Advice for effective group working
Learning to work within a group is an essential skill to develop whilst studying at university. To develop group working skills students will often be required to complete a larger assignment as part of a group. The guidance below will give advice on how to effectively work within a group.
Have an initial meeting
When starting a group project, the first thing to do is to get to know everyone within your group. You may already know some of your group, but it is important to get to know the other members of your team. This will help in team building, members feeling able to contribute in meetings and in understanding where each members strengths are.
In this initial meeting, and any later meetings, make extra effort to involve people who are naturally quiet so that they can feel that they can add their contributions.
In order to minimise the possibility of conflict, it is important that group members feel comfortable from the beginning, so make sure that everybody knows everyone’s name and that you all have each other’s contact details. Creating a team, using Microsoft Teams, can be useful for sharing ideas, arranging meetings and working collaboratively at a distance. To find out more information about using Teams go to our tools for group work page.
Analyse the task
When the group divides the task up, ensure that each person has responsibility for part of the task. The work should be divided fairly, so that everyone has approximately the same amount of work to do. The group should take people’s abilities and previous experience into consideration when deciding who does what. It can be useful to work on areas that you have less experience in to further develop your skills. Whatever area you are working on you won't be alone as meetings can be used to gain feedback and support from your group.
After allocating tasks, work out a timeline that shows each task, the date by which it must be completed and the person or people who are responsible for doing it. Make this timeline so that it has some flexibility, so that it can be adjusted if problems arise. On the group work home page you can find a task management sheet that is useful for storing these actions and due dates, as well as a filled out example version of the sheet.
Plan Regular Meetings
Meeting regularly means that you have opportunities to present your work, ask questions and keep everyone on track with what their next steps are. Although the work is split up into sections, it is still group work so use meetings to check progress, give feedback, share ideas and offer support where it is needed.
Plan meetings around once per week at the start of a group work project. Meet more if you feel it is needed. As the project goes on you can adapt this and meet more times closer to the deadline. After each meeting everyone should leave knowing what they should do before the next meeting.
Be an effective group member
Be positive and try to make the group work. Contribute to group discussions, encourage others to contribute and anticipate difficulties. Your group will only function well if everyone contributes by fulfilling their commitments, so do your section and try to support any group members where possible.
Part of being an effective group member is helping the team cope with difficulties that can arise in group work. For advice for how to deal with these difficulties see our skills guide.