The group project we were assigned in this class was less of a group project and more of a group of people who were assigned different objectives to accomplish, in other words it was more individual than any group project I had worked on in the past. A collective identity was never really associated with our group, but “social-loafing” and “free-riding” were greatly diminished due to the individual work that was required. When we did work together, we had a good group synergy and communicated our ideas openly and honestly, which I thought was great. Everyone was able to share their opinions without the threat of scrutiny, and I know at least my interpersonal needs were met. With everyone sharing their ideas evenly, no one really assumed a strong leadership role, which again wasn’t really necessary due to the individual responsibilities. Interdependence in our group really only began to take shape once the annotated bibliographies were posted online. According to the project guidelines, we were each to find three articles on our subject, read them, and provide ways to find the articles as well as a short summary of each article. The final project will be based on 6-8 articles, so by each of us reviewing three articles, we were able to distribute the work so that the entirety of the project is not solely on the individual, which is interdependence. The way this project was set up allowed to us to have individual responsibilities as well as share information amongst each other to lighten the workload, which in my opinion is the best way to accomplish a large task.
