Rachel gave us a link for Tom Wujec’s ted talk explaining about collaborative work and taught us how impvortant collaborative work is. When she asked our opinion about group work, she was met with a loud loud sound of sighs coming all from our mouths. It is true, and from a personal perspective, almost all of the group work that I was in resulted in either me doing all the work, or my smarter friend doing all the work. Every group member is to blame for whatever happens in their group, myself included.
When I was still in college, about a year ago, I had a group assignment where we have to make a report about the topic of green and sustainable structure. We were all international students, but I was the only one who had a different nationality. We are given six weeks to do the report, and we had to submit a draft by the fourth week. Around 3 time we cancelled a group meeting because one of us couldn’t show up, and we didn’t read each other’s part in the report, even though the topic must all be related. I didn’t really care what my other teammates were writing, I was only focused on doing my own work, and maybe because of that our work didn’t really go to well. There was no communication at all between us, heck we even communicate using e-mail, a freaking e-mail. We had facebook, had an online messanger, yet we use the orthodox method of communicating. After the teacher gave back our first draft, I fixed some minor error, but nothing more than that. I tried to read all of our drafts combine, and oh boy, it didn’t make any sense. I realized that we might not have understood our topics and we hadn’t communicated the way we were supposed to. But still nothing really changed. I was to busy with my assignments, and i kept reminding my teammates to send me what they wrote to see if it all connects, rather than discussing it with them. One time, we were supposed to meet up at the library at 4.pm. I came half an our late, one of my teammate had her boyfriend with her in our group meeting, and left half an our after I arrived because her battery ran out,and the third teammate came half an hour before our scheduled time finished. Well I think you can guess how our group work turned out.
I understand and agree with Rachel’s point about collaborative work, how important it is in media industry and basically your life. Your participation and your incentive affects your performance and your reputation, which affects your carrer. but most of the time groupwork doesn’t work because none of the mates are motivated, or even motivate other. And we don’t motivate because we think our work is just a work, it has no other value than adding a gpa point in our certificate. A teacher once gave us the little game that Tom Wujac mentioned and my group didn’t performed quite well truthfully we didn’t see any value in winning or even trying to do the game. Is it wrong for us not to have any motivation in doing something we consider tedious? No, but it is to use this reason as an excuse. Saying “I am not motivated in this project so I won’t perform my best, so you shouldn’t even consider making me do this shit” would never get you anywhere. A tip from me (I don’t invent this tip and still i’m trying hard to use this tip) is to try to see the value of the work, why you do what you do.
another related that you might be interested is Dan Pink’s video “The puzzle of motivation” that has the same topic with Tom, that we do our best work because we are motivated by a bigger cause.