Group Project. Those two words are most college student’s worst nightmare. Slacking groupmates, no convenient meeting times, lack of participation and working with frustrating people. What could be so appealing about all that?
Despite group projects being the bane of most student’s existence, there is some real educational value in learning in a group environment. The fact of the matter is that most offices operate with a group work type mindset. Everybody has to collaborate to get the job done. Is it always easy? No. Is it sometimes frustrating? Absolutely. Is it important to learn to get along and work with other people? Of course!
This semester has given me more experience with group collaboration as we practice different types of public relations work. While it can still be frustrating at times, I have begun to see the importance of learning to work with other people. Part of this understanding has come from experience in the workplace where I have had to collaborate to accomplish a project.
Because people are all different, group collaboration dynamics shift based on the individuals. I was speaking with Hang Tran, a classmate from a different group, about her experiences this semester. She shared she has had a fairly positive experience so far. All the members in her group work well together and divide group tasks very evenly. She has not had any problems with participation within the group and everyone gets along.
My experience has not been quite as positive as Hang’s. Although we divide the work within my group, it isn’t always finished on time. Our schedules do not match up well which makes it difficult for my group to meet up to get the work accomplished. It also means there is not quite as much social pressure to accomplish the work.
After comparing experiences with Hang, I feel that the main reason my group is not as successful is due to the fact we don’t meet in person as frequently. Hang shared that during their meetings they are able to bounce ideas off of one another and accomplish a lot of brainstorming. My group has only had in-person meetings twice and for both meetings not all of the group members could attend. Even with communication tools like Trello and GroupMe, it is difficult to get every member engaged. It also takes away the social pressure to have the tasks accomplished on time.
This past semester I have spent a large portion of time in the “real world” of the workplace. This has shown me that in most businesses, companies or organizations it is essential to work as a team to accomplish a task. I am about to begin a new job where the satisfaction of the client depends not only on myself, but also my coworkers and managers accomplishing the tasks correctly. I think it is very valuable to learn how to work with a group and allow each member the chance to accomplish the assigned task. In a work environment there is much more social pressure because you often see coworkers on a daily basis. There also is more on the line (for example the satisfaction, or lack thereof, of a large client) that motivates the team to work effectively.