This might be weird to say, but I’m a proponent of group work in academic settings.
Okay, please put away your pitchforks and hear me out a little bit. I’ll be the first to say that I dislike doing group work. I’m an incredibly awkward introvert by nature, and I’m terrified of working with strangers. Not to mention that throughout my life, I’ve been put into groups where I (and mercifully other one or two team mates) was the only ones doing the actual work out of a group of five.
In fact, the worst experience I’ve ever had with group work was when I was assigned teammates for a hackathon and all but one teammate had dropped out at the last minute.
However, there are merits to doing group work. I’m a major proponent of the belief that group work helps students develop the soft skills they need to succeed in your future job, as unpopular as that belief is. You will eventually work with people you don’t really like and people who don’t pull their own weight. Group work gives you the insight to work with and find a solution to these situations.
And that’s not the end of it! This is also going to be a super weird belief and hypocritical because I stated I dislike doing group work (in bold, no less!) earlier in this blog. I enjoy being part of a group, and working together as one. As I get to know my group mates, the primal, lizard part of my brain shuts off, and I realize I have nothing to be terrified of. In fact, I start recognizing that I like working with my group! There’s something magical that happens when you and your teammates are moving together like well-oiled cogs in a machine, and your end product turns out to be better than expected. Not to mention, it’s pretty nice having reliable teammates to have your back when things go awry on your end, and teammates to help you in debugging.
One of my most positive experiences as a OSU Post-Bacc student as when I took CS 361: Software Engineering I. In that class, I was assigned four other teammates, and we needed to work together to develop an application (Disclaimer: I’ve heard that the class’ structure has changed recently, where group work isn’t really a thing anymore).
My time in CS 361 was not without any hiccups, but I felt like it was an overall an incredibly beneficial experience. In the beginning, I felt incredibly lost on how I should start my portion of the project. Imposter Syndrome set in, and I started to feel like me getting to that point in the program was all a fluke. However, like an angel descending down to Terra, during our team meeting, a teammate said “If you need help with anything, feel free to reach out to me. I know it’s hard getting started with a project, and I’m also pretty lost so we might be able to brainstorm and come up with something.” This told me that 1. I’m not the only lost one, and 2. My teammates aren’t scary and they’re willing to help.
I reached out to my teammate, and we talked about the logistics of the project, how to break it down, and how to start working on it. There was also a point mid/end-quarter where I had an emergency and thought I couldn’t implement my feature on time. I fearfully let my teammates know about the situation, and expected the worst– That I would be shunned from the group and left to fail the class. The exact opposite happened. My teammates assured me that it was okay, wished me the best on working out my emergency, and to just let them know about any updates. Fortunately, I was able to finish the feature in time, but this situation showed me that my teammates had my back and that I shouldn’t be so scared to falter.
In short, I can conclude this blog with the following statement: Group work can be a mixed bag of both positive and negative cases, but it is necessary so we can gain the experience of what it is like working in a team.