Friday, October 25, 2013

Parallel Experiences Involving Groups

My first experience was working with a team for a Global Studies course. The class was split into groups of five to complete a project and presentation on a war in South America called the War of the Pacific. This was my pleasant experience. I was assigned in a group with all girls that were very studious and organized. We met the first day that we were assigned our project. This allowed us to get a jump-start on the project that allowed us ample time for research and editing. We were also able to practice giving our presentation a couple times. Everybody seemed to get along very well. I think that this was partially because of friendly personalities, and partially because nobody was upset with another member because everybody performed their tasks in an efficient, high-quality manner. The members were also committed to their work. I would say that this was more of a commitment to getting a good grade than because of interesting content, however, because the content of the War of the Pacific was pretty dry. In terms of talent, everybody seemed more than capable of doing their share of the preparation and presentation, and this reflected in our presentation, which resulted in an A. 

My parallel experience was working in a group in a Political Science course. We were assigned to groups of four to complete a project and presentation on the National Park Service and the national parks that they operated. This time, however, my group was very disorganized. Everybody had busy schedules, or claimed to have busy schedules, and was unable to meet until 3 days before it was due. We were still able to put together a decent project, but that is only because of two consecutive all-nighters. Nobody was friendly with each other; everybody just wanted to get their part done and go on their separate ways. The class being a lower-level course, and the project being relatively easy, all the team members had more than enough talent or smarts to accomplish the project in a high-quality manner. It seemed as if the commitment to the class and the course material was not there. Also, this was evident during the presentation, as you could easily tell that our pieces had very little interdependence and was not coordinated well enough to display a healthy dynamic.


2 comments:

  1. Lucky you for the Global Studies project! It seems like everything works out perfectly. I actually really like to have the opportunity to rehearsals before the actual ones because I felt that it would definitely benefits us. But none of my project teams decided to do rehearsals, which is sad. And I totally agree with you on the commitment part because the project successes only if everybody want the project to be success, which means same level of commitment and effort. I've had couple of projects that some team members clearly does not need or want to have decent grades. And it made the project a lot harder than it was supposed to be.

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  2. In the second example with the low level of personal commitment, were there some arguments because people wanted more effort out of their teammates? Or were people simply resigned to this being a mediocre group effort. I couldn't tell which, based on what you wrote. If there were arguments, it would have been good to provide a little of the flavor of those. Your post was very matter of fact and might have benefited from providing some more detail

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