How To Succeed In Your Group Project
There are many benefits for students associated with group projects as they help develop many skills that are increasingly important in the professional world where being a team player and having good communication skills are vital attributes to fit in and get on in the workplace.
When working as part of a group you’re not solely dependent on your own thoughts, ideas and intellect. Collaborating with others can bring forward quite different ideas allowing everyone to pool their knowledge and skills and perhaps tackle more complex problems that they would not have taken on alone.
For students new to group project work, here are a few tips on how to succeed:
- As soon as you receive your assignment and the members of your group have been chosen, take down each other’s names and contact numbers so that you can start to communicate straight away.
- Arrange an early meeting where you can break down the whole project into separate tasks, then decide what parts to play. Rather than everyone attempting to tackle everything, it makes more sense to utilise people’s special skills to complete different aspects of the project. Having said that, you may want to ‘shadow’ someone else’s task in order to learn from their experience.
- At this first meeting, decide on a format for the project. If everyone is working to the same agenda then it won’t be quite so difficult to put it all together and for it to look co-ordinated. One way to ensure that the project ‘flows’ is to choose a piece of software that allows for multi-user editing – Microsoft OneNote* for example highlights new content that someone else has added or changed so that you can instantly see any revisions. Students can see which group member has added the notes as a colour coded bar, containing their initials, appears on the right of the screen. If all the team are working at the same time then the sync speed is increased to make it possible to see what’s being changed in (almost) real time.
- Schedule in a realistic timetable and set realistic target dates for each aspect of the project to be completed. Arrange regular meetings where ideas and problems can be shared and to keep the project on track. When setting target dates, always leave a ‘cushion’ at the end of the project before the deadline hand-in date. This helps to avoid unnecessary stress if the project isn’t quite complete.
- Keep in touch with your group on a regular basis so that you can get a hint if something is not moving forward at the pace you feel is necessary. Liaising by email or phone is a good way to build a rapport with your team and to make sure everything is on track.
*Microsoft OneNote is available as part of Microsoft Office Pro Plus 2010 which can be bought online at a 90% discount on RRP. This Microsoft Office Student Offer (along with other superb deals on discounted software for pupils) means there’s no better time to invest in this versatile software package.
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