Last semester, I took up a module that required me to form a
group to work on a proposal. Although I signed up alone, I found 3 friends and
we decided to come together to work on the proposal. The group was working
well; we were enthusiastic and had high expectations of it. Two weeks into the
semester, a girl, Jane, requested to join the group. After the formalities, we thought
that she was suitable for the design section for the proposal as her major is
in the same discipline. We welcomed her into the group and reassigned the
workload.
Everyone was busy with work, and felt that the most feasible
way to complete this proposal was to do each section individually and do meet-up
regularly to comment on each other’s work. As Jane was from the Arts faculty
and the rest of us Science, the best place to meet up would be Science. No
effort was made on her part to be punctual, and gave many excuses. Besides
meeting up, we also created an online portal to communicate and share resources.
She failed to update her work online and was seldom involved with conversation
as well.
The group was rather annoyed with her actions, and even
contemplated reporting it to the lecturer. However, we were concerned that this
would reflect badly on our team. She managed to turn up for the final draft
discussion, hence we dropped the idea of reporting her. We felt that Jane’s
work was unsatisfactory and decided to redo her part, which eventually got us
good grades. I felt that Jane did not deserve this grade; moreover, we did not
hear from her again.
The group chose to avoid a head-on confrontation with Jane,
but what could we have done better?
