Group projects are essential for new expiriences in life and College
Hello, my name is Juan dos Santos and I'm writing this blog with the purpose of telling my experience/story of working on group projects and learning about their advantages and benefits\.]
My experience of my very first time working in group projects in college has been very exciting since Professor Sinkoff is making us do and interact with the topics that we are learning during the different classes and assignments. This time, the class was split into 3 groups, Group 1 was assigned with Chapter 3, Group 2 was assigned with the chapter 9, and Group 3 having chapter 10. Maria was selected as our class leader so she had to do the introductions for all three groups, which in my opinion was an excellent work by her. This activity was a great way to start a new way to work and accomplish a goal with other people that are looking for the same success.
Group 2 was the group that I got assigned to, this group is made up of coworkers who are willing to put effort into their part of the work, they are also quite friendly and very open to any questions that each colleague has to help him and that everything goes well in the project. Chapter 9 was about the importance of communicating in groups, the difference between a work group where everyone is doing their part individually and non-sharing the ideas and opinions that all participants of the project have, and a group where they all discuss different topics to improve and reach their objective, there’s a very big dissimilarity in these two groups because the one that’s practicing Communication in groups is most likely to achieve in a better and accessible way the one who’s not practicing these skills.
The way we organized the group was very clean and was done very quickly, we started off by creating a group chat in WhatsApp so we could communicate and talk more comfortable, then, through the chat we started dividing the words and topics that every person had to present, which in my opinion was a great way to start off the process and working all together, then we chose two group leaders who would be in charge of leading the group and making the decision to separate the work in the different terminologies in order to explain and talk about the topic in a more understandable and clearer way so that the whole class could understand the information well, after completing the segregation of the topics, we all made sure to start doing our slides and finish them on time, the words that I had to work my research on were words fairly easy to explain since those were topics that I've been experiencing in my soccer team, classroom and Job, to be honest Group 2 is always putting a big effort on any assignment and is conformed by very helpful and careful people.
Groups 1 and 3 did also an incredible work, their presentations were very interactive, organized and very creative with all the images and decoration that they used, I noticed from my audience point of view that their research was done correctly and was very straight and specific, the videos, pictures and all the instruments showing evidence were used well.
To start off the class presentation, in my opinion Group 1 they handled the topic very well, giving examples and covering every corner of the topic without leaving any part with any doubts or concerns, they followed the instructions from Professor Sinkoff as they were given, respecting the time while presenting and knowing how to manage their nerves (if they had) while presenting to all classmates. They started by introducing important key Terms (the system of shared values, beliefs and norms) with their definitions to understand like culture and values (the commonly accepted standards of what is considered right and/or wrong). Their topic was Intercultural Communications and it was a very exciting topic and an excellent explanation by Group 1
Group 3 was presenting about an also very interesting topic such as Chapter 10 which talks about Group Leadership and Problem solving, these are essential skills that need to be practiced in order to have success and great results on the group project, these are potential skills that every participant on the team has to have present on their principal ideas about their work, in order to practice these skills properly the group should first choose someone responsible, openminded, and with a big sense of being open for any questions or concerns that the group have to discuss, then this person is the one in charge of having big responsibilities such as last decision making, and having a good knowledge of planning stuff and always coming up with a new idea to share it with the team. Having the role of problem solving is a huge responsibility that requires you to be a correct, honest and a strong word of opinion, you also have to have a good way of treating and communicating with the different ways of thinking of the people conforming the group, this is why I think that this topic and the way that they explained how these skills were so important and how people don’t even notice their value was very clear and easy to understand
As my final thought on this experience of learning this different chapters we went through. In conclusion, all three groups presented as expected, very calmly, mature, with confidence and with great materials of research and a great creativity to place and show our ideas with pictures and videos of the various topics that were given and assigned to each of us, also the people that makes part of the class is a big advantage for learning and meeting new information and skills that we didn’t know we practiced in our life every time we play a role in a group objective such as sports, our job, classrooms and other activities in group that we practice with our community.