Group Projects; Good or Bad?

            I am not going to lie. At first, being assigned a group project (especially at the end of the semester) I was not happy. I’ve never had a good experience with group projects. Typically, I end up doing all of the work, stress myself out, and become resentful allowing my other group members to take credit for work they hardly did. 

            But this time was different. My group worked together perfectly, and complemented each other’s strength’s and weaknesses.  Some had more experience with digital design, and others with writing and editing. This made the collaborative process easier. Those who had more experience in one field, helped the other, and so on. We worked timely and effective, and completed the assignment days before it was due.

            We broke down the process. We all brainstormed on ideas for our TV story board and radio PSA’s. After a long list of ideas we all decided on our theme; stop drunk driving. We then had to decide on how to make this theme not only creative, but to reach our target audience in a different way than the typical drunk driving ads you see all the time.

            After we decided on how to portray our ideas, every member of our group chipped in. We divided our newsletter ideas to individually write, but then gave them to each other to peer edit. With each member being on time and helpful, this process was made easy. Like our peer review’s in class, this was extremely helpful. By having three other group members, it allowed more than one revision, which in turn made our final papers stronger. For our TV storyboard, we all worked together on the pictures we wanted to use as well as sounds, time allowed, format, etc.

            My group reminded me that group projects aren’t that bad, in fact, they can be easy and fun.