Dec 18, 2020
Navigating Online Teaching: Group Etiquette
In school and university, we are often required to participate in group work and related assignments. These projects are sometimes a challenge for us as university students tend to have very different schedules and may have different expectations. We, as the Student Team, have been through this process and would like to share our experience with you and some insightful resources to make your group assignments a success. In this blog, we will talk about some of our top tips on working as a group, and the benefit of group work.
Why is teamwork important?
Through teamwork, you get to learn from each other and produce better ideas than on your own. You will often discover how different people deal with the same situation, and this can help you reflect on different ways to approach a situation. You will also learn to work with people from all walks of life, which enables you to survive in your careers in the future!
Besides, teamwork is essential to improve your employability. The recruitment process nowadays often emphasises the importance of teamwork, and is often a point of focus in assessment centres. Teamwork is highly appreciated by recruiters.
Plan ahead
You are often given a course outline on Blackboard, where you can identify upcoming assessments and whether any group projects are involved. Your lecturer might also mention it in the welcome lecture. Some of the basic information that you will need to know are:
- Group members: How many will be involved? Will they be allocated by the lecturer or will you need to form your own group?
- Tasks: What is the task to be performed?
- Time: How long will the whole group project take and when is it due?
Form your group
After gathering all the background information, now it is time to start preparing for your assignment. If you are asked to form your own groups, find classmates that you would work well with. Consider things like the similarity of your schedules so you can meet easily. Once you identify potential groupmates, approach them as soon as possible to form a group (otherwise they might be invited by someone else!). If your friends are forming a group, you could try to join them as well!
Next, it would be great to create a group chat on social media platforms such as Whatsapp, Microsoft Teams or Skype. We would particularly recommend Microsoft Teams as it’s free for all UoM students and you get to share files, pin items and view them in advance. This would be helpful for the team to organise discussions about the project.
Plan your group work
Planning should be prioritised when setting up the first meeting between all group members.
In your first meeting, you could discuss the following topics:
- Time: How often you should meet up, and a common time for everyone to meet up regularly
- Deadlines to be met: You can set up internal deadlines, such as when to finish researching materials, and when to start designing the slides. You can use Microsoft Excel to document and manage your timelines, or Microsoft Project if you can access it
- Role assignment (if required): E.g. a timekeeper (to keep everyone on track) and a group leader (to initiate comments, etc.), a record keeper (to summarise to-do lists after each meeting and to share them on group chat)
- Where to keep your materials: E.g. one drive/common google drive for everyone to upload materials/PowerPoint/word documents?
- Task assignment: Allocate tasks to everyone in the group (e.g. if the assignment is to provide an overview of the accounting industry, one could work on the accounting bodies and regulator, another could work on famous corporations in the accounting industry e.g. the Big 4 etc.)
In group work, everyone should try to contribute equally. This enables everyone to be fully immersed in the project and gain the most out of it.
During your group work
Here are a few tips that could help you during group work:
- Have someone to summarise what’s being discussed in each group meeting and upload it into the group chat so everyone can refer to it when preparing for the next meeting/materials
- If someone’s not turning up, a group member can politely message them privately to know if something has happened or if they need help with anything. If there is no reply, inform other group members and come to a common solution
- Be sensitive to time zone differences - as most of the group mates might be working remotely from different time zones, you will need to be understanding. This also means that communication will have to be in advance, which requires good planning and management of time (which leads back to the first step- plan your group work!)
Group work can be a challenging task but we believe with the above tips, you will work through it just fine. All the best from the Student Team and we hope you get the most out of this experience!
Helpful resources
Top Ten Tips: Group Work (Medium)
