Mai Phượng Linh
(I don't know)
New Member
Does anybody have trouble with groupwork in school? I do. I mean I’m fine with tests, have no problem with oral presentation, alright with written report but when it comes to groupwork, ah ah ah ah ahhhh…….. things just get frustrated. The thing is in groupwork, parners share their grades and I just can’t seem to find the right partners to work with. Today, I open this topic not to whinge about my problem but in order to share some of my…..failing teamwork experiences. I would really appreciate if you can provide some tips on this for me. [-o<
1- Grade 11th
The task was to make a 5-minute movie video about the Watergate incident in American history in a group of 4 or 5. Well, my group included my best friend (like an instinct, I grabbed her right away after the teacher announced the task), another class mate (she seemed to participate in class eagerly so I assumed she would concentrate in her job), a boy (we included him because he got the camera) and a foreign exchange from Germany. We were given time in class to do research and extra time outside class to make the video. Now the problem started. Because it was outside of class, there was no teacher to supervise, no-one to push us to work effectively. We were making a video, right? and the whole class was gonna watch it so to some of us, especially my best friend and the other girl, appearance was far more important than planning on the content of the video. By that time, I realized that the fact that someone participates in class enthusiastically does not mean that he or she cares about the grade. We wasted a lot of time on jerking around and repeating filming them just because they wanted to make sure that they would look good on the video. Besides, my friend was quite opinionated and the other girl was very bossy so of course, they turned to bitch each other most of the time. The other boy and the Germany girl were very sweet and they got intimidated by this. Being fed up with watching this ridiculous scene, I gave them a few suggestions and then ended up….bitching them 8-} infront of the other two. This slowed down our project and after all, we had to arrange to meet each other about 3 times (each time took like 4 hours including nights, hell, even my host parents got irritated with this).
Needless to tell, our results was not satisfied at all. More important, it also affected our friendship a bit. Bad news was we only got 75%, good news was only one other group of the class got better result than us.
)
2- Uni_Prep-Sem1
Now I’m Uni student (well, kind of) and study with international students. My task this time was to choose a group to make a written report about a industry in Australia. Once again, I grabbed my most close mates: one girl who studied very well in accounting and maths and one boy who has spent 4 years in Australia. I assumed that their English was gonna be excellent, or at least, above the average of the rest of the class. (The thing was the girl did well on Maths and acc does not mean that she would be good at writing and the boy may have exceptional oral English skill does not mean that his writing ability would reach average level). Our teacher suggested us to break the report into 3 parts, each does his own part and then combined together so I just followed along. Because my part was the introduction and background information, I did not need to read the other partners’ work to do my job. In general, my way of working was quite independent, big mistake. Because my partners were doing the rest of the report, it was very important for them to read the previous sections to understand the whole report (I mean, how do you write conclusion and have no idea about intro and body). Well, apparently they did not do that and I myself did not make sure that they would read it, either.
In the end, our report collected a lot of grammar mistakes, paragraphs structure was not coherent and some sections did not link together at all.
3- Uni_Prep- Sem 1
This time was a groupwork report on McDonalds based on primary and secondary research. I found my guyfriend a lazy, lay-back kid and did not mean to include him in my group this time but he invited himself into the group. He was one of our close friends so we did not know how to kick his ass out of the group without hurting him. However, to make sure that everything would be correct, I checked every single section of the report, changed, fixed, did not realize that I was actually…. redoing the whole report. 8-} My female partner was mainly responsible for the layout (and she did a terrific job) and gave some ideas. The boy did absolutely nothing, well, he did but it was not counted. I found that he tried harder than last time but it still did not work, his writing skill was inadequate for Uni-level. Even the girl got mad at him and called him "bộ độ" (means “stupid” in their language, I really cracked up after hearing this so many times) ). Our teacher was surprised at that and combining with what she saw from teaching experiences, concluded that Asian girls often tend to yell at the boys (how embarrassed :embarasse , not all of us are like that, you know ; ). Oh, I forgot, he actually volunteered to pay for the printing cost :mrgreen: .
Our report got a much better result that time but in term of teamwork, we failed. Teamwork means working together, not one works extra time and does everything. [-x
4- Uni
I finally step in Higher Education now and I’m very concerned about this . I haven’t found the key to do successful teamwork yet so once again, I would really appreciate to get some advice from teamwork experts here. Like how do you deal with problems such as:
- is that a bad idea to include your close friend in a groupwork?
- how do you exclude an un-invited person in a polite way?
- what is the way to express your opinion without being judged as a bossy person?
- and so on if you can think of.
TA. :beerchug:
1- Grade 11th
The task was to make a 5-minute movie video about the Watergate incident in American history in a group of 4 or 5. Well, my group included my best friend (like an instinct, I grabbed her right away after the teacher announced the task), another class mate (she seemed to participate in class eagerly so I assumed she would concentrate in her job), a boy (we included him because he got the camera) and a foreign exchange from Germany. We were given time in class to do research and extra time outside class to make the video. Now the problem started. Because it was outside of class, there was no teacher to supervise, no-one to push us to work effectively. We were making a video, right? and the whole class was gonna watch it so to some of us, especially my best friend and the other girl, appearance was far more important than planning on the content of the video. By that time, I realized that the fact that someone participates in class enthusiastically does not mean that he or she cares about the grade. We wasted a lot of time on jerking around and repeating filming them just because they wanted to make sure that they would look good on the video. Besides, my friend was quite opinionated and the other girl was very bossy so of course, they turned to bitch each other most of the time. The other boy and the Germany girl were very sweet and they got intimidated by this. Being fed up with watching this ridiculous scene, I gave them a few suggestions and then ended up….bitching them 8-} infront of the other two. This slowed down our project and after all, we had to arrange to meet each other about 3 times (each time took like 4 hours including nights, hell, even my host parents got irritated with this).
Needless to tell, our results was not satisfied at all. More important, it also affected our friendship a bit. Bad news was we only got 75%, good news was only one other group of the class got better result than us.
) 2- Uni_Prep-Sem1
Now I’m Uni student (well, kind of) and study with international students. My task this time was to choose a group to make a written report about a industry in Australia. Once again, I grabbed my most close mates: one girl who studied very well in accounting and maths and one boy who has spent 4 years in Australia. I assumed that their English was gonna be excellent, or at least, above the average of the rest of the class. (The thing was the girl did well on Maths and acc does not mean that she would be good at writing and the boy may have exceptional oral English skill does not mean that his writing ability would reach average level). Our teacher suggested us to break the report into 3 parts, each does his own part and then combined together so I just followed along. Because my part was the introduction and background information, I did not need to read the other partners’ work to do my job. In general, my way of working was quite independent, big mistake. Because my partners were doing the rest of the report, it was very important for them to read the previous sections to understand the whole report (I mean, how do you write conclusion and have no idea about intro and body). Well, apparently they did not do that and I myself did not make sure that they would read it, either.
In the end, our report collected a lot of grammar mistakes, paragraphs structure was not coherent and some sections did not link together at all.
3- Uni_Prep- Sem 1
This time was a groupwork report on McDonalds based on primary and secondary research. I found my guyfriend a lazy, lay-back kid and did not mean to include him in my group this time but he invited himself into the group. He was one of our close friends so we did not know how to kick his ass out of the group without hurting him. However, to make sure that everything would be correct, I checked every single section of the report, changed, fixed, did not realize that I was actually…. redoing the whole report. 8-} My female partner was mainly responsible for the layout (and she did a terrific job) and gave some ideas. The boy did absolutely nothing, well, he did but it was not counted. I found that he tried harder than last time but it still did not work, his writing skill was inadequate for Uni-level. Even the girl got mad at him and called him "bộ độ" (means “stupid” in their language, I really cracked up after hearing this so many times
) ). Our teacher was surprised at that and combining with what she saw from teaching experiences, concluded that Asian girls often tend to yell at the boys (how embarrassed :embarasse , not all of us are like that, you know ; ). Oh, I forgot, he actually volunteered to pay for the printing cost :mrgreen: . Our report got a much better result that time but in term of teamwork, we failed. Teamwork means working together, not one works extra time and does everything. [-x
4- Uni
I finally step in Higher Education now and I’m very concerned about this . I haven’t found the key to do successful teamwork yet so once again, I would really appreciate to get some advice from teamwork experts here. Like how do you deal with problems such as:
- is that a bad idea to include your close friend in a groupwork?
- how do you exclude an un-invited person in a polite way?
- what is the way to express your opinion without being judged as a bossy person?
- and so on if you can think of.
TA. :beerchug:
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