Education Articles from College Matching Service

Bond with your team-members. Ask group members to post photos, details about themselves that they’d like to share, and to start a discussion board or forum in which they discuss current events and items of interest. Potential problem: No sense of community. There is a failure to bond, and hence a failure to thrive. Collaborations with this problem sometimes never get off the ground.

Clearly identify the work required. Determine what the final outcome will look like. Avoid generalities and be specific early on. Potential problem: Collaborative papers require “blending” rather than stand-alone components. The collaboration is expected to produce a paper that flows as though it were written by a single person. This can pose a monumental, even insurmountable, challenge because individual voices, writing styles, even format can be completely at odds. Further problems surface when individual team members resent the way that their work has been edited. Solution: Develop structures that allow individuals to insert their own work in sections clearly identified as pertaining to them. Do not try to blend or mesh the parts.

Identify the tasks that you will need to do in order to accomplish the goal. Potential problem: Irrelevant activities. Group members may resist doing activities they perceive to be irrelevant to the overall goal or objective they envisioned when joining the group. Even those who go ahead and do the activities may feel resentful. Solution: Let the team members know how their work ties into the final objective (the project), and how it ties into a larger world as well.

Having group online class activities may be such a hassle, but it will definitely be helpful in your development as a learner.

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