How to Successfully Navigate a Group Project or Paper

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and in today’s video, I’ll share my tips for successfully navigating a group project or a group paper.

So, you’ve been assigned a group project. Fun!  Just kidding —  I hate them.  It’s not that I don’t like other students — I do.  And I feel like you can learn a lot from others if you share your work.   But group projects are objectively terrible — and professors continue to insist that we participate in them and all earn the same grade despite the fact that VERY RARELY is everyone in the group doing the same amount work.

Right now, I’m in graduate school for social work, but in my 20s I earned a degree in information systems.  The professors always insisted that group projects were a way to “simulate how groups work in the business world.”   Since at the time I was working IN the business world in many groups, I had a pretty good sense of what that was like, and I really couldn’t disagree more with their assessment.  In the world of work, each person comes to a group with their own area of expertise — someone’s there from IT, someone from product, someone from marketing and so forth.  Your role in the group is defined already by what your area of expertise is.  In addition, there is a hierarchy in business, AND someone is generally tasked with running the group.  Not so in school group projects — no one has a specialty, everyone is equal, and there is no leader.  You have to work all that out.  And inevitably, just like in the workplace, someone refuses to pull their weight.  In a work environment, you can go to that person’s boss and have them yanked from the project if they aren’t getting their work done.  What do you do in this situation for a group project for school?  Well, someone else has to do that person’s work.  But everyone gets the same grade. It is NOT at all like a workplace, no one ever does the same amount of work, and yet, you are all graded as though you have.   I hate them, but unfortunately, they are a reality of college life.  So the question becomes, how do you get through them successfully?

I have 2 general tips for you and then some concrete steps on how I tend to organize groups that I’ve been in.  My first general tip is to have a

Leader - okay, I know this is kind of frowned on.  After all, everyone is supposed to be contributing equally, right?  Ugh — no.  Having no leader inevitably leads to dithering and chaotic decision making.  I’m guessing since you are watching this video, you are probably a good candidate for a group leader, so start taking charge immediately.  Being a leader does NOT mean ordering people around and doing less work.  In fact, you will probably do a little more work — I know I always do.  Mostly it means organizing the overall project and assigning roles and deadlines quickly from the start so you don’t waste a lot of time.  Your first task as group leader is to get everyone’s contact info and start communicating in a way that people can respond to quickly.  In my experience, this is usually text or email and is NOT through whatever web portal your school uses.  In addition, the leader generally has an overall vision for the project, will collect all of the different pieces of work, and will edit them all into a reasonably uniform product.  It’s more work, but having a single leader will produce a better work product.  My second tip is to use

Collaborative Software like Google Suite - I don’t know about your school, but mine still requires submissions in Microsoft Word documents that are supposed to be uploaded into the school portal.  This is a nightmare for group projects.   Keeping track of everyone’s individual pieces of work and different versions of edits is super annoying if you are working on something together.  Even if you have to submit the final product in Word or PowerPoint, do all of your collaboration in Google Suite and then just export it in the required format.

Okay — so now I’m going to give you the steps that I use to manage group projects.  These should work for most groups, regardless of whether you are doing a paper, presentation, or research study.  First

• Step 1 - Review the Assignment - Since you are the self-designated group leader, it helps to approach the project as though it were yours to do independently right from the beginning.  You need to review the assignment instructions and really understand what is being asked of your group.  What is your final product, when is it due, what are the specifics that need to be included.  Next
• Step 2 - Do Some Preliminary Research - Once you have the basics of what is required, start doing some research.  This is just to give you a some ideas for a topic (if you need to choose one as a group) and to get an idea of what kinds of information will go into your project.  As you research, make sure you
• Step 3 - Share References - As you find articles and websites that will be useful to your group, put them in a Google spreadsheet and share them with the entire group.  Have everyone use this spreadsheet to record ALL of their reference material and quotes.  I have a video on using Google Sheets for citations if you are interested.  Once you have created this spreadsheet and begun adding to it, share it with your group members.  Next,
• Step 4 - Make an Outline -  I am big on outlines and they are never more important than when you are working with a group.  Establishing an outline in advance gives shape to your project, helps to assign roles, and ensures that your final product will be well organized.  Again, I have a separate video on creating an outline for a paper, but this should be a similar process for a presentation or research project.  I would make the outline in Google Docs and try to make it as detailed as possible.  If there are ideas that you think should be covered, make sure you include them as bullets in that section.  If there are quotes that you've found through your research, include them as a sub bullets (on in parentheses) as well.  That way, the whole group can benefit from the work that you've done.  While you are creating the outline, give an idea of how long each section should be -- 2 paragraphs, 1 page, etc.  Share this with the group and ask for feedback before you meet for the first time.  After this, it's time to
• Step 5 - Coordinate with Group - Depending on the size of the project, group, and how well you know each other, this is usually best done in a meeting or a call.  Find a time for everyone to meet in person, over Zoom, or by phone.  I usually set an agenda as well.  Maybe this seems like an annoying flex, but I generally want to make sure we cover all the points that we need to since getting lots people together is difficult.  So, a sample agenda for this first meeting might look like this. 
• Select Topic - If you need to select a topic, come prepared with some topics to choose from and ask if anyone has additional ones they are interested in.  Then have a discussion and vote on the topic.  Make sure you decide in this first meeting.
• Shared Documents - Next, discuss the shared documents that you'll be using including the reference/citation spreadsheet and the outline/document.   It's nice to have links to these right in your agenda. 
• Outline - Discuss your initial outline with the group and ask if there are edits or changes.  You should have already received some feedback on the outline and already incorporated that into your outline.  
• Assign Writing/Work - After this, decide who is going to write each section based on how long each section is supposed to be.  Make these assignments roughly equal.  However, if there are some areas that you think will be difficult and you already have a sense of how they should be written -- assign those sections to yourself.  Let people choose to the extent possible, but make sure the work is roughly equally distributed.  Ask that group members write their sections directly into the outline document, which is already shared with the group.
• Agree on instructions - this will help you in the editing stage.  If you are doing a presentation, agree on how wordy each of the bullets should be and how many bullets should be on a slide.  Agree on how to refer to citations in the rough draft - I usually just put in numbers that refer back to the citation spreadsheet on the first draft.  Agree not to use 1st person or passive voice -- whatever the rules of your program seem to be.  And finally, agree to
• Deadlines - I would start this process well in advance and make the deadline for the first draft at least a week before the project is due.  If you think you'll need multiple drafts, than agree to the schedule for those, but give yourself plenty of time for
• Step 6 - Editing - Group projects are difficult since everyone has a different writing style.  It is challenging to make each section work with the whole, but you have to do the best you can.  I usually offer to do the editing, but if you have some folks in the group who are particularly good writers or editors, you don't have to take this job on.   You also don't want to negate each person's contribution, so don't edit so much that it ends up sounding like your work.  Make sure the transitions are smooth and that people have hit all of the correct points.  If they haven't -- send it back out to them and tell them to rewrite it.  This is why you give yourself plenty of time.  If not, you'll end up doing all of the reworking and rewriting yourself.  This is a big job, but if you have reasonably good group members and have agreed upon good instructions, it should make your job easier.  While you are doing this, the other group members should be
• Step 7 - Formatting Citations - Make sure you don't get stuck with this job.  Each person needs to ensure that the references they used in their section have the right style and are cited properly.  I usually have them all do this in the citations spreadsheet and then cut and paste it all into the reference section.  But this is a good thing for everyone to be doing while you are editing.  Finally, you'll want to send out the "finished" project for
• Step 8 - Group Review - everyone should be able to give some feedback on the final product that you'll be submitting.  Give yourself time to incorporate the feedback and to ensure that you are using whatever writing style requirements are used by your program.   And submit!

One last point -- what happens if a group member isn't pulling his or her weight?  This is one of the reasons that I like early deadlines for drafts.  Inevitably, you will have at least one person who doesn't get their work done or doesn’t adhere to deadlines.  What do you do?  What if they don't respond to communication, miss group meetings, fail to submit their draft, or submit something that doesn't meet the agreed upon criteria?  Tell the professor.  I know it feels like tattling, but this is really your only recourse.  Let the professor know that you have a problem early in the process.  Odds are, the professor won't do anything about it, but you can then keep them updated on how thing are proceeding.  And let the offending group member know that you have shared your concerns with the professor.  You can give them an opportunity to make up work, but don't be too flexible.  After all, you (or other members of your group) may end up having to complete this person's work.  If the professor knows early in the process, you may get some flexibility on grading. 

And that's it.  It's a lot of work for the "leader" particularly at the beginning and end of the process, but these steps help to have a more efficient process that results in a better group work product.  Let me know what you think.  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching.