Purpose Statement: This blog post discusses the rules agreed upon by our group so that other students reading this can have an idea of what may make a good team for group projects.
After a bit of discussion, my group was able to decide on a few key points that are especially important to have a successful team and group project. We eventually settled on the following principles for dealing with any conflicts that arise during our group projects.
Reach out again to a person who hasn’t responded to any communication. Ask the person in person/in class if they saw the text or email. Then, if the problem persists, ask Melanie to reach out to the person.
If a member of the group cannot maintain the charter and even after Melanie has talked to the person (as in bullet point 1) the problem still persists, we will each do a group evaluation on each member and submit it to Melanie so we can be graded according to the effort we put in and how well we maintained this charter.
If problems arise in general, talk to the group with honesty and openness and resolve the problem in person or in class. If the problem is unable to resolve, have a team discussion with Melanie moderating.
If problems persist, have a lightsaber duel.
We wanted to come up with a plan that would keep potential conflicts or disagreements small, and not inflate them. So, we started out with small ways of addressing the problem or the problem-maker in an honest yet gracious way. If things do not improve after discussing it as a team, we can talk to the professor. As a last resort, only after everything else has been tried, once the project and other team relationships are endangered, we will do a lightsaber duel.
Our group also agreed that honesty and openness are crucial if we were to be effective in our projects. While we agreed that it was important to attack the problem, not the person, we wanted to stress that ignoring a problem doesn’t usually help. We also all agreed that it is important to be thick-skinned, and understand that most of the time people are not trying to hurt or attack you.
The good thing is, our group seems very sensible and I don’t think we will have many problems. We certainly won’t suffer much from hitchhikers or couch potatoes. If anything, we are all rather hands-on and used to being the ones in control of other group projects. (Although, a duel sounds kind of fun).