Reflection on Group Work

Designing a project with a group can be a very daunting task. There is not only the project to design, but you also have to take group dynamics into consideration. I think our group ended up working quite well together even though we had a rough start. Our group had a lot of strong, opinionated individuals who have strong ideas about how things should be done. Since we didn't have a cohesive idea of what we were doing, we ended up with 3 different ideas about what we were doing. I don't think this is actually a bad thing. It just makes you find ways to work within your strengths. We found that dividing up the work and working separately, then coming back together for evaluation and feedback was the most efficient way for our group to get work done. It turns out that our ideas merged pretty well in the end and we were all able to work together.

I do think that this can be a problem with groups of students as well. Anytime people care about something there are usually strong opinions associated with it. If students are working on something they love, they are much more likely to be motivated and engaged, but it may also cause more conflict if they have disagreements. This is a good real-world skill to learn as we always have to work within our schools, communities, and families.