Group Work: Collaboration and Time Management

Group skills are vital in all business forms, and successful start-up entrepreneurs are usually adept at leveraging scarce resources of others through their ability to work in groups. But should up to half the assessment in some courses be based on group work, where typically teams of three of four students work together on large projects? And in a course with some units having up to 50 per cent of the subject based around group work, does this actually make it much easier for students who struggle with individual assessment to get through the subject by passing the group work, students who perhaps are going to graduate into a workforce where they lack competencies and autonomy to work independently as well as contributing to a team?

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Perhaps a post on university Group Assignments may be uninspired, filled with the expected disillusion that comes to mind immediately when you speak to anyone who’s going through, or come out the other side of, higher education and seen their fair share of group assignments. But seeing that this RMIT/Lentara studio’s entire structure is one long group assignment, and seeing as I’ve just had two rather hectic weeks in terms of trying to balance uni and work time commitments I thought it would be an appropriate part of documenting this studio.

In traditional workplaces group work is made easier by aligning timetables, you all have to be in the same place Monday to Friday 9am-5pm, collaboration in this space still requires negotiation and time to brainstorm, still requires delegation and leadership, roles and responsibilities. These processes are all assisted by having a shared direction, timetable, and, focus. University group work is often more difficult to navigate with only sharing 3-5 hours of overlapping timetable, having mixed commitments to other classes and employment outside study. In solo assignments our time is our own to manage and manipulate, a luxury we’re not afforded in group assignments.

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Over the past 2 weeks we’ve really struggled to be able to make times when everyone in our group could get together physically or digitally to flesh out our initial ideas into more tangible steps forward. We had a less than successful strategy development meeting last week, in which participation levels across the group were varied and in some cases extremely limited, raising another hurdle to university group work, even when you manage to get everyone together the level to which you can achieve anything is impaired when there are not defined roles which exist in the workplace, which provide ownership of a part of the project, and encourage participation through specific and delegated responsibilities.

This may appear to be nitpicking about group work. There are definitely some advantages to group work, and it can be pleasant with a group of dedicated peers. Working with people with different skill-sets, across different cultures, can be very challenging, and equally rewarding when it plays out right. However, getting a top mark in a group setting is harder if your group has students less concerned about grades, or less skillful.

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We’ve all had some groups with students who basically did nothing and still got top marks by virtue of everyone in the group getting the same score. And often that one student added nothing to a group and slowed down everybody else. Those in favour of group work will say that is the very point: the format helps you develop skills to deal with people who are not up to scratch – useful skills for your professional career life. (However, far more accurate in your professional career is that those who are not up to scratch are cut loose.)

That’s the good part. The bad? Is it worth paying $40,000 or so for an average degree if up to half of some courses are spent on group work for projects that may not help your learning? Too much group work can add extra complications, stress and hours.

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And yet, for all the flu season absences, the conflicting work commitments, general uncertainty, and varying levels of commitment to grades and output, we still manage to move forward toward each assessment deadline, but is it really toward the best outcome, and is it really a taste of collaboration and teamwork in the workplace? When I compare the group assignments I’ve been a part of over the last 12 years of TAFE and Uni, to the teamwork I’ve been a part of outside of academia, I have to conclude they have less in common than their differences.

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