Group work often challenging because we don’t take time to articulate expectations, agreements, values, and experiences with our teammates.

Before we begin our group lab, you and your group will work together through the following teamwork questions. Be very specific in your answers. For example, instead of saying “participate in meetings,” say instead “contributes at least two ideas to each team meeting.”

<aside> ✍️  Task: Take notes on your discussion and specific expectations. They will be used to create a peer-review teamwork assessment rubric.

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🗣 Discussion Prompts 🗣

  1. Assign roles for group management and give each other permission to exercise those roles.
    1. E.g. you may want to choose a convener who is in charge of calling meetings and developing a work schedule. You should all agree to allow this convener to call you out if you don’t show up to meetings.
  2. What tools will your group use to work together and to communicate with each other? (e.g. Google Docs? group texts? emails chain? Slack? Word docs in a shared folder? etc)
  3. How will your group divide labour or work?
    1. Look through the guidelines and rubrics for the project, and articulate some roles/labour division/expectations for each portion of the project.
  4. What are your expectations for group communication? For time management?
  5. What will happen when a member does not keep to the agreements? What kind of accountability measures will you put in place? (Do you want to involve the instructor at any point? In what role?)
    1. This may be a good point to talk about how your group will account for each team member’s accommodations and accessibility needs. Accountability is not punishment, it’s about arriving at a set of agreements about how your team will work given all your needs. So make sure to discuss this.
  6. Take time to consider the assumptions about and experiences with group work you bring to this project. How might they influence you?
  7. Take time to consider the identities and patterns of socialization you each bring to the team. What unconscious social dynamics may be at play in your team? What policies/agreements can your team put in place to mitigate these patterns?