A Closer Look at Group Projects and their Significance in Management Education

Group Work is the most significant way by which one can learn to collaborate with others. Collaboration is nothing but a group of people being involved and sharing their ideas and skills to achieve a common goal. MBA lays the foundation for the students to work as a group and acquire practical learning experience. Working as a group to finish the project before the deadline is entirely different than doing it as an individual project. Coordination of members, analyzing of case studies, understanding of the topic, and reaching the common goal within the deadline gives a whole new level of practical experience that will help the students in the Corporate world.

Importance of Group Project

1. Developing Interpersonal Skills – The ability to get success in the future depends a lot upon Interpersonal Skills. Communicating with group members and sending across the message is a key part of Interpersonal Skills. Group Projects enable the students to develop their Interpersonal Skills and gain confidence. 
2. Idea Sharing – One of the main advantages of Group projects is that Ideas never run out among the group. If one exhausts all ideas and goes blank, there will certainly be another member who will share different ideas and take the project forward.
3. Decrease time in Decision Making – As mentioned in the previous point, the project doesn’t stop if one exhausts all his ideas, another group member pours different ideas to take the project forward. Also making decisions on certain things like title, content, etc a lot of time is consumed. But when the entire team sits together, the time is significantly reduced.
4. Learn from each other’s Strengths – Observing every team member and identifying their strengths can impact the group in a much more positive way. Like some members can have a good finance background so they can tackle the finance-related part easily and less time will be consumed.
5. Acquire Leadership Skills – If one is elected a group leader, he or she will take on the role to delegate responsibilities to team members. The Group Leader has to step in if any of the team members are facing any difficulties. Also if a misunderstanding arises, the group leader has to manage the situation properly. Thus a Strong Leadership Skill is developed during a Group Project.
6. Improve Relationship – When People Come together to accomplish something they become emotional and moral support to each other, Thus creating a bonding among the team members. This helps in the future and strong networking and socializing opportunities open up.

Tips Related to effective Collaboration

• Trust – People need to trust their team members and feel safe to give and receive feedback and constructive criticism to obtain the goal of the project.
• Encourage a Creative Environment – Collaborating with team members means sharing ideas with the whole team. This opens up the possibility to be more creative which can spark the group with new ideas. It’s important to encourage a positive environment that supports creative thinking.
• Clarity – While starting a project everyone might not be on the same page from the beginning. So to take the project forward it is important to define and discuss the goals with clarity.
• Actively Listen – Listening actively is as important as speaking in terms of group collaboration. Allowing every team member to speak and actively listen to them is one of the best ways to work together.

Benefits of Group Projects

1. Groups have more information than single individuals. If one runs out of ideas, another will pour their ideas and take the project forward.
2. Group project allows students to gain a more accurate picture of how others see them.
3. Having more people search for ideas, it will make things faster and lessen the amount of time required to complete each project. This helps in increasing the efficiency of the project.
4. Teamwork improves self confidence. It teaches that every voice must be heard and valued. This encourages further participation in the group projects.

Group Projects at Globsyn Business School

Globsyn Business School (GBS) has integrated Group Projects/Assignments as a part of its continuous evaluation. Giving every student the platform to gain confidence and continuously improve themselves. The B-School has explored that creating different groups for different projects adds fun and excitement while being creative. This improves the bonding of students to a whole new level.

Industry Connect Sessions, Boardroom Simulations, Task-based analysis, Role-plays, Gamification, Group Projects play, and other such experiential learning activities an integral part of the GBS curriculum that ensures the development of the students’ cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal skills so that they emerge as industry-relevant managers.