Teamwork means group of people working together to achieve common goal. Switching from individual work to team work is not an easy task. As it requires a lot of efforts and contributions. From past few years, the instructors were incorporating more group assignments into their class requirement. There are several reasons for that. One main reason is group learning is an attempt to introduce students to real- world experiences before graduation.
In this report, I am going to reflect my viewpoint upon my group assignment in detail and my personal contribution in group work. Our instructor has assigned the students three different group projects which is Scavenger Hunt, Research paper and In- class presentation. For which group of 5 people were made to complete the assigned work.
Our team has completed all the three projects successfully on time. We also got some good and some bad marks for our project. The group projects enhanced our knowledge and skills on various areas like- communication, participation and responsibility. But there are many things we still need to improve in our future.
Introduction
Teamwork means when group of people with various complimentary skills working together to achieve a common goal or target. Teamwork generates performance greater than the performance of individual members. There are some tasks and activities that cannot be achieve individually but can be easily accomplish with teamwork. Teamwork combines the ideas of many people. Which will be beneficial for achieving common goal, but sometimes it may also result into the negative performance of the team members.
In this course, I got the opportunity to work with the groups on different work projects. Some of them are quite interesting and easy to perform. While others require a lot of efforts and research. Following are the reflections on team work which I have done during this course.
Scavenger Hunt Reflection
This is the very first group work of this course. During this project, whole class is divided into the group of 4 to 5 peoples. All group must perform the same task within the specific time limits. There are 5 people in our group Arsh, Jashan, Aman, Doris and Myself. This group activity is very exciting. During this group work we are assigned to do different task and upload the picture of completing the task on to Instagram like- taking selfies with small insect, while jumping, doing different activities etcetera. During this assignment our group works well. We got 19 out of 25 which is the second highest marks in our class. We all are happy and satisfied with our group performance during this assignment.
According to Langton. N. (2019), There are 12 exhibit characteristics of an effective team. Which makes team to work more effectively and efficiently. The things which works well during this group assignment is clear purpose, coordination, listening, open communication and participation. During this assignment our group has clear vision about the task we need to perform. There was proper coordination between group members. Each group members were agreed on the most beneficial decision for the performance of the group. There was an open communication between our group. All participants in our group were giving their suggestions about how we can achieve the target as a group. Everyone is listening to each other’s suggestions and come up with the mutual decision. Due to that reason our team works so well, and we were able to achieve the second-best score in our class.
Overall, I am happy with the performance of our group members during this task. It is very essential for a group to have the effective characteristics for the proper functioning of the group to achieve the mission.
Paper Reflection
After completing the first group assignment we were assigned with the second group project for which we have deadline for completing the assignment. During this assignment group members were the same as our previous Scavenger Hunt assignment. In this assignment we must choose one topic related with the workplace and we must produce a report of 6 to 8 pages with some credential resources. For this group work we choose the topic of “How to attract millenniums at workplace”.
For this assignment we divided the work equally between each group members and we also created one platform for communication. Which connects everyone and where we all can share our thoughts and ideas. The things which went well while working on this assignment is proper communication and clear purpose. But there are several other issues which results our group performance below our expectations. We got 45 out of 100 which is very low in comparison with other groups in our class.
In the words of Feichtner, S.B., & Davis, E.A. (1984), When instructor incorporates group work into the assignments many student faces frustrations of group work and as a result not the numerous benefits possible through team work. Furthermore, too many activities and fear to meet the requirements of group work assigned by instructor will develop negative feeling among students. Which will affect their performance in groupwork, and they will start neglecting the work assigned to them. According to me, the main reason for poor performance of our team is lack of interest and responsibility towards work assigned. Some group members were not serious about the work. They did not give their best for this assignment. There were many loopholes in achieving the desirable result of this assignment. Firstly, group members were not showing much interest for completing this assignment. Secondly, they were avoiding doing required research on their assigned topics. Only one or two group members were responsible towards their work. This may happen because they have other work pressures. Three of our group members were having mid-term prior to the submission of our group assignment. So, they were devoting much time and attention towards their mid-term rather than the assigned work.
In a nutshell, I am very disappointed with our team work on this assignment. Because me and Doris were giving our best towards our group assignment. But other group members were not taking it seriously and they are neglecting their work. In future, I will make sure to motivate and realized each group members that how important it is to give proper attention to work assign.
Presentation Reflection
Our last group project is in- class presentation on an article assigned by our instructor. For this assignment our group was changed but three of our members were the same from previous group. In this assignment, we must give 20 minutes long presentation on article about “Stress strain communication” and we need to find one scholarly article related with our topic.
Tudor, T.R., & Trumble, R., (1996) Suggested that, there are several reasons for the failure of team work. Firstly, many people believe working in a team environment is waste of productive time because too much time is spent on building trust and agreement between the groups. Another reason is people in a team commonly feels that other team members will decrease their chance for personal success. As a result, many team members hold back their efforts.
During this assignment, one of our group members was quit the group without informing us and she did not even come to class on presentation day. Due to this our performance was affected during presentation. Because, at last moment I had to cover her part of presentation. Moreover, two group members were not able to explain the things properly to the class. Which directly effects our final score of this assignment.
Personally, I believe if we practice before our presentation day then we can easily get to know about our performance and our mistakes. So that we can improve or avoid at presentation day. But our members were not taking it seriously that’s why we could not get better marks. In future, I will focus more on practicing before the final presentation.
Personal Accountability
Personally, I gave my best in my all group project. I completed my assigned work on time and at the same time I also encourage other teammates to complete the work on time. I am happy with my performance in the group projects. Even other members of our group also appreciated my work. The things I would like to improve in future is are as follow.
- Communication- I will create more opportunities for one-on-one discussions with team members.
- Knowledge- I will read more to get more information than required one.Commitments- I will set and track my goals towards my group work.
