Over the years I have been assigned to many group projects in school. Many are successful and few are not. However, it is not always so clear cut. Many successful projects can have unsuccessful elements. Last week I had to give a group presentation in my advanced composition class. Essentially, the presentation was supposed to engage the classroom audience in an interactive discussion over racial tensions involving immigration and specifically the immigration of undocumented people. Our presentation had to take 40 minutes; however, since our group had 8 people this did not seem like a big deal. Essentially, our group had a singular group meeting where we brainstormed a list of topics regarding immigration. Then we divided these topics among our group members and each member was responsible of presenting his or her designated topic in whatever way he or she wanted to. Additionally, since the total presentation time was 40 minutes and since we had 8 people we decided that each person should be allocated 5 minutes. This approach was interesting and successful for the most part since it transformed a large group presentation into multiple individual presentations on various subcategories on immigration which allowed for increased flexibility. This presentation could be considered successful as everyone did their work because if they did not speak in the presentation for 5 minutes it would have been clearly noticed by the instructor. However, there was still an unsuccessful element in the procedure and that would be transitions. Since everyone had different ways of presenting their materials and topics, the group presentation was not very fluid and the transitions were awkward as they were unrehearsed. Ultimately, however, the group presentation could be considered a success as everyone managed to contribute in a visible way.
Although many times successful projects could have a few unsuccessful elements, there are some projects that are abundantly unsuccessful. When I was a freshman, I was studying to be a computer engineer. In the first introductory course ECE 110 , the lab section forced students to form pairs in order to a create a small toy car for the final project. Essentially, the car would have to be designed to pass various tests and would have to follow a set track that had many pitfalls such as zigzags, curves, and a fork in the road. The car would have to be programmed to do this and we could not interfere with it once it was on the track. As a pair, my partner and I had 5 weeks to build this car and each week we would have 2 hours to work on the car in our lab section and we could work on it outside of class if we wanted to. However, this project was extremely unsuccessful due various unfortunate reasons. A huge problem was the lab section was scheduled at 7:45 AM. This caused me much grief as my partner kept oversleeping and missing the lab sections. Since I was weak in circuitry and programming knowledge I was unable to get much work for the first 3 weeks without my partner. Then he finally showed up on the fourth week and we scrambled to produce a car together. Ultimately, our car ended up being garbage and did not pass all the tests and we received a low score for the project. Although my partner did not show up for many critical weeks, part of the blame for such a poor result was on me. I was unable to get much work done early on as I lacked critical knowledge and I did not actively seek assistance from the teaching assistant to make up for this.
Ultimately, these two cases are quite different. Usually, when there are more people in a group like the first case I would think that it would be easier for a person to slack off. However, our group managed to structure the assignment in a way that made it more like an individual assignment which made people motivated to do their own part. However, in the second case the class timing and possibly the annoying quality of the given task caused my partner to be unmotivated to do the work. Furthermore, I also may have been unmotivated for similar reasons despite showing up. Another thing that is I have realized is that if the presentation is viewed by many people it may be more likely for people to do the work as they do not want to look foolish in front of their peers. However, the car lab was only evaluated by the teacher and not given as a presentation in front of the other students, so there may have been a lack of motivation from that. Although really in both cases there should be motivation as grades and learning are on the line.
Although many times successful projects could have a few unsuccessful elements, there are some projects that are abundantly unsuccessful. When I was a freshman, I was studying to be a computer engineer. In the first introductory course ECE 110 , the lab section forced students to form pairs in order to a create a small toy car for the final project. Essentially, the car would have to be designed to pass various tests and would have to follow a set track that had many pitfalls such as zigzags, curves, and a fork in the road. The car would have to be programmed to do this and we could not interfere with it once it was on the track. As a pair, my partner and I had 5 weeks to build this car and each week we would have 2 hours to work on the car in our lab section and we could work on it outside of class if we wanted to. However, this project was extremely unsuccessful due various unfortunate reasons. A huge problem was the lab section was scheduled at 7:45 AM. This caused me much grief as my partner kept oversleeping and missing the lab sections. Since I was weak in circuitry and programming knowledge I was unable to get much work for the first 3 weeks without my partner. Then he finally showed up on the fourth week and we scrambled to produce a car together. Ultimately, our car ended up being garbage and did not pass all the tests and we received a low score for the project. Although my partner did not show up for many critical weeks, part of the blame for such a poor result was on me. I was unable to get much work done early on as I lacked critical knowledge and I did not actively seek assistance from the teaching assistant to make up for this.
Ultimately, these two cases are quite different. Usually, when there are more people in a group like the first case I would think that it would be easier for a person to slack off. However, our group managed to structure the assignment in a way that made it more like an individual assignment which made people motivated to do their own part. However, in the second case the class timing and possibly the annoying quality of the given task caused my partner to be unmotivated to do the work. Furthermore, I also may have been unmotivated for similar reasons despite showing up. Another thing that is I have realized is that if the presentation is viewed by many people it may be more likely for people to do the work as they do not want to look foolish in front of their peers. However, the car lab was only evaluated by the teacher and not given as a presentation in front of the other students, so there may have been a lack of motivation from that. Although really in both cases there should be motivation as grades and learning are on the line.
Can you recall your emotional state while doing the car project. Were you a bit irritated at first with your teammate? Did you have his cell number and try to get in touch with him out of class? What would have happened if you two had both agreed to blow off the 7:45 AM time and simply work on the project at a later time? Could that have worked? You blamed yourself a bit for your weak skills so being unable to do the project yourself, but might it have been management skills that were the real issue because you were unable to steer the situation into an arrangement that would prove productive?
ReplyDeleteDid you get to pick your partner(s) in either example, because one would think that picking partners might allow you to get better ones. I like how you talked about making group responsibilities into individual ones being a successful tactic, I think there's a lot of truth in that.
ReplyDeleteYes I was irritated at first with my partner and I did have his cell number, but he never answered his phone. The problem with blowing off the class time and working at another time was that the we would not have access to the tools available in lab. Management skills may have been an issue, but also if I had a better understanding of how to proceed on the project then maybe I could have been more productive by myself. In the large group example I was unable to pick my partners. However, in the car project example, I did my pick my partner. The problem was that I did not know anyone prior to the class, so essentially picking a good partner was based on sheer luck.
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