It was an incident that happened in 2004. We were assigned to design a bridge model which will be stress tested on its maximum load. The bridge that can take the heaviest load (weight) with the best design will get awarded. In our group, there was only one local student and the rest were international students from different countries. At first, we were very enthusiastic and excited about the project. We named the bridge “United Bridge”. We tried many designs and tested it in the lab with various loadings and observed which design is the best.
After a few weeks, one of our international student group members suddenly disappeared. We simply thought that she was busy. But a few days later she shocked us with her own new bridge design. It was the arch bridge and we knew it was very difficult to design as a model. She suggested that the design was perfect and that we should use it as our project model. Initially, we did not accept it as it was not our group’s work. But we all know that the arch bridge was the strongest bridge among all and we finally agreed to accept it as our group work. Surprisingly, on the actual day, our classmates pointed out that it was not our group’s work. They called it that person’s bridge. We did not know what she told to the rest of our classmates and we felt remorseful and sad. The other bad thing is the bridge even could not take half of the expected weight. As soon as the test was over, she mentioned it was her own bridge and she did not allow us to take pictures of the broken bridge for the follow up analysis presentation.
Luckily we had taken photos of our previous bridge models and managed to show them as evidence of our team’s work. Nevertheless, we all were able to score above average for this project as our lecturer knew of our contributions. We avoided her though we still talk to her superficially. How would you feel and solve this conflict if you were in our place??
2 comments:
I think that she wanted to show off her capability. Actually, this is a group project, she should involve with all of you together. Although, she can create a new design, she still has to consider group members ideas and individual task.
If i were you,I would discuss with her for the distribution of the individual task or you can discuss with your lecturer for the conditions of the group members.
I think that probably she is unhappy with the way some things are being done and wants to do it her way. But I guess this kind of situations are always present and since it is a group project, there would always be room for discussion or to brain storm and evaluate each other'a ideas.
Also, I feel that the mode of communications has broken down due to the prescence of ambiguities each member felt in each other's intent which allowed the problem to be aggravated. For example, she had voluntarily agreed to use her own project as the group's effort and yet complained to her classmates that she had to do the work all by herself and also refusing to allow others to take photographs of the broken bridge. This perphaps has send a rather mixed signal to her group members and it could serve to impede in communications
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