Collaboration
What is collaboration?
Collaboration is where two or more people work together to achieve a goal or complete a task.
Working Collaboratively at University
At university, many courses include assessments designed to develop your collaboration skills. Instead of working individually, you'll complete these tasks as part of a team. Typically, the group submits a single piece of work, which is assessed with one grade shared by all members.
These collaborative assessments are often more extensive than individual ones and include various components that can be divided among team members. Examples might include reports, presentations, essays, or even practical skills demonstrations.
Why is Collaboration Important?
Collaboration is an essential skill for your future career. Most roles will require you to work as part of a team, contributing towards shared goals. Developing this ability during your time at university will help you identify your strengths, address any weaknesses, and improve how you work with others.
Collaborative assessments are especially common in the early stages of your degree, as they provide a great opportunity to connect with peers and build relationships within your course.
Resolving Conflict during Collaboration
Working with others is an essential part of your university experience, and whilst collaborative working can be a rewarding and positive experience, sometimes conflict can arise. The ability to identify, address and resolve a conflict in a sensitive and efficient way is crucial for successful group work and maintaining a good team dynamic.
Non-cooperative Team Members
Sometimes members of your group will be uncooperative and may not be doing their part of the project. Sometimes your first instinct may be to complain to your tutor, however most lecturers regard the need to cope with difficulties facing the group as part of the assignment, so avoid complaining initially to them about individuals unless you feel that you have exhausted other available options.
Firstly, you should try to communicate with an individual and try to find out the underpinning reason behind why they are unable to help. It may be that they are struggling, need some assistance from other team members or have other personal difficulties. Whatever the problem, it is preferable to help the person complete their task rather than having other team members complete it for them. This will increase fairness and reduce your overall workload.
Dominant Team Members
Groups having a dominant member is quite common and there isn’t always a correlation between who is the loudest or talks the most and who has the best ideas. The best ideas come from a group when everyone contributes and helps to shape the work using everyone’s experience.
When an individual is dominating discussions, one solution is for other group members to point out that everyone needs to be heard and to ask quieter members for their ideas.
Although, this could upset your peer if they feel that they are making good progress. To minimise potential discomfort by asking your peer to subside their talking, you could introduce a “talking object” such as a ball or another item, which allows only the holder to speak. Passing the object around ensures that everyone has an opportunity to contribute.
Another possible method is to try timing everyone's contributions and to allow everyone the opportunity to add something after a point has been made.
It is also possible to politely indicate to the dominating team member that they are taking more of their fair share of time in the meeting. Suggesting this outside of a meeting will be more effective and reduce conflict. Suggested reasons behind this could include, allowing others to contribute, increasing the range of ideas and reducing the workload of the individual who dominates.
To avoid a dominant team member doing all the work, or for them feeling obliged to do all the work, split the work so that every member has specified tasks. These tasks can be discussed in the team meetings and progress can be monitored.
Silent Team Members
Some team members may be quiet during team meetings. This may be for several reasons including confidence, other team members dominating or because they don’t feel that they have anything to contribute.
One way to help silent team members is to give them the chance to speak by asking them for their ideas and giving them the opportunity to discuss their specified tasks. Leave a space after each person’s contribution so that quieter team members have time to indicate that they have something to say. When a team member speaks pay attention and acknowledge their contribution, even if you disagree with it.
For further information on working with others in a group setting, you can use the Group Work guide to investigate further.
Scharlatt, H. 2016. Resolving Conflict: Ten Steps for Turning Negatives into Positives. Centre for Creatives