Group work: Communicating and sharing

Source: https://learninglab.rmit.edu.au/university-essentials/group-work/sharing/ Parent: https://learninglab.rmit.edu.au/university-essentials/group-work/

How well your group communicates with each other affects how you work together and how task information is stored, managed and shared. Good communication is an advantage for any group. Let's learn how to foster effective communication.

Agree on how to work together

• Successful groups make decisions as a group and expect all members to contribute equally to the task.
• Share your contact details and agree on the best way of keeping in touch.
• Meet face to face where possible to make decisions and work together effectively.
• Write a group charter to outline how you will work together, what expectations members have and how you will approach the task. Group members need to agree on the charter and sign it.

Here's an example of a group charter:

Group charter: members' responsibilities

All members agree to:

respect group members, demonstrate sensitivity and encourage learning

be fully committed to the group task and your individual agreed responsibilities

work according to the agreed time frame

give and receive feedback about your work and participate in group discussions

attend all meetings unless unavoidably prevented

agree to resolve conflict according to the group's agreed process as soon as it arises

ensure that all group members contribute equally to the task by addressing problems with tasks as they arise

agree to collectively read and edit the final group report or essay

provide contact details and respond to group communications as required

Signed:

Date:\

Sharing ideas

Hopefully, in your first meeting you will have decided how you will communicate as a group. Here are some tips for what can be covered in your next meetings.

You should:

• report on your work: what you have done, what you have learned, what you still need to do
• address problems and talk about possible solutions (product and process problems) as they emerge
• ensure everyone has a chance to speak without interruption
• make decisions about individual responsibilities for actions; e.g. the development of the group's points for the report / presentation
• address the issue of members not contributing ideas, if relevant, and stress that all opinions are needed and valued.

Set an agenda

Before the meeting, the note taker can send out a request to group members to suggest any topics that need to be discussed. They can then create an agenda that that has a description of each item that needs to be discussed by the group, a field for where the name of the person/people who is responsible for the task and space the actions that need to be completed.

Here's an example of a meeting agenda:

Keywords

• Group work
• Plagiarism

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