Spice of Life Poster Presentations

Introduction Over the years, I have watched otherwise harmonious teams fall utterly to pieces during the preparation of these poster presentations. ‘Slackers,’ ‘Procrastinators’ and ‘Control Freaks’ all seem to go into insane hyper drive…forgetting everything they have learned about teamwork and instead falling back into old, team- destroying habits. I am sure you have all been involved in these situations in the past. Generally the scenario goes something like this: In The Beginning: You have been assigned a large group project that is due at some point in the future. Class time for the project, if provided at all, is minimal prior to that due date. Your group consists of 4 other people:

One Control Freak:

Two Procrastinators:

One Slacker: After assigning groups, your professor introduces the assignment, and then gives you the rest of the class time to make a ‘plan’. You all come up with the greatest idea ever……

1. Your group, against your professor’s advice, decides to use the ‘divide and conquer’ approach to complete your project. That is, each group member agrees to complete a different part of the project, and agrees upon a due date at which time they will get their part of the project to another group member (usually the control freak).

2. Once the individual parts have been turned in, that team member will assemble them into their ‘final’ form.

3. The team will then meet one last time to ensure that the project is done well. 4. You want to get to lunch, so instead of setting up your next meeting time, you all agree to email/text each other “at some point” to arrange the meeting. This, of course, does not happen.

Several Weeks Pass…….

...and the personality ‘quirks’ of each team member begin to surface…..

 The Control Freak already has their part done and is starting to panic.  The Procrastinators are beginning to think about thinking about doing something soon….

 The Slacker has not been seen in class since the project was assigned.

It Is The Night Before the Project is Due: Your informal ‘we will text to find a time to meet’ approach has failed, and this is the only time you have left. Your ‘parts’ are in various states of disarray.

1. You got your items in on time, as did the Control Freak. Unfortunately, your part is not the way the Control Freak would have written it, so they have edited it….extensively. By the time the final meeting arrives, you cannot even recognize your own work, and you are very unhappy about the edits. The Control Freak is very proud of their work and refuses to budge on a single semi-colon.

2. Procrastinator 1 completed their section before the final team meeting – but not by the original deadline. As a result, the Control Freak did not have time to look at it, so it remained largely unedited until the team meeting. Unfortunately, it actually does require lots of revisions. 3. Procrastinator 2 misses all deadlines and brings their section with them to the final meeting – but at least it is complete. Amazingly, it is even good. 4. The Slacker skips the meeting altogether. Their incomplete and truly awful section arrives via email along with their lame excuse minutes before the meeting starts.

It is now very late. The project is due at 10:00 a.m. Arguments ensue.

1. The Control Freak is willing to stay up all night to ‘make sure it is perfect’ (in other words, exactly the way they want it).

2. The Procrastinators are quite sure the project is absolutely fine the way it is, and only want to go home to bed. You tend to agree.

3. Meanwhile, you have been secretly texting your friends while the others argue. You just want this to be over.

4. The Slacker is already at home sleeping.

10:00 a.m. Somehow you pull it all together in time for breakfast. The group turns in the project. In class, the Slacker is annoyingly well rested. None of the rest of you are speaking to each other. Everyone but the Slacker takes turns that day going to the professor to complain about everyone else in the group, and to try to make sure that they are not penalized for the ‘other group member’s errors’. The Slacker goes to explain why their sudden attack of influenza kept them from being able to help during the team meeting, but assures the professor that they did do their best to make sure that their materials got to the team.

So What Can We Do To Prevent This Scenario?

In this class, we will attempt to avoid some of these issues by using an approach that tries to encourage you to use the teamwork skills that you are developing in your RAPs and TAPs, and that holds each individual accountable for their roles in the team’s success and failure. Here are the steps we will take to try to assure that this happens. 1. I will provide ample in-class time to foster good teamwork. You will be doing most of the groundwork for this project – the planning, the experiments, the analysis, and even quite a bit of the literature searches as a team in class. You will also be given at least one additional class period before the poster is due to work on the project. I will be available to teams at any time in the process to provide feedback, should you want it. 2. Each person’s final grade will be determined by the extent to which they contributed in a productive way to the team’s efforts. Each team will establish a written contract that will clearly state each person’s responsibilities to the project, specific due dates for project items, and penalties that will be assessed if an individual fails to fulfill their part of the contract. The penalties must be at least a 10% deduction in the person’s final poster grade, but can be anything the team decides upon and that I approve. This contract must be signed by each team member, and must be turned in to me for approval. If a teammate fails to uphold their part of the contract, you must dock them the agreed-upon points. I will determine if extenuating circumstances warrant a reprieve.

3. I’d love to dissuade you from the divide and conquer approach altogether. The very best posters I’ve seen happened when teams arranged several meetings (none of which were too horribly long) in order to craft each section together. There are good reasons to do this. The discussion cannot really be done well unless it takes its contextualization from the introduction, and the abstract cannot be written at all until all of the other sections are complete….so at least keep those things in mind if you choose to divide and conquer anyways.