Students will be able to collaborate effectively in a group setting within the discipline.
I have done a lot of group work in my time at Longwood. By far the most common group setting I have participated in has been during class projects. A lot of my introductory courses assigned both the groups and the projects we would be working on. For example, I worked with a group to create a poster for a class called Intro to Genetics and Cell Biology, and our work mimicked the work of the other groups from that class because we did the same project more or less. I found this difficult at times because I was often put into groups with people I didn’t know, but I am still glad that I had that experience as I think it gave me a lot of exposure to other people work style and helped me learn to collaborate, even with people who had ideas that were completely different from my own.
With moving on to some of my upper-level courses, we were given more freedom with the projects we chose to do and who we chose to work with. For example, in Comprehensive Human Anatomy and Physiology I, we were told to design and execute our own experiments. We got to choose our own group members and spent a lot of time coming up with project ideas, figuring out our approach and methods, and then performing the actual experiment. This was truly an enjoyable experience for me as I feel like the collaboration between the members of our group resulted in a great poster.
I have also had to work in smaller groups for things like presentations. For example, in a class called Comparative Biomechanics, we had to group into pairs and lead multiple discussions with our partners throughout the semester. One example of the outcome of this group work is a presentation we gave on glide performance. I compare this one-on-one experience with my experience working in larger groups often. It has taught me a lot about group dynamics and how best to communicate, divide workloads, and play on everyone’s individual strengths.
Being able to collaborate effectively with others is not only a skill that is valuable for scientific work, but for life in general. There are many instance where you may have to work in a group setting to complete a task. I think that the experience working in a group setting that I have gained throughout my time here at Longwood will be beneficial for the academic, professional, and personal aspects of my future.