The other thing that's almost a given in a group project of a certain size: they often require working with people we find incredibly annoying, who have ideas we find incredibly dumb, or harbor opinions we find patently incorrect. That is the cost of being a human being in the world, in meaningful community with people who are different from you, and is nearly always worth cultivating our distress tolerance for
The only projects I've been in where everyone was "equal" were class assignments. They never went great, and sometimes were horrible. That's because in the Real World, there's always a founder (volunteer) or a leader (in work projects), and people follow the leader. That's not necessarily a bad thing-- sometimes the storm phase of Form, Storm, Norm, Perform can just be too much.
I experienced that dynamic all throughout school, until after college graduation, then suddenly it stopped, because, and here's the key:
From that point on, I only ever did group projects with people who wanted to be there.
Things get really wild when I ask my students to collectively decide how the course should be graded.
The other thing that's almost a given in a group project of a certain size: they often require working with people we find incredibly annoying, who have ideas we find incredibly dumb, or harbor opinions we find patently incorrect. That is the cost of being a human being in the world, in meaningful community with people who are different from you, and is nearly always worth cultivating our distress tolerance for
The only projects I've been in where everyone was "equal" were class assignments. They never went great, and sometimes were horrible. That's because in the Real World, there's always a founder (volunteer) or a leader (in work projects), and people follow the leader. That's not necessarily a bad thing-- sometimes the storm phase of Form, Storm, Norm, Perform can just be too much.