Reflective Piece (Group Work)

During the group section of the Unit X project I worked with two other students to produce infographics. We would meet to discuss which infographics we would produce, meet again to share our own individual efforts and once more to perfect our final choice for submission. 

By dividing roles equally and attempting to create an individual piece each I found that the group was able to select the best qualities of each infographic and therefore amalgamate these aspects to come out with the best possible result. Though at first we all assigned roles based on producing parts of a single infographic, we soon found this an impractical way of producing an infographic; the contrast in style between our individual pieces made for poor and often messy looking infographic. By each producing an infographic each, we found the quality of our work to improve. 

Our initial attempts to assign roles garnered lower quality work. We found that sharing duties rather than attempting them alone to be more effective. We approached the infographics the same way, in so far as our method of work once we established an effective procedure did not change. We decided and selected our topics by looking at trending news items on various news websites as well as by viewing social media. When we had a conflict or disagreement on what to select we would observe what is more topical and relevant to the week.

Overall I was pleased with the collaboration. Group work is significantly different from individual work and, though it is not always your own ideas being used, being able to collaborate creatively created, in my mind, better work. Working in a group has left me able to develop ideas further with more effect which is a skill I acquired through regular discussions regarding our group work. Though I felt our group were successful in producing our infographics I felt that had we began sharing duties rather than attempt to work more individually we would have got off to a better and quicker start. The nature of the unit meant that I was engaging in lots of media, which helped my approach. However I do feel that diversifying my media consumption further would have helped.