My 1000 word post dealing with group projects

For my thousand-word blog post I am going to talk about the use of online and off-line collaboration. Collaboration meetings allow people to work together to accomplish a goal or complete a task at hand. I will be using two readings in my blog post which are “Group Dynamics” by Donelson R. Forsyth and the “Tuchman five stages of group dynamics” reading. In the Group Dynamics reading by Forsyth, it discusses the many uses of groups and all the types of groups that one can belong to in society. In the Tuchman article, it lists all the five stages of the group dynamics. The aim of this post is to examine off-line and online collaboration through two examples dealing with my own personal experiences with groups that I have worked with.

According to the Tuchman reading about the five stages of group dynamics, the author discusses the five stages of group dynamics which are forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Forming is the stage where one is using predetermined characteristics to gather if he or she wants to work with someone (Tuchman). I experienced this stage in multiple classes working on projects I had to do. Storming is the stage where one is gathering the ideas to further prepare to complete a task. During the multiple group meetings that I was a part of, I was able to experience this stage. The norming stage is where one is participating and contributing their ideas that they’ve found for the task at hand. Performing is the next stage obtained by most groups but some groups that I have been part of didn’t have a presentation part. The next stage is adjourning which is coming to the conclusion or coming to a final say about the topic at hand. I would say in my opinion this stage for me is when someone finally submits the final product.

My own personal experience dealing with online collaboration is that it can be tricky to form a group for a project. For example, in my hacking class, it is entirely online and I had to send out emails to start forming a group for a project. This was tricky because it was all done electronically via email. If this class was in person we would have probably arranged ourselves with people we had past experiences with or just the people sitting near you. Once we settled on a group we had to immediately figure out how to get in contact with our members. We texted throughout the semester to try to find a good meeting date and we were able to complete the project. You can say that I experienced all the five stages of group dynamics doing this project with my group. In the Forming stage, my group developed the relationships within which allowed us to create a set of boundaries on how to complete the paper. In the Storming stage was when we met as a group and started figuring out who was going to write about each part of the paper. For the Norming stage, our group was being active and we were able to accept new ideas. In the Performing stage, I would say in regard to this project it was when people were on the same page and actually uploading their part to the Google doc that we shared. Lastly, for the Adjourning stage our group came to a conclusion and finally turned the paper in on time (Tuchman).

Regarding off-line collaboration, I have experienced this many times throughout my life. I like to think of off-line collaboration as when people are forming groups not on an online basis. For example, I have a group that I regularly play basketball with at the campus rec center on the University of Arizona campus which can tie nicely into this reading titled “Group Dynamics” where the reading talks about the types of groups one belongs to. Since those are my close friends that I play basketball with, they could be categorized in the primary group (Forsyth, 2006). I also have experienced off-line collaboration in the classroom setting such as making new friends in the classroom. For example, in this one theater class that I was taking for a tier one or tier two class, I made some friends with some individuals and we began to sit together. For my ESOC 313 class, we had to do a group project that was assigned to us. For this class, we were able to arrange ourselves by who we sat next to or who we had previously worked with to determine whether or not they were interested in participating in the task. According to the group dynamics reading by Forsyth, the types of groups that I might have participated in were “work task based” groups. These groups are goal oriented and my group’s goal was to complete the project (Forsyth, 2006).

Doing this project allowed me to critique my own beliefs on doing a group project. I have experienced multiple ways of doing a group project through an online class and in an off-line experience. In the online example that I provided it was a unique situation for me because I have never met anybody in that particular class that I was taking. Also, I don’t have the luxury of seeing these people face to face as opposed to some of my other classes. For my off-line experience, it was much easier than the online experience because not only could I see them face to face and actually communicate with them but I also had some type of rapport. These readings helped me understand the process of group work and helped me when I had to participate in groups for multiple classes. In my off-line experience, it helped me understand the actual behavior of an actual group that I partake in. Lastly, in my online experience these readings helped me navigate the hard task of forming an online group. Through the readings that I’ve mentioned, they help solidify the overall ideology that someone has as a member of a group.