group project essay example

How to write a Reflection on Group Work Essay

Here are the exact steps you need to follow for a reflection on group work essay.

• Explain what Reflection Is
• Explore the benefits of group work
• Explore the challenges group
• Give examples of the benefits and challenges your group faced
• Discuss how your group handled your challenges
• Discuss what you will do differently next time

Do you have to reflect on how your group work project went?

This is a super common essay that teachers assign. So, let’s have a look at how you can go about writing a superb reflection on your group work project that should get great grades.

The essay structure I outline below takes the funnel approach to essay writing: it starts broad and general, then zooms in on your specific group’s situation.

Disclaimer: Make sure you check with your teacher to see if this is a good style to use for your essay. Take a draft to your teacher to get their feedback on whether it’s what they’re looking for!

This is a 6-step essay (the 7 th step is editing!). Here’s a general rule for how much depth to go into depending on your word count:

• 1500 word essay – one paragraph for each step, plus a paragraph each for the introduction and conclusion ;
• 3000 word essay – two paragraphs for each step, plus a paragraph each for the introduction and conclusion;
• 300 – 500 word essay – one or two sentences for each step.

Adjust this essay plan depending on your teacher’s requirements and remember to always ask your teacher, a classmate or a professional tutor to review the piece before submitting.

Here’s the steps I’ll outline for you in this advice article:

Step 1. Explain what ‘Reflection’ Is

You might have heard that you need to define your terms in essays. Well, the most important term in this essay is ‘reflection’.

So, let’s have a look at what reflection is…

Reflection is the process of:

• Pausing and looking back at what has just happened; then
• Thinking about how you can get better next time.

Reflection is encouraged in most professions because it’s believed that reflection helps you to become better at your job – we could say ‘reflection makes you a better practitioner’.

Think about it: let’s say you did a speech in front of a crowd. Then, you looked at video footage of that speech and realised you said ‘um’ and ‘ah’ too many times. Next time, you’re going to focus on not saying ‘um’ so that you’ll do a better job next time, right?

Well, that’s reflection: thinking about what happened and how you can do better next time.

It’s really important that you do both of the above two points in your essay. You can’t just say what happened. You need to say how you will do better next time in order to get a top grade on this group work reflection essay.

Scholarly Sources to Cite for Step 1

Okay, so you have a good general idea of what reflection is. Now, what scholarly sources should you use when explaining reflection? Below, I’m going to give you two basic sources that would usually be enough for an undergraduate essay. I’ll also suggest two more sources for further reading if you really want to shine!

I recommend these two sources to cite when explaining what reflective practice is and how it occurs. They are two of the central sources on reflective practice:

• Describe what happened during the group work process
• Explain how you felt during the group work process
• Look at the good and bad aspects of the group work process
• What were some of the things that got in the way of success? What were some things that helped you succeed?
• What could you have done differently to improve the situation?
• Action plan. What are you going to do next time to make the group work process better?
• What? Explain what happened
• So What? Explain what you learned
• Now What? What can I do next time to make the group work process better?

Possible Sources:

Bassot, B. (2015).  The reflective practice guide: An interdisciplinary approach to critical reflection . Routledge.

Brock, A. (2014). What is reflection and reflective practice?. In  The Early Years Reflective Practice Handbook  (pp. 25-39). Routledge.

Gibbs, G. (1988)  Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods . Further Education Unit, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford.

Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D., Jasper, M. (2001). Critical reflection in nursing and the helping professions: a user’s guide. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Extension Sources for Top Students

Now, if you want to go deeper and really show off your knowledge, have a look at these two scholars:

• John Dewey – the first major scholar to come up with the idea of reflective practice
• Donald Schön – technical rationality, reflection in action vs. reflection on action

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Step 2. Explore the general benefits of group work for learning

Once you have given an explanation of what group work is (and hopefully cited Gibbs, Rolfe, Dewey or Schon), I recommend digging into the benefits of group work for your own learning.

The teacher gave you a group work task for a reason: what is that reason?

You’ll need to explain the reasons group work is beneficial for you. This will show your teacher that you understand what group work is supposed to achieve. Here’s some ideas:

• Multiple Perspectives. Group work helps you to see things from other people’s perspectives. If you did the task on your own, you might not have thought of some of the ideas that your team members contributed to the project.
• Contribution of Unique Skills. Each team member might have a different set of skills they can bring to the table. You can explain how groups can make the most of different team members’ strengths to make the final contribution as good as it can be. For example, one team member might be good at IT and might be able to put together a strong final presentation, while another member might be a pro at researching using google scholar so they got the task of doing the initial scholarly research.
• Improved Communication Skills. Group work projects help you to work on your communication skills. Communication skills required in group work projects include speaking in turn, speaking up when you have ideas, actively listening to other team members’ contributions, and crucially making compromises for the good of the team.
• Learn to Manage Workplace Conflict. Lastly, your teachers often assign you group work tasks so you can learn to manage conflict and disagreement. You’ll come across this a whole lot in the workplace, so your teachers want you to have some experience being professional while handling disagreements.

You might be able to add more ideas to this list, or you might just want to select one or two from that list to write about depending on the length requirements for the essay.

Scholarly Sources for Step 3

Make sure you provide citations for these points above. You might want to use google scholar or google books and type in ‘Benefits of group work’ to find some quality scholarly sources to cite.

Step 3. Explore the general challenges group work can cause

Step 3 is the mirror image of Step 2. For this step, explore the challenges posed by group work.

Students are usually pretty good at this step because you can usually think of some aspects of group work that made you anxious or frustrated. Here are a few common challenges that group work causes:

• Time Consuming. You need to organize meetups and often can’t move onto the next component of the project until everyone has agree to move on. When working on your own you can just crack on and get it done. So, team work often takes a lot of time and requires significant pre-planning so you don’t miss your submission deadlines!
• Learning Style Conflicts. Different people learn in different ways. Some of us like to get everything done at the last minute or are not very meticulous in our writing. Others of us are very organized and detailed and get anxious when things don’t go exactly how we expect. This leads to conflict and frustration in a group work setting.
• Free Loaders. Usually in a group work project there’s people who do more work than others. The issue of free loaders is always going to be a challenge in group work, and you can discuss in this section how ensuring individual accountability to the group is a common group work issue.
• Communication Breakdown. This is one especially for online students. It’s often the case that you email team members your ideas or to ask them to reply by a deadline and you don’t hear back from them. Regular communication is an important part of group work, yet sometimes your team members will let you down on this part.

As with Step 3, consider adding more points to this list if you need to, or selecting one or two if your essay is only a short one.

8 Pros And Cons Of Group Work At University

You’ll probably find you can cite the same scholarly sources for both steps 2 and 3 because if a source discusses the benefits of group work it’ll probably also discuss the challenges.

Step 4. Explore the specific benefits and challenges your group faced

Step 4 is where you zoom in on your group’s specific challenges. Have a think: what were the issues you really struggled with as a group?

• Was one team member absent for a few of the group meetings?
• Did the group have to change some deadlines due to lack of time?
• Were there any specific disagreements you had to work through?
• Did a group member drop out of the group part way through?
• Were there any communication break downs?

Feel free to also mention some things your group did really well. Have a think about these examples:

• Was one member of the group really good at organizing you all?
• Did you make some good professional relationships?
• Did a group member help you to see something from an entirely new perspective?
• Did working in a group help you to feel like you weren’t lost and alone in the process of completing the group work component of your course?

Here, because you’re talking about your own perspectives, it’s usually okay to use first person language (but check with your teacher). You are also talking about your own point of view so citations might not be quite as necessary, but it’s still a good idea to add in one or two citations – perhaps to the sources you cited in Steps 2 and 3?

Step 5. Discuss how your group managed your challenges

Step 5 is where you can explore how you worked to overcome some of the challenges you mentioned in Step 4.

So, have a think:

• Did your group make any changes part way through the project to address some challenges you faced?
• Did you set roles or delegate tasks to help ensure the group work process went smoothly?
• Did you contact your teacher at any point for advice on how to progress in the group work scenario?
• Did you use technology such as Google Docs or Facebook Messenger to help you to collaborate more effectively as a team?

In this step, you should be showing how your team was proactive in reflecting on your group work progress and making changes throughout the process to ensure it ran as smoothly as possible. This act of making little changes throughout the group work process is what’s called ‘Reflection in Action’ (Schön, 2017).

Scholarly Source for Step 5

Schön, D. A. (2017).  The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action . Routledge.

Step 6. Conclude by exploring what you will do differently next time

Step 6 is the most important step, and the one far too many students skip. For Step 6, you need to show how you not only reflected on what happened but also are able to use that reflection for personal growth into the future.

This is the heart and soul of your piece: here, you’re tying everything together and showing why reflection is so important!

This is the ‘action plan’ step in Gibbs’ cycle (you might want to cite Gibbs in this section!).

For Step 6, make some suggestions about how (based on your reflection) you now have some takeaway tips that you’ll bring forward to improve your group work skills next time. Here’s some ideas:

• Will you work harder next time to set deadlines in advance?
• Will you ensure you set clearer group roles next time to ensure the process runs more smoothly?
• Will you use a different type of technology (such as Google Docs) to ensure group communication goes more smoothly?
• Will you make sure you ask for help from your teacher earlier on in the process when you face challenges?
• Will you try harder to see things from everyone’s perspectives so there’s less conflict?

This step will be personalized based upon your own group work challenges and how you felt about the group work process. Even if you think your group worked really well together, I recommend you still come up with one or two ideas for continual improvement. Your teacher will want to see that you used reflection to strive for continual self-improvement.

Scholarly Source for Step 6

Step 7. edit.

Okay, you’ve got the nuts and bolts of the assessment put together now! Next, all you’ve got to do is write up the introduction and conclusion then edit the piece to make sure you keep growing your grades.

Here’s a few important suggestions for this last point:

• You should always write your introduction and conclusion last. They will be easier to write now that you’ve completed the main ‘body’ of the essay;
• Use my 5-step I.N.T.R.O method to write your introduction;
• Use my 5 C’s Conclusion method to write your conclusion;
• Use my 5 tips for editing an essay to edit it;
• Use the ProWritingAid app to get advice on how to improve your grammar and spelling. Make sure to also use the report on sentence length. It finds sentences that are too long and gives you advice on how to shorten them – such a good strategy for improving evaluative essay  quality!
• Make sure you contact your teacher and ask for a one-to-one tutorial to go through the piece before submitting. This article only gives general advice, and you might need to make changes based upon the specific essay requirements that your teacher has provided.

That’s it! 7 steps to writing a quality group work reflection essay. I hope you found it useful. If you liked this post and want more clear and specific advice on writing great essays, I recommend signing up to my personal tutor mailing list.

Let’s sum up with those 7 steps one last time:

• Explain what ‘Reflection’ Is
• Explore the benefits of group work for learning
• Explore the challenges of group work for learning
• Explore the specific benefits and challenges your group faced
• Discuss how your group managed your challenges
• Conclude by exploring what you will do differently next time

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ What is Educational Psychology?
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ What is IQ? (Intelligence Quotient)
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 5 Top Tips for Succeeding at University
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 50 Durable Goods Examples

2 thoughts on “How to write a Reflection on Group Work Essay”

Great instructions on writing a reflection essay. I would not change anything.

Thanks so much for your feedback! I really appreciate it. – Chris.

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Group Writing

What this handout is about.

Whether in the academic world or the business world, all of us are likely to participate in some form of group writing—an undergraduate group project for a class, a collaborative research paper or grant proposal, or a report produced by a business team. Writing in a group can have many benefits: multiple brains are better than one, both for generating ideas and for getting a job done. However, working in a group can sometimes be stressful because there are various opinions and writing styles to incorporate into one final product that pleases everyone. This handout will offer an overview of the collaborative process, strategies for writing successfully together, and tips for avoiding common pitfalls. It will also include links to some other handouts that may be especially helpful as your group moves through the writing process.

Disclaimer and disclosure

As this is a group writing handout, several Writing Center coaches worked together to create it. No coaches were harmed in this process; however, we did experience both the pros and the cons of the collaborative process. We have personally tested the various methods for sharing files and scheduling meetings that are described here. However, these are only our suggestions; we do not advocate any particular service or site.

The spectrum of collaboration in group writing

All writing can be considered collaborative in a sense, though we often don’t think of it that way. It would be truly surprising to find an author whose writing, even if it was completed independently, had not been influenced at some point by discussions with friends or colleagues. The range of possible collaboration varies from a group of co-authors who go through each portion of the writing process together, writing as a group with one voice, to a group with a primary author who does the majority of the work and then receives comments or edits from the co-authors.

Group projects for classes should usually fall towards the middle to left side of this diagram, with group members contributing roughly equally. However, in collaborations on research projects, the level of involvement of the various group members may vary widely. The key to success in either case is to be clear about group member responsibilities and expectations and to give credit (authorship) to members who contribute an appropriate amount. It may be useful to credit each group member for their various contributions.

Overview of steps of the collaborative process

Here we outline the steps of the collaborative process. You can use these questions to focus your thinking at each stage.

• Share ideas and brainstorm together.
• Formulate a draft thesis or argument .
• Think about your assignment and the final product. What should it look like? What is its purpose? Who is the intended audience ?
• Decide together who will write which parts of the paper/project.
• What will the final product look like?
• Arrange meetings: How often will the group or subsets of the group meet? When and where will the group meet? If the group doesn’t meet in person, how will information be shared?
• Scheduling: What is the deadline for the final product? What are the deadlines for drafts?
• How will the group find appropriate sources (books, journal articles, newspaper articles, visual media, trustworthy websites, interviews)? If the group will be creating data by conducting research, how will that process work?
• Who will read and process the information found? This task again may be done by all members or divided up amongst members so that each person becomes the expert in one area and then teaches the rest of the group.
• Think critically about the sources and their contributions to your topic. Which evidence should you include or exclude? Do you need more sources?
• Analyze the data. How will you interpret your findings? What is the best way to present any relevant information to your readers-should you include pictures, graphs, tables, and charts, or just written text?
• Note that brainstorming the main points of your paper as a group is helpful, even if separate parts of the writing are assigned to individuals. You’ll want to be sure that everyone agrees on the central ideas.
• Where does your individual writing fit into the whole document?
• Writing together may not be feasible for longer assignments or papers with coauthors at different universities, and it can be time-consuming. However, writing together does ensure that the finished document has one cohesive voice.
• Talk about how the writing session should go BEFORE you get started. What goals do you have? How will you approach the writing task at hand?
• Many people find it helpful to get all of the ideas down on paper in a rough form before discussing exact phrasing.
• Remember that everyone has a different writing style! The most important thing is that your sentences be clear to readers.
• If your group has drafted parts of the document separately, merge your ideas together into a single document first, then focus on meshing the styles. The first concern is to create a coherent product with a logical flow of ideas. Then the stylistic differences of the individual portions must be smoothed over.
• Revise the ideas and structure of the paper before worrying about smaller, sentence-level errors (like problems with punctuation, grammar, or word choice). Is the argument clear? Is the evidence presented in a logical order? Do the transitions connect the ideas effectively?
• Proofreading: Check for typos, spelling errors, punctuation problems, formatting issues, and grammatical mistakes. Reading the paper aloud is a very helpful strategy at this point.

Helpful collaborative writing strategies

Attitude counts for a lot.

Group work can be challenging at times, but a little enthusiasm can go a long way to helping the momentum of the group. Keep in mind that working in a group provides a unique opportunity to see how other people write; as you learn about their writing processes and strategies, you can reflect on your own. Working in a group inherently involves some level of negotiation, which will also facilitate your ability to skillfully work with others in the future.

Remember that respect goes along way! Group members will bring different skill sets and various amounts and types of background knowledge to the table. Show your fellow writers respect by listening carefully, talking to share your ideas, showing up on time for meetings, sending out drafts on schedule, providing positive feedback, and taking responsibility for an appropriate share of the work.

Start early and allow plenty of time for revising

Getting started early is important in individual projects; however, it is absolutely essential in group work. Because of the multiple people involved in researching and writing the paper, there are aspects of group projects that take additional time, such as deciding and agreeing upon a topic. Group projects should be approached in a structured way because there is simply less scheduling flexibility than when you are working alone. The final product should reflect a unified, cohesive voice and argument, and the only way of accomplishing this is by producing multiple drafts and revising them multiple times.

Plan a strategy for scheduling

One of the difficult aspects of collaborative writing is finding times when everyone can meet. Much of the group’s work may be completed individually, but face-to-face meetings are useful for ensuring that everyone is on the same page. Doodle.com , whenisgood.net , and needtomeet.com are free websites that can make scheduling easier. Using these sites, an organizer suggests multiple dates and times for a meeting, and then each group member can indicate whether they are able to meet at the specified times.

It is very important to set deadlines for drafts; people are busy, and not everyone will have time to read and respond at the last minute. It may help to assign a group facilitator who can send out reminders of the deadlines. If the writing is for a co-authored research paper, the lead author can take responsibility for reminding others that comments on a given draft are due by a specific date.

Submitting drafts at least one day ahead of the meeting allows other authors the opportunity to read over them before the meeting and arrive ready for a productive discussion.

Find a convenient and effective way to share files

There are many different ways to share drafts, research materials, and other files. Here we describe a few of the potential options we have explored and found to be functional. We do not advocate any one option, and we realize there are other equally useful options—this list is just a possible starting point for you:

• Email attachments. People often share files by email; however, especially when there are many group members or there is a flurry of writing activity, this can lead to a deluge of emails in everyone’s inboxes and significant confusion about which file version is current.
• Google documents . Files can be shared between group members and are instantaneously updated, even if two members are working at once. Changes made by one member will automatically appear on the document seen by all members. However, to use this option, every group member must have a Gmail account (which is free), and there are often formatting issues when converting Google documents back to Microsoft Word.
• Dropbox . Dropbox.com is free to join. It allows you to share up to 2GB of files, which can then be synched and accessible from multiple computers. The downside of this approach is that everyone has to join, and someone must install the software on at least one personal computer. Dropbox can then be accessed from any computer online by logging onto the website.
• Common server space. If all group members have access to a shared server space, this is often an ideal solution. Members of a lab group or a lab course with available server space typically have these resources. Just be sure to make a folder for your project and clearly label your files.

Note that even when you are sharing or storing files for group writing projects in a common location, it is still essential to periodically make back-up copies and store them on your own computer! It is never fun to lose your (or your group’s) hard work.

Try separating the tasks of revising and editing/proofreading

It may be helpful to assign giving feedback on specific items to particular group members. First, group members should provide general feedback and comments on content. Only after revising and solidifying the main ideas and structure of the paper should you move on to editing and proofreading. After all, there is no point in spending your time making a certain sentence as beautiful and correct as possible when that sentence may later be cut out. When completing your final revisions, it may be helpful to assign various concerns (for example, grammar, organization, flow, transitions, and format) to individual group members to focus this process. This is an excellent time to let group members play to their strengths; if you know that you are good at transitions, offer to take care of that editing task.

Your group project is an opportunity to become experts on your topic. Go to the library (in actuality or online), collect relevant books, articles, and data sources, and consult a reference librarian if you have any issues. Talk to your professor or TA early in the process to ensure that the group is on the right track. Find experts in the field to interview if it is appropriate. If you have data to analyze, meet with a statistician. If you are having issues with the writing, use the online handouts at the Writing Center or come in for a face-to-face meeting: a coach can meet with you as a group or one-on-one.

Immediately dividing the writing into pieces

While this may initially seem to be the best way to approach a group writing process, it can also generate more work later on, when the parts written separately must be put together into a unified document. The different pieces must first be edited to generate a logical flow of ideas, without repetition. Once the pieces have been stuck together, the entire paper must be edited to eliminate differences in style and any inconsistencies between the individual authors’ various chunks. Thus, while it may take more time up-front to write together, in the end a closer collaboration can save you from the difficulties of combining pieces of writing and may create a stronger, more cohesive document.

Procrastination

Although this is solid advice for any project, it is even more essential to start working on group projects in a timely manner. In group writing, there are more people to help with the work-but there are also multiple schedules to juggle and more opinions to seek.

Being a solo group member

Not everyone enjoys working in groups. You may truly desire to go solo on this project, and you may even be capable of doing a great job on your own. However, if this is a group assignment, then the prompt is asking for everyone to participate. If you are feeling the need to take over everything, try discussing expectations with your fellow group members as well as the teaching assistant or professor. However, always address your concerns with group members first. Try to approach the group project as a learning experiment: you are learning not only about the project material but also about how to motivate others and work together.

Waiting for other group members to do all of the work

If this is a project for a class, you are leaving your grade in the control of others. Leaving the work to everyone else is not fair to your group mates. And in the end, if you do not contribute, then you are taking credit for work that you did not do; this is a form of academic dishonesty. To ensure that you can do your share, try to volunteer early for a portion of the work that you are interested in or feel you can manage.

Leaving all the end work to one person

It may be tempting to leave all merging, editing, and/or presentation work to one person. Be careful. There are several reasons why this may be ill-advised. 1) The editor/presenter may not completely understand every idea, sentence, or word that another author wrote, leading to ambiguity or even mistakes in the end paper or presentation. 2) Editing is tough, time-consuming work. The editor often finds himself or herself doing more work than was expected as they try to decipher and merge the original contributions under the time pressure of an approaching deadline. If you decide to follow this path and have one person combine the separate writings of many people, be sure to leave plenty of time for a final review by all of the writers. Ask the editor to send out the final draft of the completed work to each of the authors and let every contributor review and respond to the final product. Ideally, there should also be a test run of any live presentations that the group or a representative may make.

Entirely negative critiques

When giving feedback or commenting on the work of other group members, focusing only on “problems” can be overwhelming and put your colleagues on the defensive. Try to highlight the positive parts of the project in addition to pointing out things that need work. Remember that this is constructive feedback, so don’t forget to add concrete, specific suggestions on how to proceed. It can also be helpful to remind yourself that many of your comments are your own opinions or reactions, not absolute, unquestionable truths, and then phrase what you say accordingly. It is much easier and more helpful to hear “I had trouble understanding this paragraph because I couldn’t see how it tied back to our main argument” than to hear “this paragraph is unclear and irrelevant.”

Writing in a group can be challenging, but it is also a wonderful opportunity to learn about your topic, the writing process, and the best strategies for collaboration. We hope that our tips will help you and your group members have a great experience.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Cross, Geoffrey. 1994. Collaboration and Conflict: A Contextual Exploration of Group Writing and Positive Emphasis . Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Ede, Lisa S., and Andrea Lunsford. 1990. Singular Texts/Plural Authors: Perspectives on Collaborative Writing . Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

Speck, Bruce W. 2002. Facilitating Students’ Collaborative Writing . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Group Work That Really Works

A group essay writing activity pushes every student to contribute—and it can lead to real growth in writing ability.

Group work is a mode of learning I’ve struggled with for much of my teaching career. The concept of students working together to learn is valuable for many reasons, but creating a group activity where all students are engaged in the collective work can be challenging. Recently, I tried a group essay writing activity that not only involved every student in the task but also created conditions for rich student discussion that resulted in some real growth in their writing skills.

A Group Essay How-To

1. On the day before the group essay, each student first writes an essay on their own. I’ve moved more and more over the years toward having the students write their first draft of most of the writing we do in class. This eliminates many of the distractions that can intrude on student writing and ensures that I’m there to support them. If students need additional time to finish their paper after class, I’ll usually accommodate them.

2. I read the essays myself , writing some quick feedback on a separate sheet of paper—usually just a rubric score, one thing the student did well, and one thing they could do to improve their essay. I use the individual scores and feedback for conferencing with students later that week, when we’ll discuss their reflections on their writing and ways to improve. I also assess the essays as a group for areas that seem to call for more instruction for the whole class.

3. I teach a mini-lesson on one or two of those areas of need I’ve identified for the class as a whole (e.g., thesis statements, finding and integrating evidence, transitions, etc.).

4. And then, the group essay. After handing back the individual essays—with no marks on them—and organizing students into groups of four or five, I give them instructions for group work.

First, students take turns sharing their thesis statements with the group. They discuss the relative merits of each and come to consensus on a group thesis statement. They write this in large letters on one regular sheet of paper that I’ve given them.

Next, students decide on supporting points for the thesis. They need to have a number of supporting points equal to the number of the people in the group because each student is responsible for individually writing a body paragraph for one of the supporting points, using evidence and commentary to connect their supporting point back to the thesis. They each write their own body paragraph on another sheet of paper.

Once students have finished writing their supporting body paragraphs, they come back together as a group and puzzle the essay together, adding transitions to connect the body paragraphs and writing a concluding paragraph on a final sheet of paper.

Although this composing step worked well on paper, I’m looking forward to having the students try it out on shared Google docs, as that would make the editing process easier—particularly when the students come together to combine their paragraphs into a cohesive whole.

5. Finally, the groups get up in front of the class and read their essay aloud. After each group reads, we take a few minutes to discuss the strengths of the essay and ask any questions we might have about it.

Why Group Essays Work

The success of this activity stems from the shared responsibility of writing the essay. As I walked around the room while the groups were working, the focus and richness of the discussions showed me just how much impact this activity would have when it came to developing students’ understanding of the elements of an effective essay. Almost every single student was engaged, and those who became distracted were quickly brought back to focus by a group that was relying on their contribution.

Having the students read their essay aloud in front of the class provided some valuable results. The entire class benefited not only from hearing what students had done with the thesis and support but also from the feedback given by me and their classmates. And I was provided with a great formative assessment opportunity and took notes for further mini-lessons my classes might need. In the very next essay we wrote in class, I noticed significant growth in the skills students had worked on in their groups.

One more not-so-small detail: Students loved the group essays. The complaints I sometimes hear about group work—that one person ended up doing all the work, that one or more people weren’t contributing, that it was hard to figure out who was supposed to do what—were rare. All students were essential, the roles and tasks were clearly defined, and the time constraint of needing to get all the writing and discussion done in one class period added an urgency to the task, so that very little time was wasted. (It is possible to break the group activity into two class periods if necessary.)

Students agreed that this was an activity that actually helped them understand how to improve their writing, and they asked if they could do it again for their next essay.

I’m looking forward to trying some variations on the group essay—perhaps having students write the essay together before trying on their own, or having them create mini-lessons for the writing needs they see in the classroom.

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Reflection of Group Project, Essay Example

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Summary of Peer Feedback

Peer feedback has been one of the most valuable learning experience in this project because it has helped our group understand our strengths and weaknesses we were unaware of and has provided valuable suggestions regarding improvement in the future.The peer feedback gives us a good summary of our presentation. First of all, the presentation was more focused on oral presentation. The presenters also made sure to involve the audience in the discussion. The presenters also succeeded in relaying the central message of their presentation.

Group Strengths

The project strength noted by most of the audience members was the presenters’ attempt to involve the audience whether through class activity or discussion. This ensured that the audience is engaged with the discussion and better grasp the concepts being relayed by the presenters. This approach also ensured that audience do not get bored and stay engaged. The presenters also appeared knowledgeable about their material which helped them build credibility with the audience.

Groups Weaknesses

Some of the audience members felt the presentation could use more multi-media and visual materials. This feedback made us realized that people have different learning styles and oral delivery of information may not be suited to everyone. Similarly, some pointed out that presentation slides could have used more information which once again confirm that we made the error of assuming oral delivery of information will be sufficient to help audience understand the message.In fact, some peers pointed out we could have used less talking because it becomes challenging to retain information. Another weakness of the presentation was lack of simple examples. We mistakenly assumed that the audience member will already have reasonable understanding of the material we may be presenting, thus, we chose the examples our group understood. This feedback make us realized that the best strategy is to use the simplest examples so that even those with poor understanding of theories can grasp the message.

Strategy for Improvement in the Future

After going through peer feedback, our group also evaluated the actual processes we went through in completing the project and determined what may and may not be the desirable strategy in the future. In our opinion, one of the strongest qualities of our group was that each member displayed professionalism regarding his/her tasks and completed them on time and in a manner expected of him/her. This helped us complete project before time and gave us valuable time to prepare for presentation. This sense of reliability also built strong working relationship among the members. The main weakness of our group was insufficient face-to-face meetings which were also due to time constraints. Thus, most of the communication took place through email until we prepared for the presentation. After our group went through peer feedback, we realized lack of face-to-face meeting prevented us from valuable brainstorming opportunities which might have helped us address some of the weaknesses noted in the feedback.

In future, we will hold more face-to-face meetings even if they are short or during lunch breaks. We will also incorporate more multi-media material and achieve a delicate balance in terms of written material. Some peer members appreciated while others complained about lack of written material, thus, the answer lies somewhere in between. We will also incorporate more examples and the criteria to choose examples would be that they can be understood by even those who are being introduced to the concept/theory for the first time.

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My Experience Working in a Group: a Reflection

Table of contents, challenges of group work, benefits and learning opportunities, lessons learned.

• Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (2009). An educational psychology success story: Social interdependence theory and cooperative learning. Educational researcher, 38(5), 365-379.
• Belbin, R. M. (2012). Team roles at work. Taylor & Francis.
• Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), 384-399.
• Forsyth, D. R. (2014). Group dynamics (6th ed.). Cengage Learning.
• Katzenbach, J. R., & Smith, D. K. (2015). The wisdom of teams: Creating the high-performance organization. Harvard Business Review Press.

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Supporting Effective Group Projects and Teamwork

Both group and teamwork are effective teaching strategies to engage students in collaboration and peer-to-peer learning. Group work generally applies to short-term collaborations among students to complete a classroom assignment. Group work can be an effective short-term strategy to engage students in specific activities. An example of group work is students working together in small groups during one class session to add ideas to a Padlet or Miro Board. In contrast, teamwork applies to long-term or ongoing collaborations in which groups of students work together towards a common goal, purpose, or outcome. An example of teamwork is a final project for a class that students complete together over the course of several weeks.  

Teams work together towards a common goal, purpose, or outcome; they also exhibit trust and encouragement, feel a sense of shared ownership of the work they’re producing, and leave vital space to express ideas and opinions.  This online resource is mainly focused on teamwork, but many of the principles (transparency, staying involved, prompting reflection) are applicable in any teaching setting, including group and teamwork.  

Students often have negative feelings towards group assignments, for a variety of valid reasons, but when designed deliberately, teamwork can be an enjoyable, empowering, and effective learning experience for students and instructors.  

Teamwork assignments should:  

• Align with the course learning outcomes outlined in the syllabus, either through process or products; and  
• Necessitate effort from multiple individuals who each perform different roles and responsibilities.  

Ultimately, students should know why they are doing teamwork, and how they are drawing on previous lessons and skills to succeed.  

Benefits of Teamwork

How do students benefit from engaging in teamwork? Teamwork:  

• Cultivates a sense of community and connection among the students  
• Stimulates and encourages student creativity ​  
• Allows for sharing of diverse perspectives and approaches ​ , both intra- and inter-group  
• Leads to more thoughtful, nuanced, complex products ​ which integrate the input of multiple perspectives  
• Helps students build collaboration, organization, and communication skills valued by employers

Types of Team Projects  

Consider formats other than a research paper or presentation for delivering the findings of a project. Ideas include:  

• A short film or video  
• A board game  
• An art installation  
• A website or blog  
• An advertising campaign  
• An interactive map or timeline  
• Analysis of a case study  
• An issue of a news/literary magazine  
• A short performance  
• A poster presentation  
• An edited collection of essays  
• A radio broadcast (think NPR)  
• A podcast with several “episodes”  

Setting Student Teams Up for Success  

Let’s review four strategies to support student thriving in teamwork:  

1. Deliberately number and arrange teams  

Select a number for team size that aligns with the format and needs of the relevant assignment. Teams should be composed of 2 to 5 students , with 6 as an absolute maximum. A team of 2 to 5 ensures that every student has a meaningful role and opportunities to contribute their perspectives; any more is likely to ‘stall’ the group or leave one or more students on the sidelines. Instructors can set team size limits on such platforms as Canvas and Zoom.  Visit this resource for a guide on making student groups in Canvas.  

Consider the team size that would best align with each project:  

• An essay or paper typically requires a small group, preferably 3 or fewer students. A larger group can result in students circumventing collaboration by each claiming a different “portion” of the writing, which they then combine into one non-cohesive product.  
• A short video may require a larger student group, such as 4 to 6 students, as there can be several distinct roles associated with filming (for example: writer, producer, director, performer, editor).  

You can also provide students with a list of roles from which they can choose after forming teams. This helps students stay on-task, as each student knows exactly what they should be doing to contribute. Since every student has a clear direction or set of tasks based on their role, it is clear for each student, as well as you as instructor, what work among their individual responsibilities has been completed. Some examples of team roles include recorder, mediator, skeptic, and reporter. You may also offer roles based on the specific project they are completing, such as the video project roles described above. Students can rotate roles so that they each practice different skills and leave the course with multiple teamwork tools.  

Forming Student Teams  

You may choose to assign students to teams or allow students to select their own teams. Consider asking students for their thoughts on how to form teams; you can use an anonymous poll to learn whether students prefer being assigned teammates or selecting their own teammates. One ‘middle ground’ option is to encourage students to form teams based on a shared interest or topic. You can offer students topics to choose from and let them cluster in teams around what is most interesting to them. Discourage students from selecting teams based on existing friendships. Students may struggle with the transition from ‘friend’ to ‘teammate,’ and it is harder for students to provide critical feedback within their friendship group.  

If assigning students to groups, consider their prior knowledge, experience, and skills; a shared sense of motivation among the team; and students’ familiarity with each other.   

Most importantly, avoid randomizing teams. Randomly assigned teams will likely lack anything that binds them together, such as shared goals, interests, or approaches to classwork, meaning they are unlikely to feel a sense of responsibility to each other or the assessment.  

Team Formation Activities  

Consider assigning students to craft norms or guidelines as a team. You may prompt them by asking such questions as: What values and practices should we prioritize as a team? What do we each want to accomplish by working together? When something goes wrong, how will we compassionately hold each other accountable? Here are some questions to prompt students in team formation, which you can ask them to collaboratively answer and submit before beginning their shared project:  

• What are the most important elements of successful teamwork?  
• How will we ensure that all team members’ ideas are heard and integrated into our project?  
• What are our preferred modes for communication (email/text/group messaging app/calls, etc.)? What times are okay to communicate? How quickly should people respond to messages?  
• How do we want to complete the work (i.e. are we ok waiting till the end or do we prefer to complete aspects before they are due?) How will we communicate and set these expectations? What will we do if these expectations are not met?  
• Who will upload this team formation document? Who will submit or upload the final project to Canvas?  
• What are we worried about with respect to group work and/or this project? How can we alleviate any of those worries?  

Equity in Team Formation  

If assigning students to groups, instructors may feel tempted to diversify student teams by ‘distributing’ marginalized students among various team formations. For example, if there is only a handful of BIPOC students in class, the instructor may want to assign one BIPOC student to each team of white students, to help ‘diversify’ the identities and perspectives of otherwise racially homogenous teams.   

This is likely, however, to leave marginalized students feeling isolated and tokenized. Student teams are unfortunately a venue in which discriminatory behavior and microaggressions are often expressed against marginalized students. Marginalized students are much more likely to feel safe and a sense of belonging when they are in a group with at least one other member that shares aspects of their identity.  Additionally, student identities are much more complex than what we might visually register from interactions, and even what they have shared with us in class. Allowing students to cluster based on a topic of interest circumvents this concern, as students will be already unified by their shared interest.  

“It is important to make sure that there is critical mass in every group so that lone members of a particular social category (e.g., race, gender) do not find themselves isolated in a group.” — Eberly Center , Carnegie Mellon University  

Instructors can prompt student teams to include a diversity of perspectives, regardless of the composition of student groups, by building such reflection into project criteria. For example, you may ask students to explain how different populations or identities may be included in, or impacted by, the work they produce, or to reflect on how their respective identities play role in the work they generate.  

2. Practice Transparency  

Following backward design , the assessments of your course should feed into the course’s learning outcomes, meaning assigned teamwork should clearly connect back to course learning outcomes. Students should not be assigned to teams simply for the sake of less grading on the part of the instructor. Keep in mind that, as instructors, we cannot assess anything that we do not teach . Before evaluating or providing feedback on student work, we must practice the relevant skills as a form of active learning. Just like we would not grade students on content that’s never been covered in class, we wouldn’t assess students’ collaboration skills without discussing and exploring those skills first as a class.  

Students should understand why they have been put in teams and the course skills they are meant to practice when working together. Why are they completing this assessment with others, and not alone? If it isn’t clear how teamwork will connect back to course outcomes and the skills that students are meant to practice, you might reconsider the assignment. You should also make it clear to students how they are meant to conduct themselves throughout teamwork and how they will be evaluated on their work.  

It’s important that, from early on, students establish guidelines for conducting themselves professionally in the context of their group. Prompt students to generate these guidelines together. To frame this activity, explain the importance of such team skills as:  

• Good communication skills  
• Reliability  
• Knowing one’s role  
• Self-reflection  
• Flexibility  
• Conflict management  

Depending on students’ prior experience with team projects and the complexity of the assignment, you may need to devote class time early on to teaching and reinforcing these skills.  

Most group projects require students to work together outside of class at least part of the time. Provide students with an estimate of approximately how much time they might need outside of class for the project. In constructing this estimate, consider how the group project is integrated into your course. If there are other assignments, such as readings, essays, or tests, will students have enough time to complete those assignments and this project? Students can complete one of the team formation activities described in the previous section to define how and when they will work together on components of the project.  

Addressing Challenges within Teams  

It is vital that students know early on what to do in case their team is not functioning well: When is it appropriate for them to come to you for advice?  What strategies do you want them to try when problems arise?  Consider, for example, what you want students to do if a student is not responding to emails about setting up group meetings. What if a student in the group is not doing their part, and this is preventing other students from being able to complete their parts? If a group member voices a concern to you, guide them in appropriate ways to communicate these concerns to the group.  

3. Stay Involved  

Instead of evaluating a team’s success solely from their final submission, team projects should be scaffolded so there are multiple opportunities for minor submissions or check-ins along the way. Scaffolding for group projects means breaking down the assignment into steps and providing feedback along the way. Each step builds on the skills of the previous one, while potentially introducing new techniques or skills along the way toward the completion of the major tasks. Students can submit outlines, project plans, and drafts for feedback from you and/or your peers. They can also ask questions and share ideas with you and/or peers. Students can incorporate answers, others’ ideas, and feedback into their project as they develop it, making for a stronger and more collaboratively constructed project overall. This breaks the evaluation of the project down into multiple smaller components, instead of one overarching grade. This also cultivates an opportunity for ongoing metacognition by students as they witness their own growth and reflect on feedback.   

You can establish communication pathways for students to share updates on their progress, as well as to share if they have concerns about the group, such as struggles to collaborate or microaggressions directed from one student to another. You can use a Canvas quiz to do this by making it an ungraded survey, and potentially also selecting to make submissions anonymous (students may still self-identify if they choose to). You can also direct students to an anonymous Google survey.  

Using class time can ease some of what students often feel is a burden of group work, namely finding time when everyone is available. Additionally, allotting time during a few class sessions for students to work together enables you to observe group dynamics and serve as a resource to students.  

4. Include Opportunities for Assessment and Reflection  

Encourage students to monitor their development and reflect on their performance as they work together. How successfully are students practicing relevant course skills? Where is their group encountering successes and challenges? How can they improve the aspects of collaboration in which they are not so strong?  

Here are some opportunities you can offer for students to assess their own progress:  

• Checklists of project components or tasks, and/or skills they are practicing  
• Learning journals, with regular entries  
• Peer review  
• Reflective papers  
• Student portfolios of their process with the assessment, such as examples of their brainstorming, work drafts, etc.  

Here are some questions you can ask students to answer when reflecting on their performance in their team. You may ask students to answer some or all of these questions and submit them after the final project is completed:  

• How much time was spent as a group (group meetings, discussing the paper, practicing, etc.) working on this presentation?  
• How much time did you personally spend on this project (both group meetings and individually)?  
• Did everyone attend the meetings? If not, who missed meetings? Do you know why? Did they do anything to ‘make up’ the missed meetings?  
• Did your group practice the presentation (not summarizing what you intend to say, but saying it like you plan to present it)? If not, what did you do?  
• How did your group communicate? Did anyone not communicate well or appropriately? If so, who? Describe the situation a bit more. Did anyone always initiate communication (emails, texts, group messages)? If so, who?  
• Did anyone dominate the discussions to the detriment of others? If yes, who, how so exactly, and why do you think that happened?  
• Did anyone lack critical contributions to the presentation (you felt they were invisible and did not add anything specific to the project)? If yes, who, how so exactly, and why do you think that happened?  
• What were your specific responsibilities in putting this presentation together?  
• If you had 100 points to distribute to all members of the group (including yourself), how should the points be distributed? For example, if everyone in a 5-person group contributed equally, each person would receive 20 points.  
• Is there anything else you would like to share regarding the group presentation or how your group worked together?  

Grading Group Work  

How can we grade group work in a way that minimizes student anxiety and is fair and equitable to individual student effort?  

The answer is to assess both group and individual contributions. To conduct individual contributions, you may ask students to use tools such as individual reflections, self-assessment rubrics, individual quizzes, and/or journal entries. As always, you should make your grading scheme and criteria for the project clear; for example, share a rubric with them. Even if you don’t work with rubrics, students will need a clear set of criteria for what constitutes a quality finished product, how you define effective teamwork, and how you characterize an effective team member.  

When assigning teamwork, instructors may be worried about a lack of contributions from less engaged students. Similarly, dedicated students may feel deeply demotivated by team projects if their success is dependent on team members who may not perform their share of the work. In this way, teamwork can discourage effort from highly engaged students.    

Part of students’ anxieties regarding group work stem from their uncertainty around whether they are being evaluated on their team’s final product (a design, report, presentation, etc.), the collaboration among students in a team (their practicing of organization, communication, the balancing of individual contributions, etc.), their individual contributions of the team, or any combination of these. It is important to assess each team’s process as well as their final product. This reinforces the value of teamwork in completing the assessment, and helps students grow in those teamwork skills. Your grading scheme should reflect your goals for student learning as well as seek to motivate the kind of work you want students to create.  

Here is an example of scaffolding a team project into smaller graded components:  

• Final Team Project: 30% of final course grade  
• Team/Topic Selection: 5%  
• Topic Introduction/Project Outline: 5%  
• Final Team Presentation: 10%  
• Final Team Paper: 5%  
• Self & Group Reflection: 5%

The Importance of Classroom Culture  

Students can only build trusting and collaborative cultures within teams when the class itself has a trusting and collaborative culture from the beginning of the semester. As one of the CTRL Student Partners explains, “Teamwork is rooted in the culture of the classroom…So much of that is dependent on the tone that the professor has and how they try to create a strong classroom climate. It’s really helpful to create that community and also make people comfortable with the idea of group work.” Here are some strategies for cultivating such a classroom atmosphere, suggested by CTRL Student Partners:  

• Facilitate students getting to know each other ​ , including in low-stakes ways that are not graded; this can include in-class, short-term activities that help build trust and communication  
• Cultivate a conversational and casual dynamic in class ​  
• Integrate active learning to complement lecture ​  
• Promote discussion and collaboration before assigning group work  ​  
• Allow students to assign roles and tasks within the group, based on instructor suggestions or prompts  

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Self Reflection — Self-Reflection On My Experiences Working In A Group

A Reflection on My Experience Working in a Group

• Categories: Self Reflection

About this sample

Words: 464 |

Published: Nov 8, 2019

Words: 464 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Works Cited

• Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (2009). An educational psychology success story: Social interdependence theory and cooperative learning. Educational researcher, 38(5), 365-379.
• Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological bulletin, 63(6), 384-399.
• Katzenbach, J. R., & Smith, D. K. (2005). The wisdom of teams: Creating the high-performance organization. Harvard Business Review Press.
• Hackman, J. R. (2002). Leading teams: Setting the stage for great performances. Harvard Business Press.
• Lencioni, P. (2012). The advantage: Why organizational health trumps everything else in business. Jossey-Bass.
• Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. (2011). Getting to yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in. Penguin.
• Belbin, R. M. (2012). Team roles at work. Routledge.
• Charkoudian, L., & Moore, W. (2017). Building a strong team culture in a healthcare setting. Journal of Healthcare Leadership , 9, 9-20.
• Belbin, M. (2016). Team Roles and Team Performance: Is there “really” a link?. International Journal of Management & Business Studies, 6(2), 47-58.
• Smith, G. D. (2018). Effective Teamwork: Practical Lessons from Organizational Research. John Wiley & Sons.

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Group papers follow exactly the same formatting rules as student papers except for in one area, the title page. Group papers should include a title page that lists all members of the group alphabetically by last name followed by the professor's name, the class name and number, and then the date. The title is centered and two lines down the page.

There is no page number on the title page. Page numbers should start with the second page. In the example below, the last name of each group member should be listed, separated by commas, before the page number.

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Reflecting on Group Presentation with Rolfe’s Reflective Cycle Essay

Over the course of the last decade, reflective practice in the advancement of knowledge in a plethora of areas, including business, education, social work, and healthcare, has been becoming continuously more widespread. Patel and Metersky (2021) state that reflection is considered to improve learning, which is why it is so popular in so many spheres. According to Schwind and Manankil-Rankin (2020), deliberate reflection on any experience gives meaning to people’s three ways: of being, knowing, and doing (or, alternatively, ontology, epistemology, and praxis). When it comes to the most widely used reflective models, Rolfe’s reflective cycle is one of these, and it is deemed applicable in any context due to its clarity and subsequent ease of employment (Galutira, 2018). The following reflective essay uses this model to guide my thinking about teamwork, leadership, and time management in relation to creating a group Powerpoint presentation. The aims of this essay are to evaluate the experience of such a type of work and to describe how the things I have learned can be applied to my future nursing practice.

Rolfe’s reflective cycle is a reflective model created to help people assess their experiences or empirical learning activities. In terms of group and teamwork, Rolfe’s model is an effective tool for each member to evaluate how they can improve their teamwork skills ( Use the ‘What? So what? Now what?’ model, no date). This method’s history dates back to the 1970s when an American schoolteacher Terry Borton wrote a book in which he proposed a reflective practice framework founded on three questions: what? so what? and now what?

Borton’s scheme was adapted for clinical use by John Driscoll, although his version could be implemented in various disciplines. In addition to that, Rolfe et al. took Borton’s model and refined it further for use in a clinical setting and pastoral work ( What? So what? Now what? model of reflection , no date). Rolfe and his colleagues left the structure of Borton’s scheme unchanged but expanded each question to include extra questions to stimulate deeper reflection. As stated by Business Bliss Consultants FZE (2018), this is aimed at increasing self-awareness, analysis skills, and skills of problem-solving. The ‘what?’ phase of Rolfe’s model contains questions to help objectively review what took place. The ‘so what?’ phase is a more subjective study of the consequences. Finally, the ‘now what?’ phase is a look at the way the lessons learned can be beneficial for the future.

I believe that the main reason why my group succeeded in creating a presentation without major quarrels or disagreements was because of our good teamwork, which was due to the strategy we all agreed upon for the working process. This strategy consisted of having each member of the team assigned a specific task in the beginning based on what each person is good at – for instance, finding appropriate references, doing research, or creating presentations. We communicated to check where everyone was with their part of the work every week. However, it would have been harder to do had our group been larger; but since there were five of us, communication was effective, and each person’s voice was always heard. To interact with one another, we created a WhatsApp group chat, and while it proved to be productive, we still felt that a lack of face-to-face meetings was a significant drawback. Moreover, for our work to be more organized, we selected a team leader, Wendy, who was chosen due to her having had experience with working in groups and making presentations before.

In addition to that, one unfortunate circumstance that I found myself facing was my poor time management skills. It seems that I had initially underestimated the amount of work it would take for me to finish my part of the task. As a result, in the final stages of preparation, I worked for hours in the end and felt exhausted when it was done. However, since our group scored an A, I consider it all to have been worth it.

What this experience tells me about myself is that I have to be less confident when approaching such tasks and put more effort into planning how, when, and what exactly to do. This is especially important when working in groups or teams because other people rely on you to do your work efficiently and timely. Academic literature on effective team communication points at the necessity of each member of the team to feel that they are responsible for the final outcome (Harris and Sherblom, 2018). In addition to that, according to Marlow et al. (2018), when it comes to a successful group, it is not the frequency of communication but its quality that matters. It explains why us discussing things in a group chat once a week was more than enough for the eventual success of the project.

Moreover, this experience taught me that for group work to be productive, there must be a leader in a team. As I have mentioned earlier, we appointed Wendy to be our leader, and I believe that had it not been for her, it would have been more difficult for us to make progress. As per Northouse (2021), a true leader is someone who is focused on developing others, leads by example, and ensures that the communication between team members is effective. All of this is about Wendy, who was an inspiration for all of us to aim to work harder and was always there to help anyone who struggled with anything.

I believe that I have learned a lot from working on this project with my peers. First of all, for the sake of not only my mental health but also other people succeeding, I plan to start working on my time management skills. In addition to that, I will ensure that I remember everything that I have learned about group work and apply it to the next team project in which I will participate. In terms of how I can apply the reflections on our work to my future nursing practice, I now have an understanding of how to be an effective team player and a good leader. Both of these qualities are important to deliver safe and high-quality nursing care, which is my, and every other nurse’s, ultimate goal.

In conclusion, reflective practice is essential to improving learning and evaluating one’s skills for future development. One of the most effective and popular reflective models is Rolfe’s reflective cycle, which is based on a person asking themselves three simple questions: what? so what, and now what? When expanded into a series of additional queries, these give one an opportunity to analyze their work and think of ways to enhance it. I applied it in assessing the work of my group on a presentation and found that it is extremely efficient in supplying one with food for thought and identifying benefits and drawbacks. I will use the knowledge that I have gained from working with this reflective model in my future nursing practice to be a great team player and a successful leader.

Reference List

Business Bliss Consultants FZE (2018) Rolfe’s reflective cycle . Web.

Galutira, G.D. (2018) ‘Theory of reflective practice in nursing’, International Journal of Nursing Science , 8(3), pp. 51-56.

Harris, T.E. and Sherblom, J.C. (2018) Small group and team communication . Waveland Press.

Marlow, S.L., Lacerenza, C.N., Paoletti, J., Burke, C.S. and Salas, E. (2018) ‘Does team communication represent a one-size-fits-all approach?: a meta-analysis of team communication and performance’, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes , 144, pp.145-170.

Northouse, P.G. (2021) Leadership: theory and practice . Sage Publications.

Patel, K.M. and Metersky, K. (2021) ‘Reflective practice in nursing: a concept analysis’, International Journal of Nursing Knowledge , 33(3), pp. 180-187.

Schwind, J. K. and Manankil-Rankin, L. (2020) ‘Using narrative reflective process to augment personal and aesthetic ways of knowing to support holistic person-centred relational practice’, Reflective Practice , 21(4), pp. 473–483.

Use the ‘What? So what? Now what?’ model: a great example of reflective questioning (no date). Web.

What? So what? Now what? model of reflection (no date). Web.

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IvyPanda. (2023, September 24). Reflecting on Group Presentation with Rolfe's Reflective Cycle. https://ivypanda.com/essays/reflecting-on-group-presentation-with-rolfes-reflective-cycle/

"Reflecting on Group Presentation with Rolfe's Reflective Cycle." IvyPanda , 24 Sept. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/reflecting-on-group-presentation-with-rolfes-reflective-cycle/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Reflecting on Group Presentation with Rolfe's Reflective Cycle'. 24 September.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Reflecting on Group Presentation with Rolfe's Reflective Cycle." September 24, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/reflecting-on-group-presentation-with-rolfes-reflective-cycle/.

1. IvyPanda . "Reflecting on Group Presentation with Rolfe's Reflective Cycle." September 24, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/reflecting-on-group-presentation-with-rolfes-reflective-cycle/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Reflecting on Group Presentation with Rolfe's Reflective Cycle." September 24, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/reflecting-on-group-presentation-with-rolfes-reflective-cycle/.

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