Joshua Group Reflection

 Hi, my name is Joshua. 

 

I learned a lot from the first group presentation. I enjoyed learning about ideal vs. real culture and understanding how ideal the way one expects things to be while real culture is how things would truly occur in a real case scenario. The co culture slide is a good because it is short and simple to understand for example, two friends in a larger group of people being close because they share the same beliefs, interest, etc. Sometimes the simplicity in an explanation gets more across than a long, messy, and hard to understand explanation. The slides that mention sex, gender, religion, and sexual orientation are eye catching to me because it comes to show how these groups of people have come together to believe or to fight for something that they truly believe in or identify with. The mention in the age differences comes to show how different age groups have different things when it comes to life experience, life intellect, physical ability, etc. What a 10-year-old can do is entirely different than what a 60-year-old can do but someone who is 11 is very likely to do the same thing as a 10-year-old therefore they get along in many ways. Another point in this chapter that is very interesting is the uncertainty avoidance. Different people, cultures, and religions have different views on subjects and there may be low uncertainty where there is no need to control a situation or high uncertainty where there is a need to get a belief across urgently. I was a part of the second group and believe we all did a phenomenal job, and the collaboration process is what led to such a great presentation. Matter of fact, our topic was based on collaboration and different ways of getting to work together. One of the subjects that was touched is different groups such as social groups, support groups, interest groups, etc. The point in these groups is to show how these people come together based on their specific needs or just simple interest. For instance, an interest group could be people that enjoy the show the office because they all share an interest in watching the show. It is important to identify these groups because another form is support groups which consist of things such as therapeutic groups or like alcoholics anonymous, it’s not a common interest it’s more like a common life experience and need in improvement. Then one of the most important things in groups is the development of it. How else would a group form! Forming a group is the first step. The members must come together to discuss what they can bring to the group skill wise, what are their goals, and simply getting to know one another. As the members familiarize themselves with the group’s goal, they can find a way to accomplish it by doing what they are best at. This is the simplest stage because the members are getting to know one another, and they are trying to share their ideas and concerns without causing any big disagreements. You must be open-minded to the other members ideas. The next stage is storming. Now the group is more comfortable with one another and are able to express their honest ideas and thoughts without any concerns of disagreement. The politeness and open-mindedness from the first stage is not the biggest concern anymore because every member may have a different opinion or idea and they are not worried if their other teammates agree with them or not. When group members share their opinions, other members may take their side, and this forms coalitions. If a group does not storm, then this may cause groupthink which takes its toll on the members mental capabilities and moral judgment. It is important to communicate. Norming is described as the stage where all the members are united and understanding of one another. During this stage, all ideas have been thoroughly expressed, any major conflicts have been fixed, the members are fond and loyal to one another, and the roles within the group are sorted out. Members come to appreciate what they can bring to the group and are allowed to provide constructive feedback to help each other out. Not everyone has to do the same thing within the group, it is a good idea to break up the tasks because being able to do different things is what makes a group complete. Moving forward, The last group was really great in their presentations. They established important concepts such as leadership, tasks within a group, and maintenance. It is important to share leadership responsibilities so that the task does not fall onto one person. It should be divided amongst the people; it is important for everyone to contribute. Communication is one of the most basic yet hardest things to do especially if it is not done well. As group 3 shares group communicating occurs with a large group of members and is utilized to share ideas and concerns. Communication then leads to evaluating how good the groups are at what they are doing. Are they doing their jobs correctly or are they not working great together? I think learning about this helped group 3 come together to see if their project was great as a whole.  I believe all of these projects were great in many ways. They were full of a lot of valuable information and everything from the textbook was beautifully transferred over to create this presentation. Everyone was thorough and creative and had different ways of presenting their ideas to the class. The visuals helped further their points and so did many of the videos but that is where one of the biggest mistakes comes in. Some students relied too much on the videos to explain what they should have. 2-4 videos per presentation would have been fine but some groups would have a video in every slide, and it just defeats the point in this task which is to communicate with each other. Some videos did further the point, but others were just filler.