Working as a team!

Group work is a common and important part of post-secondary courses. Your professor may put you into a group, or allow you to create your own. If you are assigned a group, you should contact the other members immediately to start sorting out responsibilities. If you don’t take initiative, it’s possible that no one in your group will until it is too late. Connecting with them early is the key. If you are not assigned a group, then you should immediately post looking for a group in the discussion form and network with people you have already met in the class. The discussion forum is a good way to find reliable members for your group, as anyone who is regularly visiting the discussion forum is more likely to be motivated to do course work.

You are likely to end up in a group with people who have very different histories, strengths, and weaknesses. Group work allows you to divide tasks so that people can focus on their strengths, with each person contributing their best work to the group. The activity below will show you an example using three fictional students who have been assigned to work together in a group.

Additional tips for working in a group:

• Communicate early and often
• Keep in mind that people have very different, often busy, schedules. Don’t expect immediate responses, give people at least a day to respond
• Test your connections before any online meeting; you don’t want to run out of time because you spent it trying to make a connection work

Practice Activity