SW7: Exigence of Teamwork
The two articles give their own advice about the heuristics involved in collaborative
projects. However, each article gives different reasons as to why it should be implemented as
well as different heuristics. Joanna Wolfe argues that teamwork is useful because it will
"...prepare for the workplace by providing opportunities to learn the social and organizational
skills" and "To improve the educational experience through collaboration with fellow students"
(Team Writing: A Guide to Working in Groups, 5). This means that it would be unwise to send
young adults out into the workplace without teaching them group dynamics. She goes on to
describe the different methods of collaboration in order for readers to get an idea of how to do it
themselves. In this section, she also explains how and why each method can go awry. For the
divided method, she states:
The type of collaboration method a group uses has significant consequences for how the
work proceeds. In the interviews beginning this chapter, Eduardo describes experiences
typical of groups that rely on divided collaboration. Team members completed their
individual sections at the last minute, there was no time for discussion of the final draft...
Moreover, one of the team members produced a section that was particularly low quality
(6).
This quote warns against cramming. Sure, this should be obvious, but what is important here is
that these certain groups typically divide the project into sections, meaning the divided method
encourages such negligence the most. Also, when this is done, one person typically does worse
than the others regardless of the fact that everyone managed their time poorly. Readers whom are
not confident in their ability should be signaled to avoid this method above all others. I'd say that
such a structure clearly and concisely conveys the point that collaboration is important and
should be taught in schools.
The article by H. Allen Brizee takes a different approach. Instead of explaining different types
of group techniques, it advocates that stasis theory, a specific heuristic, should be used by
students:
In a contemporary interpretation, moving through the four stases encourages discursive
knowledge building important for virtual and remote teaming. Specifically, stasis theory
asks teams to agree on the facts (conjecture), the meaning of the issue (definition), the
seriousness of the issue (quality), and the stases ask group members to work together to
determine what should be done (policy) (Stasis Theory as a Strategy for Workplace
Teaming and Decision Making, 364).
Stasis theory is clearly defined early into the article as a good strategy in a workplace
environment that is becoming increasingly remote. This means that much of modern-day
collaboration is done through technology as opposed to face-to-face. This makes sense since
technology is becoming more and more advance and the new generation is more tech-savvy than
the previous generation. It then explains what each of the four stases are. During project three,
we will have to discover mutual agreements among our teammates, define our issue by
identifying its meaning, gauge the quality of the issue by determining how serious it truly is, and
agree on what we should do to solve the problem. Both articles do a splendid job in making their
exigence clear.
References
Brizee, H. Allen. (2008). Stasis Theory as a Strategy for Workplace Teaming and Decision
Making. J. Technical Writing and Communication, Vol. 38(4).
Wolfe, Joanna. Team Writing: A Guide to Working in Groups. Boston/ New York.