Group work guidelines

The most important reason we encourage you to get in groups is to help you develop important social skills that will help you immensely later in your real life job. Some of these skills are

• Sharing information and ideas comfortably and efficiently
• Addressing one other respectfully
• Disagreeing with ideas not the person
• Keeping on focus and keeping track of time, etc.

Basic rules

• Stay on task. Do not simply chat during your meetings, or in class. Make sure you finish your assigned task as soon as possible.
• Encourage everyone (including yourself!) to participate. If only one or two person's voice is heard during the discussions, how will this process help you learn different points of view? One of the aims is to share ideas and it is best done if everyone puts their 2 cents on the table, not just one person.

Intermediate rules

• Do not judge someone else's idea immediately, either good or bad. Listen to them carefully, understand them and if you do not agree with the idea, tell your point of view in a respectful manner.
• Ask questions, whether it is for clarification when you do not understand what someone else has just said or to ask for help when you are completely lost about some topic. It is OK to be confused sometimes, it happens to everybody sometimes!
• Make sure you understand things. You may rephrase what has just been said and ask if that is what the person intended to say.

Higher level rules

• Criticize answers, not people! First rule is you have to understand an idea before you can criticize it. Make sure everybody has a chance to tell what they think, thoroughly. Then explain what you think and if you agree partially or not, why you think your point of view is right, and which parts of the other argument you think do not quite work, etc. Give as much information as you can and if the rest of the group still do not think you are right, reevaluate your thoughts. If in the end, the group cannot reach a consensus, assuming this has been done way before the deadline for the project, come talk to one of us. If not, decide a way to chose one of the points of view.
• Do not be afraid of asking for justification. Do not just believe what you are told if the answer is not clear to you. Politely ask for more explanation.
• Do not be afraid to put your thoughts on the table. If they are good ideas, people will appreciate them. If they do not quite work, you'd better know about them now rather than after an exam which you lost points because of the wrong ideas. It is OK to be wrong sometimes, nobody is perfect!

• Ten guidelines for students doing group work in mathematics page by Anne E. Brown from Indiana University South Bend
• Fact and Fiction: Common Fears About Group Work page from Writing Guide at Colorado State University