My Group Experience:
In my MATH 2008 class I was in a group project with 3 other people. In this class we did not have a good group dynamic. I had to organize everything and I practically did everything myself with the help of one other group member. One day we had a independent workday without the teacher and the one group member did nothing but play on the smartboard in our math lab. Myself and the other 2 worked together to finish the project, but she did not help at all. Not only this but when she would "work" on things her computer wouldn't work, or she couldn't log into our shared Canva. I felt as though in this situation I could not communicate with her because no matter what I said or asked she would say that she was confused or stuff such as that or her computer was dead. I felt used and misunderstood with her and one other group member.
Function Theory:
We did not function well and so our group dynamic suffered, and we could not problem solve or do the project properly because one group member did not want to function with us. Our group dynamic was not functional, and we had a huge lack of communication. This created errors and a non-productive group relationship. I noticed that I also did nothing to resolve this internal conflict, which is a key part of the functional theory of overcoming constraints. The functional theory focuses also on satisfying the task requirement by understanding the issue that you are working on. In this case our issue was a math problem and I think that this is where we began to suffer as we all had different understandings of the problem. I believe that if we would have functioned together as the functional theory points out we could have done better and had a functional experience.
Social-Exchange Theory:
We had to do a group dynamic form. In this form I wrote what the one group member’s work ethic was because the profit of having her in our group did not exceed the costs of our grade. I did not believe that she deserved the 100 on the group dynamic aspect of the project because she did nothing. The group experience was not attractive and rewarding because I did most of the work and I felt used in a way. While we were productive and finished the project well within the time allotted the relationships, I had with this group was not rewarding. In the book they talk about profits= rewards-costs and i believe in this group experience I had less rewards than costs, so the profit was lower than I have experienced in almost any other group.
Conclusion:
Overall, in this negative group experience, I believe that if I knew about these theories, I could've made the group dynamic better. By understanding how to overcome constraints and how important communication is for the betterment of your group you can create a better dynamic and function so that you can solve problems with much more ease. The functional theory is key to have a strong group dynamic and problem solve in a functional way. Social-exchange theory is all about how the relationships and how the group members must be "profitable" by rewards exceeding the costs to be attractive to other members.
Thank You