Invention and Discovery

Guide to Working in Groups

NB: The Guidelines below were originally written by and are used with the permission of Jack Green Musselman. They draw on up to two articles in Teaching Philosophy: "Taking Rough Drafts Seriously", by Stanley J. Werne, 16:1, March 1993, 47-5 7, and "Collaborative Writing: A Philosopher's Guide," by Deborah S. Bosley and Joellen Jacobs, 15:1, March 1992, 17-31. My use of these materials in X100 conforms to the copyright of these materials held by Teaching Philosophy and/or the authors. Any non-educational and/or commerical reproduction of these materials, without the written consent of Teaching Philosophy and the authors, is strictly forbidden.

General Guidelines

You have three major group assignments this semester:

The 5-page airplane paper

The section of Bell's vol. 2 notebook , and

The telephone invention project.

The 5-page paper is relatively constrained, with the next two becoming progressively less so. Your team is more or less free to select a potential telephone design, choose how to research it, and how to present it and write it up for the end of the semester. What follow are first some requirements, and then some useful suggestions. Please read them all.

Requirements

First, you are not entirely free to create your own guidelines. In order to facilitate group work, there are a few extra requirements for these assignments:

sheets on which to record your work

a plan of how you will proceed (your group proposal), and

evaluations of each member of the group. For each of the three major group projects you need to fill out these forms and turn them in with your writeup. I understand that by the third time this might seem a little tedious. However, group work does not just "happen" on its own, and these help me to recognize problems before you all try to shoot each other during finals week.

Regarding the evaluations: write an individual evaluation of each group member, including yourself, using the forms. You should do this as honestly as possible, at least because others will in turn evaluate you. Hand these in with the project on the due date. These forms let me know how well the group worked as a team. They will not play a part in how I grade the projects, but they will affect how I apportion the grade.

Other than these requirements, how your team proceeds is up to you to decide.

A. Research and Writing Suggestions

Each group--this means everyone in the group--could meet together outside of class at least once a week while projects are afoot. In order to do this, each person should get (and use) the phone numbers and email addresses of every other person in the group. You should be in regular contact with one another so that no one person is left out as the group does its work.
Brainstorm to identify many interesting topics or approaches. Then later discuss each one until the group agrees on a topic. You may email or see me for suggestions on your "short list".
For the most part, I leave it up to your group to figure out who does what work, when it should be done, etc. Helpful hint: do not be afraid, at any step, of telling those in the group if anyone is doing too little or too much. Put assignments down in writing on your minutes sheets. In the past, the most successful groups identified separate tasks and made use of "parallel processing" between meetings.
Keep a continuing record of the group's work and your own work on the sheets. (This is best done by making some notes during and soon after the sessions). Remember: you must hand in at least three (3) of these with each project's writeup. On these sheets, be extremely specific about how much work you did, what kind of work you did, etc.
Do some library and/or web research to discover possible difficulties in or other approaches to your topics. This works very well in parallel: split up a source list among your group and everyone goes and gets one or two, then sits down to read and then discuss in a common area in or near the library. In only a 2-hour block your team of 4 could do 8 hours of work.
Your group may ask me questions at any time. This is a good idea, for it lets me know how things are going and lets you touch base.
Meet several times. Preferably once a week or so outside class.
Assign people specific tasks between meetings.
Write a rough draft of both your writeup and your presentation, even if one is not required. Show this to me, to other groups if you choose, or friends. Make sure they tell you when something is not clear.
Revise the rough draft.

B. Grading of the Project

While everyone on your team may not necessarily get the same grade on the project, the grades will be similar. Therefore, it is in your interest, when you sit down together for the first time, to divide up the work in ways that you think are fair. Why? Because if someone in the group is a "free rider," and you did not plan for that in advance, that person will benefit from the work that the rest of the members of the team did. Second, few people plan to be free riders, but many of us get busy. Specific tasks and responsibilities help avoid that problem.
I realize that people may have conflicts of interest in working with or evaluating other group members. (Some people think others do not do enough work, shut them out of discussions, don't use their arguments, etc.). If this happens in your group, you should try to work out problems AS SOON AS THEY ARISE. For example, if you believe the others are not taking your contribution seriously, or are somehow excluding you, or if some members of your group are doing little or no work, YOU MUST TELL THEM RIGHT AWAY. DO NOT WAIT TO WRITE THIS ON THE EVALUATION FORMS, AS IT LOOKS LIKE PETTY GRIPING AT THIS POINT. TELL THEM RIGHT AWAY. RIGHT NOW. THIS MINUTE. If these problems cannot be worked out, I need to know as soon as possible. In these cases, I will reluctantly step in and we will work something else out. Most likely it will require more work.