5 Cardinal rules of Groupwork

Uni is full of groupwork that we all hate doing, but it has to be done. To make life easier I have written down the 5 cardinal rules of doing groupwork to make those assignment run smoother.

#1 Do your work

If you don’t do your part, the task will fail. If everyone slacks off, you’ll have a piece of work prime for the bin and not Turnitin. It’s as simple as that. We all get that sometimes you have 12 million things due or your flatmate gives you tonsillitis and you just can’t do your part that week, but if you constantly do nothing you won’t only have a crap piece of work, your group won’t like you very much.

#2 Make sure everyone’s ideas are considered

Unfortunately, your ideas aren’t always the best ones out there; I’m sure we all wish we were the smartest person in the room, but we very rarely are. It usually ends up being the case that when one person offers up an idea, another person adds to it or improves on it and this is how you can create a solid piece of work that all have contributed to.

Sometimes people can offer up ideas which, in your head, are completely idiotic but that doesn’t mean you need to say it like that. If you don’t like something someone suggests, just say ‘perhaps we could do it this way’ or ‘I like that idea but what if we look at it from this angle’. It’s nice to be nice.

#4 Negotiate

There will always be disagreements in group work. Instead of agreeing to disagree or leaving one person feeling undervalued because you chose a different idea, try to incorporate them together. This will obviously not work every time but as long as you try to negotiate something between ideas, you’re doing good work to make the assignment as collaborative as possible.

#5 Meet up in person as much as you can

Meeting up isn’t always feasible since most students have jobs and other deadlines but it is much easier to write a piece of work together if you’re physically together. Google docs is great for when you don’t have time to meet up but in my experience, you get a hell of a lot more work done when you’re together.

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