8.4: Concluding Your Project- Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Collaborative Review

Before you turn that project in, remember: even if you divided it up, the completed product belongs to all of you and should get each group member’s final review and approval before you submit it. This final review includes editing for mechanics, style, and surface issues (including proper documentation, fact checking, and document layout). It can be especially helpful to go over the entire final composition together, as a group. Each person takes a turn reading aloud, while other members of the group follow along and check for errors. This shared editing session can also be an opportunity to pat one another on the back.

The Post-Mortem

That’s it, right? On to the next thing? Not yet. Too often, we progress from project to project, from class to class without pausing to think back on what we have accomplished. We often miss out on reflection of the goals we had for ourselves, neglecting to ask critical analytical questions: what did I hope to accomplish? In what ways did I grow as a person? As a student or scholar? What evidence do I have for that growth? How does this growth prepare me for what is next? When it comes to the high-impact learning potential involved in collaborative work, it can be an invaluable exercise to take stock by reflecting on the stages of the process and making sense of what you experienced. Someday, in the not-too-distant future, a prospective employer or graduate school is going to want to know, “How did you get to where you are today?” This final step in the process—called a “postmortem”—will give you some practice at formulating an answer to this complex question.

Less morbid than it sounds, the “post-mortem” is an activity that you are likely to see in the professional world, and it involves looking back on the processes used to design/write/build the project, and reflecting on your successes, failures, and personal perspectives on the process in general. For many professionals, it is an invaluable component in understanding what does and does not work as they think about future endeavors. With truly complicated endeavors like collaboration, a post-mortem can help to give you insight that you can only get once you’re on the other side of your project. Here are some guiding questions:

• Was your project a success? If so, why? If not, why?

• What were some of the most poignant lessons you learned about yourself?

• What surprised you about this collaboration?

• What might you have done differently?

• In what ways did this collaboration change or maintain your perceptions of collaborative work?

• How would you instruct someone else in the process of collaboration?

Once you’ve done your own reflecting, take your observations back to your group, and discuss together what you’ve concluded about the process. Not only does this final step bring some healthy closure to the project, but it also opens up opportunities for resolution of lingering conflict, mutual recognition of your accomplishments, and, for those of you who’ve got an especially good thing going with your work, a conversation about possibly taking your project beyond the classroom.

What Difference Does a Mindful Collaboration Make?

Does it really make a difference to do all of this prep-work and strategizing and management and reflection? I wanted to find out. Several months after my students completed a collaborative project, I did a kind of post-mortem by anonymously surveying them to get their views on collaboration. I was curious: most of them had never before taken these structured steps toward the preparation, management, and reflection on their group work. I learned from their pre-project reflections that most had worked in groups without talking about goals or communication strategies, making assumptions that their group members knew what they had to do and why. They had only known how to “launch in” and (gulp) hope for the best. And for many of these students, tensions loomed from the start. Would these new strategies change their views?

In my survey, I asked them,

• How would you rate the importance of collaboration in the university classroom?

• What do you think are the most important ingredients for successful collaboration?

• Did this collaborative project change the way you viewed collaboration before?

• How will you approach collaborative work in future academic and professional endeavors?

• How would you advise entering college students to approach collaborative work?

Despite even the most negative of experiences some students described before they began their group work, a majority of those who completed the survey rated collaboration as either “very important” or “extremely important.” What’s more, several of the students’ responses emphasized the goals behind collaboration, and many who were initially concerned about group work came to see collaboration more positively than they had before. Take a look at what some of my students wrote:

At first I felt like learning to work with someone really didn’t
matter. I was fine doing the work on my own. I learned in my
project that it is indeed very important.

I believe the collaborating in a university classroom is important
because it prepares you for the difficulties that you will have to
face with collaboration in the work field in the future. Having
experienced many obstacles and difficulties while working with
assigned partners and group members I know that learning to
resolve these issues is a social skill that will be extremely helpful
in the future.

Integral to the collaboration process is being able to understand
one another, and have the patience to see what others are saying.

I feel that the most important ingredients for successful collaboration
are communication, as well as compensation. Group members
must be sure to communicate amongst themselves—relay
problems, conflicts, concerns, and comments amongst each other.
Moreover, if a given group member is having trouble completing
his/her part, then the remaining members must at least make an
effort to help the troubled group member.

I thought that the most important parts were an ability to listen
to your peers and to also find a way to organize the group such
that each person contributed to the discussion.

One aspect that can make everything a lot easier is organization.
When you are organized, you save time, and everyone is able to be
on the same page. The [project] gave the opportunity for students
to get organized and figure how the group is going to function.

I think when you collaborate on a project it is not always going
to work perfectly with people who have the same ideas as you. In
order to be successful you all need to be able to negotiate and work
together for a common goal.

Communication, structure, negotiation, organization, deadlines. These aspects stand out for these students as some of the most important elements of successful collaboration. While they may seem like common sense, you probably know by now how challenging it can be try to juggle all of these conceptual balls in the air when you don’t have a mindful structure to guide you. The invention, management, and reflection tools we’ve talked about in this chapter can help to form the backbone of a creative, communicative, and rewarding collaboration.

Though flying solo can produce some extraordinary individual work, we might again heed the words of Lennon, who describes his first meeting with McCartney: “I thought, half to myself, ‘He’s as good as me.’ I’d been kingpin up to then. Now I thought ‘If I take him on, what will happen?’ . . . The decision was whether to keep me strong or make the group stronger. . . . But he was good, so he was worth having. He also looked like Elvis. I dug him” (Norman 109). Lennon asked himself: what will happen? Ask yourself the same thing when you begin a group project. It could be something pretty good. It might also be something great.