Organization of Teams

I have attended college for three years now, and I feel that every time the professor mentions group project, my automatic reaction is to dread it. I feel that almost every time I work on a group project, the work is not divided evenly. Someone ends up doing more work, and someone benefits from the other person taking charge. When it comes to the final presentation or work, most projects I worked on ended up being fine, but there was still an unequal divide of work. However, when I was in LAS 122 freshman year, a class designed for James Scholars Students, I remember actually enjoying the project and having the work divided evenly. Additionally, as a member of Alpha Phi Omega, the service fraternity on campus, being on committees is usually quiet enjoyable and the work is divided evenly. When reflecting on group projects in my Spanish and economics class, I feel that collaborating in an effective way was hard. To start off, we were assigned to work with random people in extremely large classes with up to 1000 people. The need to create a personal connection was very low. With this, I feel that most of us did not have much respect for each other -- we saw each other as random people we were assigned to work with. With regard to what high performance teams should have, we certainly lacked a deeper sense of purpose: it was just an introduction course, which did not have much significance to those who took it as a general education requirement. Additionally, many students demonstrated their lack of importance by not contributing to the project, not answering text messages about what we should do, and eventually, me and one other person completed the whole project in fear of receiving a bad grade. High performance teams should have high accountability, but we essentially lacked any form of accountability. The professor only looked at the final project and gave every person the same grade, so if something was not complete, everyone would receive the same grade. Incentive to work on the project went down, because people assumed that someone was bound to do all the work eventually. I think that this group followed a more dysfunctional structure. With the one boss structure, one person is in charge and divides the work. One other person and I attempted to this, but since no one responded or acknowledged our attempts, it just did not function properly. In lecture we discussed how employees may act advantageously or in an immoral way because they know they can get away with it, and I think this also exemplifies that in a classroom. Fortunately, this has not been my only experience in group projects. Freshman year in the introduction to LAS for James Scholars, we had many group projects, and I worked well with these people. To start off, I think that my peers were accustomed to performing at a high level, and this workstyle was seen in our projects. In this way, we did not have a single boss: essentially every group member was a boss. Also, we were all pursuing different majors, including statistics, biology, geology, and English, so we were able to utilize our own skills that others did not have. For example, the English major did a lot of the writing, as the statistics major I did the charts and data information, and so on. This created a strong sense of collaboration. It may be seen that this in part due to the fact that most students in this class were highly motivated, but the important thing is we still had respect for each other and collaborated well. Additionally, no student did not contribute to the work because they thought the other students would certainly work. Everyone felt accountable. When serving on committees in Alpha Phi Omega, it follows the one boss style as one person chairs the committee. However, the other committee members are still motivated and do their portion of the work in my experience. In comparison to the first example, I think that intrinsic value is important. People choose to serve on the healthy lifestyle committee or environmental concerns committee; it is not a requirement. High functioning groups need a deeper sense of purpose, which those random projects in introductory courses do not have. Additionally, many people I am on the environmental concerns committee with feel very strongly about the state of our environment. This creates a bond or relationship that is more than surface level. We are all there for a clear purpose, and we know what to do to help promote eco-friendly lifestyles on campus.