5 Survival Tips For Group Projects

By Danielle Wirsansky on February 19, 2018

Group projects are the bane of students’ academic experiences worldwide. Forced to work together in groups to complete assignments, group projects start in elementary school and continue throughout middle school and high school. Most students expect (or at least fervently wish) that when they get to college, group projects will have become things of the past. Unfortunately, this is often not the case. Even in college, students have to deal with those pesky group projects.

Seeing as how so many students are so opposed to group projects, one would think that college students would not have to endure them. College classes are often huge, much larger than any middle or high school class size, and where students hardly know each other, and the professor or TA scarcely has time to go through all the assignments. As this is not the case, there surely must be some benefit to working on group projects (even if it hard to fathom, or if you feel that the negatives outweigh the positives).

Regardless, the fact of the matter is that you still have to participate in the group project if you are assigned to one in class, no matter how you feel about group projects or your group members. Group projects can be tough, but if you plan well enough, you can make it through the semester. Read on for some survival tips to get you through your college group projects!

Infographic by Danielle Wirsansky

Take the Lead

The best way to make sure that your group project gets done is to take the reins yourself and make it happen. After all, if you do not make sure it gets done, who will? You cannot control your other group members, but you can control yourself. All you can ask is the best of yourself. You know what you are capable of doing. You realize just how important this group project is and how much of your grade is riding on the successful completion of it.

You might not be a leader or might feel uncomfortable taking the lead in a grandiose fashion. You do not have to though! There are small ways that you can steer the group and keep them on track without becoming a self-appointed leader. Be the one to keep communicating—make sure messages get through. Take the time to make sure that each individual truly understands what they are supposed to do and is capable of doing it. Create contingency plans if a group member makes you feel uneasy about their own ability to complete their part of the project. Remind your group members of deadlines as they pass. These seem like small things, but they can really help your group members, and thus your group project, to stay on the safe and narrow.

If someone else in the group is willing to be the leader, support them. You can still do the small things listed above, though you should be sure to do it in a way that does not undermine the person that actually wants to be the leader if you do not. Work with them and help facilitate their leadership amongst your group members so that everything actually gets done and you can have this silly group project off your back.

Communicate

One of the biggest issues with group projects is that it can be really difficult to establish and maintain clear communication between so many group members. Some people prefer texting while others prefer email while some may prefer facebook messaging. A happy medium has to be discovered. You can be the one to corral the different group members and make sure everyone stays on top of group communications.

Take initiative—be the one to start the email thread; start the text chat; create the facebook group chat and label it for your group project so that everyone is clear on what you are about. And if the majority of the group decides facebook is the way to go and one member protests it, saying they do not even have a facebook account or some other reason, take it upon yourself to be the one to text them the crucial information.

Facebook chats are often good tools for group projects because you can see if a person has read a message or not, which is not often the case in email or text communications. By being able to tell who saw a message or missed it, you can reach out to them specifically to get a response or make sure that they did not miss an important detail that has cropped up.

Laying the groundworks for means of communication is a critical step in the success of your group’s completion of a project. Beyond knowing what platform to communicate via, you also need to make sure that the way you communicate is also clear. Just because you know a piece of information does not mean that every group member also knows it. Maybe you visited your TA’s office hours and they gave you some helpful advice—maybe your group members did not read the syllabus and instructions as well as you. Whatever it is, you just want to make sure that all of your group members are on the same page as not only you, but each other.

Communication is important—clear communication is key. Everyone needs to know what they need to get done, in a clear and concise manner. Communicating clearly will also help to avoid the frustration of mix-ups, which is a huge part of what makes working on group projects such a hassle.

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Set Deadlines

Another aspect of setting up clear communication is making sure that not only does every group member know what they have to do, but that they also know when they have to do it by. Sure, your group has a deadline of when the project has to be turned in by to the teacher, but does everyone in your group absolutely, 100% know when this deadline is? Make sure that everyone knows and that there is no confusion. Will everyone be there? Does anyone have any conflicts? Do all of your group members have to be present in class for the deadline?

Apart from the final deadline, you probably need to create some internal deadlines for your group members to make sure the project is done on time. When working on a group project, each member is often working on separate elements that go together at the end. Do you need to assemble the elements of your project together before you turn it in? How much time will you need to put the parts together? If so, you need to set up a time all your group members can meet at in order to put the group project together in its final form.

Will you need to give a presentation on your project? If so, you will probably need to practice your presentation once or twice before you actually do it for a grade—so when is everyone available to meet to practice ahead of time?

Are there any elements of the project that have to be completed first before a second step or second element of the project can move forward? If so, you need to create a deadline for that first step to be completed. Whoever is doing that step cannot wait until the final project due date deadline because that is not fair to whoever is responsible for the second step.

Enough time must be given so that everyone can complete all the parts of the project. It is not fair to hold back another group member—it will not benefit anyone in the end. If an element of the group project does not get completed, it will hold everyone back and everyone’s grade will suffer.

Set these deadlines on early into the process of working on the group project so that everyone not only has enough time to complete their part of the project, but the group can be sure that the appropriate person is working on each element and can feel certain that everything will be done on time and will fall together. If one group member is going out of town for a week at the beginning of the project, they probably should not be responsible for an element of the project that must be completed earlier, just as someone whose commitments outside of class pick up towards the end of the group projects deadlines should not be given a job to do where the work is focused at that same time. It is great to set deadlines, but it is not helpful if no one can hit them.

These deadlines are supposed to help guide you and help clarify the projects steps for all the group members and keep them accountable and on track. Let the deadlines serve to inspire you to get your work done so that you group projects gets the best grade that it can.

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Do Not Procrastinate

Avoiding procrastination goes hand in hand with setting deadlines to complete all the elements of your group project. Maybe you are a procrastinator who does their best work minutes before the deadline. But wouldn’t you be appalled if you knew that one of your other group members was waiting until the last second to finish their part of the project? Wouldn’t you be worried about whether or not they would finish their work on time? You do not want to be that person in the group project that causes more of a headache for their group members than the actual work does because they do not feel secure about you getting your work done on time. Do not stress out your group because they are not sure if they can count on you to finish your work and meet the deadlines.

Maybe getting a head start is not your usual style. But for group projects, you should be really pro-active about getting your work done. Reassure you group members that they have no cause to worry—there is no chance that you will wait too long to get your work done and tank the whole group’s grade. Keep up morale, keep your head down, and get the work done. The sooner you finish it, the sooner the group project will be done and off your back.

Leave Breathing Room

A final tip to help you survive any group project you are forced to participate in is to leave yourself some breathing room. You have done everything you can. You have stepped in to lead or bolster the group’s leadership; you have opened the channels of communication and made sure that everyone knows what they need to do; you have even set deadlines so everyone can be sure to get their element of the project completed on time. The final element of your approach to the group project is to be sure that you and every member have some breathing room with their duties and deadlines.

Stuff happens. Schedules get upturned. Assignments do not get completed. Deadlines are not met. Whatever the case may be, your group needs to be prepared for some kind of bump in the road along the way during this project. No one wants something bad to happen in the process, but it often does and you and your group should have contingency plans in place to ensure yourself against any disaster. So when setting your deadlines, do not push it back to the last possible moment. When doling out assignments, do not take the risk that you have given someone too much to do. Give everyone some breathing room. It will make the process safer and much less stressful.

Very few people truly enjoy working on group projects, whether you get to choose your group mates, or they are assigned to you. But if you follow the above tips, you can do more than simply survive a group project—you can flourish and succeed with it too. You can overcome group project obstacles!

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