Group Dynamics Ð PLEFKA, Group 18, Tommi White, Amy Crowe, Andrea Sano,
Brad Plefke and Megan Christensen

Our collaborative semester project was created with a very pleasant degree
of cooperation, respect, planning, delegation, plus more than a little
laughter and absolutely no bloodshed (not even threats of it).  While we
were all a bit intimidated by the assignment Ð preparing a news item in
which no magic answers will appear in our email at the last minute Ð
everyone contributed and the final project came off more smoothly than we
expected.  We all had different interests in the topic so people who were
more interested in science issues found those and other people did more
social research.  It's also nice to have a journalism major who likes
typing and getting the final editorial cut.  The hardest part was the
science and deciding how to sound competent without overkill and without
going over our heads in chemistry.    

Schedules were a challenge, but we managed to get work done even when one
or two people had to be absent.  We traded a lot of email to make sure
everyone knew what was going on.  For example, while we were drafting our
editorial comments, we listed our links and a project outline in a Word
file as we worked, then emailed it to everyone so we could use it between
our meetings.  It helped that we all had the same level of
conscientiousness/anxiety about our grade, so everyone made the same
effort to get things right.