Hello, again, everyone.

This week, we take Week Seven?s topic about groups in a new direction, as we look at how to keep the group functioning. Sometimes called teams, groups are the building block of community, civic, and corporate life. That is because teams are often the best personnel vehicle for solving problems or advising others on pertinent marketing issues.

In an online course, the challenge is to keep all members of teams engaged in their group?s work. When a team member is really engaged in a group, he or she is sharing tasks, taking initiative, and following-through on assigned projects. That?s the ideal.

The reality is that group members often become disengaged from team work. While this week?s related reading offers reasons for what the author calls, ?dysfunction,? we all know as online faculty when dysfunction occurs, whether our class is doing group work or not. One of the first symptoms of dysfunction that we see is a decline in the quality and quantity of work: fewer postings and less frequent postings, to name a few.

Since a group is a microcosm of a class, the dysfunction is not a general occurrence but a specific one. Certain group members become inactive because their jobs or families are taking a lot of their time, so they don?t answer queries from the active members of a group. Perhaps they are not logging on, or perhaps they are unsure of how to be in a group in an online setting.

The result is that increased responsibilities are placed on the active team members, particularly the leader of the group. When several groups exist in our classes, any inactive members in a group slow down the progress of the group and affect a group?s prominence among the other groups. If this inattention by inactive groups persists, the team leader has to take the initiative to contact them and urge them to participate. Should the behavior continue, the remaining active members and leader have to move on and finish their tasks, often doing more than their fair share of work.

So, what has been your experience with groups. As you post to the blog, continue to identify yourself by your class moniker, as we answer this week?s question: How do you keep the group productive and pleasant?

Related Reading: Lencioni, Patrick M. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable. (2002). San Francisco: Joosey-Bass. Retrieved 3 May 2008 from www.amazon.com.