Working in Groups

            Working well in a group is a skill in itself, one that is becoming increasingly important in the scientific workplace.  Some of the basic ground rules for working in groups in the Advanced Integrated Laboratory courses are:

1. Respect each person.  Each person has contributions to make and things to learn; everyone in the group has a responsibility to encourage, support, and listen to other group members. 
2. Validate scientific disagreement.  One great advantage of working in a group is that multiple perspectives are available.  Take advantage of differing opinions.  Try differing ideas if you can't convince one another of a "best" way.
3. Divide jobs to increase productivity, but rotate jobs so that each person in the group gets a full experience. Working in a group should be FASTER and MORE EFFICIENT than an individual effort
4. The purpose of working in a group may change from freshman to senior level.
1. Freshman: both people need to be able to do everything in the lab
2. First two semesters of AIL: Maybe both partners will learn a new instrument at the same time. The goal is that both people can really run it by the end. In other aspects of the project, requiring background skills, jobs are delegated.
3. Third and fourth semesters of AIL: divide and conquer; work together and share skills; so you aren’t both learning an instrument for the first time but rather the experiment itself is focused on your ability to divide work into different roles, do them separately, and bring it together for a final product where people depend on each other’s results. E.g. one person makes solutions while the other sets up an instrument or does a synthesis.