Collaboration is an important aspect of a person’s life because it can help to strengthen and deepen their thoughts, ideas, and individuality. Collaboration is something that people are taught all throughout their lives so that they can strengthen their social skills and truly learn how to work with one another. Learning how to work together in school develops the skills needed to collaborate in a more effective, professional manner later on in life. Rebecca Ingalls, in “Writing “Eyeball To Eyeball”: Building A Successful Collaboration”, discusses the impact of collaboration and the multitude of things it can do for a person, what they’re working on, and any ideas that they want to capture. She details the importance setting goals within collaborative groups because, without set goals, there is an excess amount of space for error and focusing on the wrong things. A created group contract sets joint rules and goals that were set by the group in order to ensure every member works together, has something to do, and remains productive.
I think that Ingalls did a great job at detailing the importance of collaboration and having people work together from a young age. While I do agree that collaboration is important, I have always hated group projects and working together with others, regardless of whether the groups are self-selected or put together by a teacher. I feel like someone is always left out, someone is always doing a majority of the work, and then everyone else is just doing the scraps that are left over. I also feel like, throughout elementary, middle, and high school, groups that were picked by the teacher still consisted of friend pairs or groups which created bias within the group and I had a tendency to feel left out. Even now in college I absolutely despise group projects because somebody doesn’t text back and somebody else does one slide out of the twenty that are needed and then there’s that one person who doesn’t do any work until twenty minutes before the deadline and everyone is anxious about the project getting turned in on time. I just generally hate group work and group projects and it creates an abundance of anxiety and stress for me- I always feel stupid within a group and like I’m never doing enough, which ends up meaning that I do more than needed to make up for that feeling.
I think that the best way for collaboration to be successful when it comes to groups, specifically for those who are younger, is for teachers to create groups and assign different tasks to each member. I think that, by doing this, nobody will feel left out or like they’re doing too much or too little. I think I’ll always have a hatred when it comes to working with others because I generally don’t feel good enough, but I also think collaborations extremely important because sharing ideas can expand what I’m thinking and make it something greater. I’ll just have to learn to be uncomfortable in order to do better and expand my knowledge and thoughts.
Leave a Reply