Allegheny College Joshua Searle-White, Ph.D.

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Many of you may have had experience working in groups in the past. Group work can be very exciting and fun, in that a good-functioning group can spark new ideas and creative thinking, can divide up a workload in a way that benefits everyone, and can produce a more interesting result than any individual could by herself.  I have seen group presentations that have been extremely creative -- one group used a dramatic reading of Yertle the Turtle to illustrate personality theory principles; another re-enacted the Afrikaners' Great Trek and the Arab-Israeli Wars and videotaped them all, another turned the classroom into a Senate hearing on the pros and cons of Prozac, and yet another brought in a time machine and conjured up various sets of enemies from the past.  And there have been many more, and the students involved have almost always gotten a great deal out of working with each other.

However, there are some potential difficulties in working in groups, and these difficulties can become exacerbated by the fact that each individual student's grade depends on the work of the others. Based on my experience in groups and in watching other students work on group projects, let me offer the following suggestions (note: these are suggestions, not directives -- how you organize the work in your group is up to you):

• Meet early and often. Problems tend to arise mostly when the group members are pressed for time at the end.
• Think about choosing a leader who will direct the overall work. This means a leader who is in charge with the consent of the group, not a dictator! This person might delegate tasks, coordinate schedules, set deadlines, and in general oversee the project. Whether or not this will work depends on the personalities of the group members and of the character of the group -- some groups may want to be non-hierarchical. However, in most groups someone will attempt to lead, whether or not that is made explicit. If a clear definition is made of who will lead and who will perform other roles, each group member can then concentrate on her piece of the work.
• Student groups often divide the work up and then assign one group member to "pull it all together" at the end. Be careful of this strategy. It places a tremendous burden on the "editor," who may have to make decisions about cutting out sections or ideas that others have written. If you do decide to do it that way, make sure that 1) there is enough time for that person to do the editing and then show it to the group, get comments, and re-edit before the presentation, and 2) that the "editor" knows how much authority she has to make decisions about what to keep in and what to leave out.  And if you give him or her authority to make those decisions, live with them.
• If you do have different group members create different sections of the presentation, show each other your work after each draft for comments. This exchanging of drafts can help both the writer and the other group members in developing their ideas.
• Keep track of any disputes, tensions, or disagreements that arise in the group. Not every disagreement or tension needs to be resolved immediately, but when interpersonal issues begin to impede the work, they need to be dealt with. If you are having difficulties within the group that you cannot resolve, please come to me and talk to me about it as soon as possible, and I will meet with the group to try to help.
• Try to hold your meetings away from televisions, friends, and other distractions; work when you are working and relax when you are relaxing.  Working in groups can (and often is) a lot of fun, and that is fine -- but make sure that you stay focused enough on the task to get it done!

Depending on how comfortable you feel in front of an audience, making an in-class presentation can be one of the most fun or one of the most nerve-wracking experiences of your college career. However, after college you will almost certainly be asked to make such presentations in your work setting, and so I view this presentation as a chance to help you learn the most important (at least, what I think are the most important!) rules of oral presentation.  (I have a separate handout on making an individual presentation which covers some of the same issues.)

In a group project (at least, one which I assign), you will typically have a great deal of latitude in how you give your presentation. You can elect one person to speak or have several different group members speak; you can integrate any manner of audio or visual material into the presentation; you can ask the audience (the class) to engage in activities or exercises. In sum, you can be as creative as you want in presenting the material (though anything involving explosives or live animals should be cleared with me first). However, there are a few general principles about speaking in front of groups to which I would like you to adhere. They are:
 

1. Stick to the time limit. This is the cardinal rule in any presentation. You can sustain an overly-long presentation only if you are very, very good and extremely interesting. (Of course, I assume you will be that good and that interesting, but I want you to practice heeding the time limit anyway.) There are two techniques for ensuring that this will happen. First, practice the presentation, from beginning to end, at least once before giving it. After all, a theater group would never go on without a dress rehearsal -- why would any of us give a presentation without practicing? Second, have someone either in the group or in the audience time the presentation and give you 5, 3, and 1-minute warnings if you get up to the limit.
2. Think about your audience. When you are preparing the presentation, think about who will be in the audience, what they know or don't know, and what kinds of questions they may have. This is an extremely important rule for writing papers, making presentations -- whenever you are going to communicate with an audience. At all times, try to keep in mind what the audience members are likely to be thinking, what questions will arise in their minds, and whether or not they can follow your logic. Look at your presentation through the eyes of the audience, and that will help you decide what to put in and what to leave out. If you do this well, you can avoid the typical problems of boring the audience or being so erudite that they don't know what you are talking about.
3. Remember that you are not "reading a paper." Others may disagree with me about this, but my opinion is that an oral presentation, and especially a group one, is a dramatic presentation, in the sense that unless the speakers have some kind of special authority or power, the listeners are not going to be compelled by content alone. You must consider how you can keep the audience with you -- by varying your rate of speech (pauses and brief silences can be very effective for adding emphasis), keeping eye contact with the entire audience (and not just with the professor -- that makes it seem like the rest of the group is superfluous, and it makes me uncomfortable), and changing what you are doing if you see that you are losing the listeners.
4. Make the presentation organized. A presentation is no different from a paper, a novel, or a play in that there needs to be some kind of clear organization, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. That doesn't mean you have to make it stilted, but it does mean that you have to think about how the presentation is structured within the time limit.  And if different people are doing different parts of the presentation, make sure the various sections are knitted together thematically.
5. Be confident. Remember that in virtually any presentation, you know much more about the subject than anyone in the room. The more relaxed (not informal, but relaxed) you are, the more at ease your audience will be.

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