize our tasks, and critique each other’s work. The project was large so we broke it down into smaller tasks and created due dates for each of the tasks. The schedule was created and followed by all of the group members. I actually wasn’t the team leader, it was another student who I felt did an excellent job of reminding us when things were due and helped keep the meetings efficient. We met once a week and rarely strayed from the agenda resulting in extremely productive sessions. It was an overall great experience and taught me a lot about how important it is to communicate regularly and effectively with other group members.
I haven’t worked with groups using an online platform before, and honestly I’m a little nervous to do the group teachings assignment. I think the group’s productivity and outcomes will rely heavily of our ability to collaborate and cooperate with each other using the resources we have available (blackboard, email, etc.). I think that when working with groups on online platforms its important to have a smaller group size. Too big of a group would get confusing and might result in members failing to contribute to the workload. I think that since the group teachings have 2-3 members this phenomenon will be less likely to occur. We will see how it goes! For those of you who completed the group teaching assignment, do you have any tips?