Proposal: Improving Group

Communication
Submitted by
London Barlow
Salt Lake Community College
Communication 1010
March 21, 2016

Contents
1

Individual Proposal

Overview

Project Description

Group Assets

Group Limitations
Recommendations
Conclusion

6
7
8

Overview
Our group researched on how we being students could help better educate
people on how to transfer schools. Our group successfully came up with the
best way to reach out to students about this issue. We were successful in
2

Individual Proposal
doing this by the passion our group members had by relating the situation to
our own college transfer experience and strategically thinking of ways we
can let students know that its an issue.
Our group did have some limitations which made it more difficult to complete
the project. I learned that assigning a job to each member is the best way to
get the work done more proficiently.

Project Description
Our group choose the transferring colleges problem. Our task for our group
made up of seven individuals was to find the best way to first inform
students that transferring credits was an issue and second to provide a way
3

Individual Proposal
for them to track their classes and if they transfer to the school they want to
go to. During this project I learned that taking everyones ideas into account
and being able to agree as a group using problem solving technique helped
us form good relationships to carry out the project efficiently.
Starting out we as a group asked the question Is transferring schools an
issue that many college students face? After research we came more
knowledgeable that this was an issue that needed to be addressed. Next we
came up with our criteria that we wanted our solution to meet.
We then started brainstorming ideas of the best way to inform students
about this problem and what our budget would be. I had the best group of
people who were very creative and open about sharing their Ideas. While
thinking of ideas we also had to come up with a strategic way to execute
each and every idea so we knew what would be the most effective way to
reach students and most realistic with our budget. For example, we wanted
to print fliers informing people of ways they can check to see if their credits
are transferring so we had to figure out how much they would cost and the
best way to present them to people and follow the guidelines of slcc campus.
We each researched and shared what we found in regards to pricing,
advertising and what is allowed on campus.
Next we wrote down all our ideas and criteria and went through the list as a
group and decided what we thought matched our criteria the best. We
unanimously choose what solutions would fit best with our criteria and
started brainstorming further on the best way to execute these solutions. We
then talked about potential problems we could face and created a plan be to
fall back on if needed.
Our groups communication showed a lot of strengths but the way we split
the work load showed many weaknesses that I will discuss in the next pages.

Group Assets

Individual Proposal
Our group demonstrated two really affective ways of communicating that the
book states as what makes a group a team and our group demonstrated two
of the 8 characteristics very well: Unified commitment and Collaborative
climate.
In the book it states people in successful teams put the groups goals above
their personal interests.(189) Everyone in our group was able to achieve
this and it made our project go much smoother. Even though our topic of
discussion did relate to many group members personal experience the ones
that it didnt still worked hard to learn and understand our topic.
The second asset shown by our group was collaborative climate. In the book
it says people in successful teams must trust and support one
another(189) This is something everyone in our team was really good at. We
made sure we checked up on each other to see how each person was coming
along on their part of the project and we trusted each other to get the work
we were assigned finished.

Group Limitations

Individual Proposal
Unfortunately, our group did have a few limitations that made the project a
little harder: meeting as a virtual group, attendance and unassigned
individual tasks.
When we would try to communicate over group text there were very few
times when people would respond which made it really hard to get feedback
and answers and slowed down our project progress by a lot.
When we created the group text we thought it would be a good way to
communicate with each other outside of class and would have been if the
group members were more willing to text back. Another problem we ran into
with this is two people would send a text at the same time and someone
would answer one of the people but not the other so it got hard when they
had to keep texting the same thing until someone answered them.
Another problem that our group faced was absences to group meetings.
Although it wasnt excessive it still made things harder when we didnt have
everyones input at every meeting. Another problem this created was
missing important information and having to catch that person up either by
text or in the next group meeting which delayed progress.
Another limitation we faced was the absence of individual roles assigned.
Our group thought it would be best if each role were handled as a group. This
created some problems assigning work because we didnt know who to
assign it to so the work loads ended up becoming very uneven. In the text it
states In group endeavors, success or failures often are attributed to
leadership(191) This is something our group was lacking and it made the
progress of the project slow down and become more confusing.

Recommendations
6

Individual Proposal

I learned a lot during this project of what methods work for group projects
and what doesnt. If I were to do this project over again I would change a few
things things.
Using virtual communication even though it was hard at times most group
members were to busy to meet outside of class so it was a really good
alternative even though some didnt participate. In the text book states in
some circumstances virtual teams cam be at least as effective as those who
meet face-to-face.(191) Something I did notice was there were a couple shy
people in the group and they were more willing to share their insight over the
group text then they were in the meetings which was really beneficial for
them and for us.
Something I would change about how we did the project is assign every
group member a specific role. Our group decided to assign all the roles to the
group as a whole so nobody has a specific task to do which made it hard to
get the work done. In the end we did end up assigning work to each person
but it was super uneven work loads and could have been split up more to
relive stress from other group members.
In future group projects I think its important to assign specific roles/jobs to
everyone to split the work load more evenly and help make meeting more
efficient.

Individual Proposal

Conclusion
Our group came up with an effective solution to the transferring problem. We
showed commitment and passion. We needed to improve our virtual
communication and task role assigning.
This project helped me learn the importance of a group leader and individual
roles. It has also shown me the importance of recognizing each group
members strengths and how it would be very beneficial to use each persons
knowledge/strengths in the completion of a group project.

Individual Proposal

References
Ronald B. Adler & Jeanne Elmhorst, Comm 1010| Salt Lake Community
College, Communicating At Work: Strategies for Success in Business and the
Profession. The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 2013