Hello, children. Today we are going to review some important aspects of how to work within a group since many people are entirely unaware of how to participate in such a way that the whole project doesn’t fall apart. Honestly, it’s not hard, but, from what I’ve seen we are desperately in need of a review.
For starters, communication. If your group makes a group chat, please read it. Go to the meetings the group has and make sure you know what is going on. Don’t just sit there with your headphones on ignoring the task until someone else does it.
Pull your weight. Other people won’t and we all know this as we have all been forced into group projects in the past, but please try to do something for the project. Some professors go so far as to ask what individual members did and what grade you deserve so just be aware that if you sit back and don’t do anything you will absolutely be thrown under the bus.
When you go to present, know the topic. This seems pretty straight forward but I had a presentation last week where we were explaining how a specific movie fit within a genre and one member stood there loudly talking about how they hadn’t seen the movie before. Not going to lie, I hadn’t either, but I had looked over the slides and various information we had in order to figure out what the important information was and how I needed to present it. They clearly were reading off the slides.
If you have a serious issue with one of the aspects of the project you need to speak up before the presentation. You’d think this would be obvious, something absolutely anyone would know. Nope. On Monday, I had the wonderful experience of being thrown under the bus by one member of the group who flat out refused to say anything until the middle of the presentation. It was a wonderful outburst, totally helped our grade. I’m so glad I might fail this project because someone sat on their annoyance until it was much too late. Don’t be this person.
One last thing— you can take a leadership role without taking over the whole project. Make sure the project isn’t just yours. People have to agree on what you are putting out and that any risky decisions are made with a full consensus. Don’t risk someone else’s grade on your decisions but also don’t let anyone slack. Leader, not dictator.
Let’s try to get these projects done without failing or clawing anyone’s eyes out.