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Do you like group work or find it helpful ?

Poll

Do you like group work or find it helpful?

llys

Please vote in the poll. Thanks. :smile:

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Reply 1

Smack

Volunteer Team

Yes, in my degree (engineering), it was extremely useful as it allowed much bigger projects to be constructed, as well as demonstrating a key skill required in the workplace.

Reply 2

amongsttheweeds

Yes, I think it's very much necessary to learn how to carry others and do their work for them.

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Reply 3

Blazinq

rarely
most of the time it's **** and I'm with god awful people

Reply 4

username1039383

Im one of those people that just talk the whole time and never get anything done (depends if i know the group members well) if in a group so i find it better to work on my own as i get more done that way :tongue:

Reply 5

cyiarik

Unless I have specific questions and need answers, then no.

No.

No I've found group working often hinders my learning and performance and can be extremely frustrating. In some cases group work is necessary and then I have no problem with it but other than that I cannot stand it.

Reply 8

SilverstarDJ

As much as working with others will be part of my job, I don't enjoy group work, especially if people are less motivated to learn than me and I am forced up to pick up the pieces as my grade will be affected by their apathy.

Reply 9

SillyEddy

Depends on the team, but on the whole, yes. I have a stunning group of people to work with at the moment, so we accomplish a lot. It keeps things challenging and gives us the opportunity to really expand on some ideas. We're all quite open and vocal about our project and smart enough to make improvements and use foresight. Especially in the first year of university it was a good tool to see what my fellow students were made of and to understand their strengths and weaknesses (which we're putting into effect this year).

That said, I've been in plenty of group projects where I could do the work a lot better and faster by myself, but it's usually not too bad. It's a useful skill to be able to teamwork, and it does take effort to get it right. It takes some courage to release a bit of very important work to someone else to finish off, but similarly, they're doing the same to me, so it's nice to have that appreciation. It means a project can be done 4 times faster because there are more eyes, hands and brains working on it. It's pretty good. Highschool and college sucked for it, however.

Reply 10

HeavyTeddy

No. I hate it. Though it wholly depends if I like the people on my group or not. I tend to not like most people so therefore I don't enjoy group work. The most annoying thing is relying on other people to get the work done. I'd rather work on my own, at least that way I know I'm going to do something properly.

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Reply 11

tory88

I liked it at school, when things didn't matter all that much, as it was enjoyable. But at university you're entrusting a certain percent of your mark to others (unless you want to do the work of everyone) and I don't like that.

Reply 12

monkyvirus

As someone with anxiety it was the worst experience of my life. Especially as I was an undergrad put with 3 postgrad students (the course I was doing was a specialist one at my university) who ignored my opinion the entire time and just bossed me about :frown:

. I think the fact it effects your grades makes it far far worse as well. Your grade is likely just going to be an average of the grades you would have got individually.

Basically with a good team you can do wonders but with a bad team you will be stuck in a rut. Lecturers assign people randomly (or in my case tried to split the undergrads up so we'd "benefit" from the postgrads knowledge) without any thought into who would gel well together or fulfill key team roles.

Reply 13

discomposure

Depends - in the lab, yeah sure as long as there's enough work to go around. For presentations/projects no, its friggin annoying.

Reply 14

TalkingLion

I hate group work. I prefer doing things my own way, whilst I feel like working in groups is just never productive. I'm also usually the one left to do all of the work at the end.

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Reply 15

nulli tertius

Just an idle thought, but I wonder what proportion of those who don't like doing group work, nonetheless apply for jobs where "must be able to work well in a team" is part of the essential person spec and I wonder what proportion get through the team exercise at the assessment centre?

Reply 16

Hailey02

I really enjoy group work since it is the best way to get exchanges and reinforce relationships, it is also another way of being involved in a hard or easy task but reaching together the same goal, success or failure.

Reply 17

llys

Original post by nulli tertius

I think pretty much all of them. At least from my experience, people in the workplace hate (nonsensical*) "group work" too! :lol:

I also think that "jobs for introverts" have pretty much disappeared, except for jobs like mailman or truck driver perhaps.

*I think that group work only makes sense when projects are so huge that a single person cannot possibly finish them; in that case group work works and is generally accepted even by people who don't like useless group work. In fact, in disciplines where this is commonly the case (e.g. Engineering, Computing) proper protocols for group work have been established which help to make it work (e.g. SCRUM for Computing projects and other programs for Engineering projects etc.). I don't think people here have experienced this, however, and I think that school or university group work does not prepare you for this at all and is just a waste of time.

Reply 18

CJKay

Definitely not. I find it more of a hindrance.

Reply 19

Insanity514

Personally, I don't find the actual work useful as I think it goes way off topic (at least it did in first year for me). Not that I don't like working with others, because it can be very useful for topics like anatomy.