Working Well as a Team

Problem: No sense of community or connection with peers; failure to bond. Sometimes the project never gets off the ground.

Suggested approach: Make an attempt to bond with your team members. Ask group members to post photos, details about themselves that they would like to share, and start a forum in which you can all discuss current events and items of interest.

Problem: Resentment from team members about the way the workload is dispersed or if the dominant person is perceived as a “bully.”

Suggested approach:

• Listen.
• List the roles/responsibilities/behaviors expected of each role. Look at the assignment sheet. From that assignment sheet, the group can make a task list. Once the group has a task list, they can decide on what roles are needed to complete the project. Then assign tasks to specific team members and develop a realistic set of due dates.
• Ensure that there are clear ways to connect with each other if there are questions.

Problem: Friction between team members can be subtle. Some team members may deliberately criticize work, endlessly debate small points, or refuse to contribute at all. Others may become passive.

Suggested approach:
    * Admit it when there is friction between group members. Get it out in the open. Then, develop a productive solution.
    * Define the roles as well as the tasks. Provide guidelines for team-member roles and describe actions to be taken by each member of the group.

Problem: Difficulty coordinating time for the project, due to team members living in different time zones or having different schedules.

Suggested approach: Organize the group schedule.

• Give the group at least a week to do each part, no matter how small.
• Find out your team members’ schedules so that, as a group, you can accommodate each other’s time constraints.
• Develop a communications plan. Try to communicate in real time if you can, either with instant messenger, chat, or video chat.

Problem: Team members may become competitive rather than collaborative. They may not want to modify any of their work.

Suggested approach:

• Build in rewards for working with each other (for example, offering praise to your group members). Encouraging each other will enhance the group environment.
• Make sure that each person clearly perceives that there exists a clear reward for the effort expended in the group work.
• Separate the tasks and roles so that there is division of labor, rather than overlap.

Managing the Project Together

Problem: Collaborative papers require “blending”; the paper should flow as though it was written by a single person.

Suggested approach: Clearly identify the work required. Develop structures that allow individuals to insert their own work in sections clearly identified as pertaining to them. A couple of group members should be responsible to review the paper to make sure the paper transitions well and each part of the paper flows together.

Problem: Irrelevant activities. Group members may resist doing activities they perceive to be irrelevant or not what they envisioned for the goal.

Suggested approach: Identify the tasks that the group will need to do in order to accomplish the goal. Let team members know how their work ties into the project and how it ties into the course material.

Problem: The project may seem overwhelming.

Suggested approach: Simplify the tasks and break them up into individual steps. Instead of envisioning a large group project, visualize the entire assignment as four or five smaller projects that will each require two or three steps.

Problem: Goal or outcome may not be clearly defined.

Suggested approach:

• Redefine the outcomes as you go, based on the types of work the group is producing. Be flexible and make adjustments as needed.
• Make sure the outcome and the goals are as clearly defined as possible. It is important to clearly define the concrete attributes: length, structure, content, purpose, format, complexity.