Group Work Presentation: A Creative Collective Experience

Group work presentation is collective work experience that requires equal participation to achieve its objective. The process was full of creativity, putting up different components of a presentation aimed at achieving the best out of what we learned. Our group presentation involved communication both at a physical meeting and virtually through the social media platform. Our first step was to meet in class to hear from each one of us on ideas that could help us develop concepts for our research work. After going through different themes and topics we finally agreed on the best topic, we had the confidence to carry out a presentation about it. After agreeing on a topic, we set out to assign each member a role in the development of the overall presentation. The components of our presentation were diverse, and they involved varied components (Poonpon, 2017, pp.10). These components included handouts, slides, the outline of the discussion, and google drive shared notes. We had an agreement that as group members, we were supposed to participate in discussion within a WhatsApp group, which we had created. The WhatsApp group was a place where we posted our progress regarding our presentation. Aside from the WhatsApp group, we always met after classes twice a week.

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Strategies Used for Our Presentation

For an effective presentation, we utilized three strategies. The three strategies were preparation, presentation, and pitfalls.

Preparation

Organizing our group from the initial stage is what made our preparation easy and less complicated. We decided on group moderator, and luckily, I was chosen as the moderator. A group moderator is the leader of the group and always given mandate by the group to provide guidelines and final say in cases where there are disputes (Jayashree & Mitra 2012, pp.555). Group moderator also guided the group during the Q&A session of presentation in deciding on whom to answer questions asked. Understanding group audience was another step in our preparation since we did want an engaging group interaction. Luckily, our target was our classmates, and most of them were familiar with the topic we had chosen since it was already covered in our class teachings. An example to illustrate understanding of our audience is that we could use business terminologies without worrying about the audience having limited knowledge of the terminologies.

Presentation

At the day of the presentation, we divided the presentation into three parts; introduction, main ideas, and conclusion. Agreeing on whom to present during the first minutes made it convincing to the audience to keep listening to us. The aim of the presentation is to discuss an overview of the topic at hand. For example, we were discussing HR roles in the modern business world. We first talked about the traditional roles of HR before talking of current and future roles of Hrs. The middle of our presentation covered information related to our aim of the project. There were different sections since we wanted to discuss our topic in detail. The conclusion of our presentation summarized all the key points of our topic detailing the importance of pooling this information as a group rather than individually.

The Positive/Negative Experience of the Presentation

Working as a group had both a positive and negative experience. Presenting as group eased pressures since we shared responsibilities. Group work ensured that we appreciated each other, and it prepared us for the real workplace experience where work is shared rather than done individually (Santamaria, 2010). The good thing with a group is that it made it possible for us to identify pitfalls in advance hence allowing us to come up with ways to address them before the actual presentation. Our group proactively participated in the success of the presentation.

The negative aspect of group presentation is that it required commitment and focus. As a moderator, I could find it sometimes challenging to make some decisions. At the beginning of the project were all-enthusiastic, with a positive attitude but towards the middle of our project some members got bored, and their change of attitude nearly affected our outcome (Loeb 2015, pp.221-230). From the negative aspect of a group presentation, I learned that as a leader of a group, it is necessary to accommodate everyone no matter their attitude. Group work also requires creativity and appreciation for every contribution of members. Reflecting on the group is sometimes believe that every group member worked their best to contribute towards the accomplishment of the project. If I was to do the presentation, again I think the thing to do differently is the improvement of our graphics presentation. The graphic presentation we used was a bit below par since it was our first time using slides presentation. The correction we received from our audience and lecturer will help in having the best graphic designs for our projects in the future.

References

Jayashree, P. & Mitra, S. 2012, "Facilitating a deep approach to learning: An innovative case assessment technique," Journal of Management and Organization, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 555-572.

Loeb, S.E. 2015, "Active Learning: An Advantageous yet Challenging Approach to Accounting Ethics Instruction: JBE JBE," Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 127, no. 1, pp. 221-230.

Poonpon, K., 2017. Enhancing English skills through project-based learning. The English Teacher, p.10.

Santamaria, J.G.O. 2010, "Individual Attribution of Group Performance Among University Students in Metro Manila: There is an "I" in Team," Philippine Management Review, vol. 17.