The following are a handful of best practices for effective group work days.
- Don’t forget to be humans. Take a few minutes each day to check in with each other, share what you’ve been watching / listening to / playing / etc.
- Set an agenda at the start of the meeting. You’re much more likely to accomplish your goals if you have goals.
- Work separately together. Even if you decide to divide and conquer work for much of the day, stay on your group’s Zoom call. It’s okay to turn video off if you need / want to here, but stay around—this is the digital equivalent of sitting around a table working together. You’ll be surprised how helpful this can be!
- Need an instructor? Ask early! Your instructors will always check in with each group each day, but if you need help on a specific thing, ask at the start of class or, even better, before class starts, to better help us plan how to schedule and prioritize our time each day.
- Show your work. As much as possible, leave a textual record of what you work on / find in your group’s channel. Drop in links / media as you go and / or write short summaries of what you decide on / come up with, too. Doing this is super easy, and it leverages one of the main advantages of Slack—automatic creation of a searchable record of what you’ve worked on.
- Always leave a brief end of day summary. At the end of each group meeting (including both class days + your mandatory out-of-class work day), leave a short response to these two questions:
- What did we accomplish today?
- Who’s doing what before next meeting?
- What do we need from our client / instructor?