small group communication
The impact of a single member on group dynamics
Now that you have completed your discussion of 12 Angry Men, it’s time to apply the same critical thinking skills to exploring your own impact on the groups you take part in.
BEFORE YOU WRITE:
Consider your knowledge, skills and insights regarding small group communication, power and leadership by applying it to your own experiences and observations of times when you have worked in groups. What has worked? What would you do differently? What do you like and dislike about working in groups? and so on.
DRAFTING THE ESSAY:
Show mastery of the course content by using course terminology appropriately, describing and explaining specific incidents that have occurred in your own experiences informed by your course-related learning (use them as examples) .
You should, as you did with your discussion of 12 Angry Men, select a particular aspect of small group communication on which to focus the essay. Keep the focus on an aspect of small group communication that enables you to identify and describe how one member can have personal impact, pro and con, and how one might become a more effective group member in future experiences.
Examples of what you might focus on include:
How to emerge as a leader
Recognizing task, social-maintenance, and dysfunctional roles and how the roles one member of a group fills can impact the group
Dealing with a disruptive group member
Motivating the group to achieve its goals
and so on
As with earlier essays, use personal examples as support for larger ideas about communication, in this case as it occurs in a small group setting.
