Taking into consideration the policies that have been put in place to deal with slackers, what concerns you when it comes to group work in this course? Do you think group work in the university setting is a good preparation for working with others in the ‘real world’? In what ways are group work in the academic setting similar to or different from group work in the workplace? How have your past group work experiences (positive or negative) shaped your attitude towards group work?
The ability to be able to work with a team is an essential skill in many workplaces. Being able to communicate and work cooperatively and efficiently is something I desire to have. As a student who is in university, I do believe that my academic setting is a good place to gain and prepare for working with others in the ‘real’ world. Some may argue that group projects are inefficient and unrelated to their field since the project may be unrelated to their prospective career or they are afraid of dealing with slackers. However, no matter what the project is or who you are working with, I believe it is still a good and related experience. The reason I argue this is because in the ‘real world’, you do not know who you are going to work with. You may work with a group who is completely unmotivated and unwilling to work. It is much more beneficial to gain experience on how to deal with slackers in school rather than dealing with slackers on your very first project at a company. If you do not have the experience beforehand, your seniors and clients will be extremely disappointed on the lack of productivity that the group has. This would be dreadful for any person in their very first group project or work at a company.
The type of project or presentation does not matter. The experience from the project or presentation will still contribute to your ability to work with a team. One may argue that a presentation on some random topic such as gender equality has no relation with working on a software. The topic may not be the related to your desired career or field but the benefits and experience on working with a team still applies. In any group assignment, you are required to be able to communicate your ideas and information and plan each individual’s role in the project. If you learn how to collaborate with your group and plan out roles that caters to each member’s strengths, you are benefiting and achieving much more productivity and results than working alone. To illustrate, in high school I once worked on a semester long project with a senior. We were tasked in creating a program that generates progress report cards to replace with the school’s current program. From the experience I had working on the program with my senior, I learned to communicate and collaborate with my teammate very well. We split our tasks depending on your strengths which worked out very well. Unlike my senior who was a creative and artsy person, I am more better at using logics and manipulating data. I also had much more experience in Back-End development than my senior who knew very little about web design. Knowing each other’s strengths and weaknesses, we were able to fill in each other’s weaknesses which resulted in high productivity.
However, I will admit that my experience with group work in university has not been very positive compared to my experience in High School. But it was still a good experience because I learned to lead my group to be more productive. I had to constantly contact my group on any updates on the project status and remind some group members that they need to contribute to the project. Although not all group members were very productive till a day or two before the deadline, we were still able to work together somehow and produce a finished product that we were all proud of. Therefore, I would advise any student including myself to take the advantage of any group work to enhance your collaborative and communication skills to prepare for your future work in the ‘real world’.