How to succeed in your group assignments at uni

By Rhiannon Thefaut, BA International Business Management

In Business, the group work begins in first year with the Business Challenges and Business in Context modules. These modules can be a great opportunity to develop your teamwork – an important life skill that most employers will want after you’ve graduated. 

Speaking from experience, Business Challenges is an example I’ve used in many job interviews; it shows how I successfully negotiated, listened to and worked with my team to work effectively, with our group winning the overall challenge!

However, you won’t always get a team that works together perfectly and might encounter issues along the way. You don’t choose your group and therefore you can get put with people who may clash with you personally, or who may not have the same drive as you do.

But, there are several things you can do to give your group the best possible chance of succeeding, starting before anyone even lifts a pen:

Have a preliminary meeting with everyone before you start any work.
This allows everyone to discuss their personal goals for the assignment, gauge each group member’s skill sets, and helps you get to know them a bit personally so your group can flow easier. Working with people you can get along with makes it a lot easier. I’ve made some of my best friends at Uni through group work – it’s a great opportunity to get to meet new people on your module.

Also, as you’re on a business course, networking is vital from day one – if you get to know these people and they end up at a great business, you could use this connection to help get you a job with them. They could also remember that you had strong analysis skills and recommend you to their manager! 

Set deadlines for each part of the group work and give specific tasks to each person. 

Designating specific tasks to each member of your group is the best way to ensure that everyone’s work is matched up with their skill set. This also holds the less motivated members of your group accountable to complete their work, and if they do not or complete it to a low standard, you can reflect this during the peer assessment stage of the group work. For those who are unfamiliar with peer assessment, this essentially lets you rate how much you feel each member has contributed to the group work, to ensure that everyone gets the credit that they deserve at the end of the module. 

Make sure you stay in touch. 

It’s important you know how your team is getting on with their tasks. People may be struggling with the work they’ve been assigned, so you need to make sure you know whether they need any help with it. Checking in with your group via social media is a good way of knowing where you’re all at with your tasks, and is key to remaining on schedule.

If you don’t communicate with your team and complete the work, then everybody’s grade is going to suffer.

Arrange regular meetups to go through the work together. 

All the libraries have group rooms which you can book out for up to 4 hours, and the management school normally has space you can use as well! If you can’t physically meet in the same room, then group video calls are a good way around having to make the long trek from your dorms to the library!

The challenges I’ve faced during group assignments have helped me to grow and learn how to deal with difficult situations. In work, you’ll find you disagree with people, however, you still have to work with them so use these experiences as practice!

 

My Favourite Third Year Module

By Rhiannon Thefaut, BA International Business Management

One of the best things in third year is that you have such an amazing choice of modules that you can take. The wide range of topics and specialisations you can do is really cool – there were so many modules I’d never even considered taking such as ‘Work and Employment in the 21st century’ and ‘Creativity and Innovation’ which honestly were so interesting and developed your business thinking immensely. You can choose modules that are exam based if that’s your strong point, or modules that are more coursework based – whether that coursework is through groupwork or through individual essays.

When I was choosing Universities, I had a taster lecture of Consumer Psychology and I absolutely loved it. It was one of the main reasons I chose Sheffield University – in the hopes of getting to study this module. I cannot remember the woman’s name who took the class, however, she was so enthusiastic about the topic. I had done business at A-level, but had not got to look at it from a psychological aspect before. One of my main memories is that she asked me about my most recent purchase – why I purchased it, how much it cost, what the value it was to me. I was a awkward, unconfident, red faced sixth former and went home and overthought all my answers and how awkward I was when answering the questions. However, the overthinking led me to realising how interested I was in this topic and how much I’d love to study it more.

Fast forward three years and I’m halfway through this module, in my final term at the University of Sheffield. The module has been interesting so far – we’ve learnt about what motivates a person to make a purchase, how companies use psychology to make their adverts appealing and how we make decisions.

With regards to how it’s graded, there is an individual essay and a group work. The individual essay is similar to the taster lecture I had 3 years ago in which we get to analyse how and why we made a purchase for ourselves and for somebody else. There’s also group work which requires you to make an advert and a poster, based on the theories you’ve learnt in class.  Our group is advertising Mac make-up, and we’ve aimed to use repetition and humanistic psychology (which focusses on emphasising an individual’s potential). It’s been really cool to create and edit your own video as it’s allowed me to develop my editing skills, alongside my analytic skills for writing the essay section of the essay!

I do recommend this module if you are interested in understanding why people make purchases and how. I think it’s vital to have this understanding before you work in a business, especially if you want to work in Marketing – as you’ll be trying to sell products to consumers. Knowing how to do that is important.