GROUP ACTIONS AND DYNAMICS

Mike Borgstadt, Todd Bennett, Howard Wang, Greg Watson

	In a class like chemistry, group projects and studying is very
important in helping understand the material.  Most people, and our group
would agree, learn better by studying in groups rather than doing it
individually.  Groups allowed us to see the problems that we encountered
from a different point of view as well as gain a better understanding of
the chemistry behind the news items.
	As far as our group's actions are concerned, we met very
frequently.  We met about once every two weeks, either to study new
material or to work on the semester project.  We met for approximately for
two hours at a time and in that two hours we learned more than if we would
have study alone.  Meeting in groups helped our comprehension of the
material greatly.
	The first time we met, we picked out a news article to use in our
semester project.  We spent over a two hours finding a news item, which
was both appropriate, and interesting to research.  We went through many
articles before we found one that fit our needs.  This was the most
difficult part of the project.  After we found our article, we started
finding many links that corresponded to our topic.  After finding the
links, it was just a matter of summarizing the article and incorporating
the links that we found.  Over all, this process took about eight to ten
hours to put together our project.
	The other times we met, we discussed the material that was covered
in class and in the book.  This especially helped when we were covering
the material over stereochemistry.  We all obtained a greater
understanding of the chemistry by seeing it through the others
perspectives.
	Getting together in groups had more benefits than just learning.
We met new people in our group that had similar interests and majors.
This could help us in future classes because we already have built a
foundation for a study group with each other.  We know how each of us
learns best and that could be beneficial to making better grades in upper
level courses.  All in all, we felt that group studying was beneficial and
look to doing it in the future.