What I've learned from the Lecture Group Project

We’re a couple of weeks into the lecture group project for Eng 211 and I have to admit, I honestly never thought it would go this well.

First of all, during my entire school career I have never been someone that enjoys group works / projects. Especially during high school (and I’m sure everyone has experienced this) they were always just so disorganized. There were no clear assigned roles, so you would have the people that would take the initiative and try to complete a majority of the work, leaving everyone else to try and catch up.

This in turn would create at least one or two (if you were unlucky) freeloaders that would always mess around, not contributing anything, and still expect a good grade out of it and pretty much all of the time that is what would happen.

Lets face it, we've all been either of these people at least once.

These experiences would put me in a dismal mindset and it was with this mindset that I began the group project for this class. I didn’t expect any work to get done in a timely manner. I expected I would have to worry if the content was good enough; that we wouldn’t creatively mesh well together, which would just increase the stress on the group. All of these factors would in my opinion create an almost hostile work environment.

Thankfully, I’m pleased to say that these past couple of weeks have totally flipped this mindset around. My project team are very hard workers and make sure that every part that needs to be done is done before the deadline, which a huge relief.

We fully utilize Google Hangouts in order to communicate, which is very convenient because I get my notifications on my phone. Along with this we have made good use of both Google Docs and Google Slides in order to collaborate on our collaborative blog post and lecture slideshow, respectively. I have to admit that without these tools there’s a possibility that the work we’ve done so far wouldn’t have gone nearly as smoothly as they have.

In conclusion, this entire project has been a great experience. I enjoy the hard-working group that I get to work with, and I’ve enjoyed not having to worry about meeting deadlines and having that added stress.

I’m also grateful that i was able to learn two important things about creating an effective work group. These are:

• Learn to communicate quickly, effectively, and consistently. Communication is key when it comes to group projects. Try to provide updates on portions of the project at least every couple of days, and increase these updates the closer your group gets to the deadline.
• Collaborate whenever possible. No one should be expected to single-handedly complete a project of this scale alone. Besides, three heads are always better than one.

If you are able to do these two things, the completion of your project will be smooth and painless, allowing you to create something great.