What are the advantages and disadvantages of working in a group?

Answer 1

The advantages of having a study group is that all members are able to share their experiences, share workloads, and you can all test each other. The disadvantage is that if your all working on the same, you may all end up having the same work or work that is very similar.

Answer 2

Some skills that are generated in a Group Discussion are:

Communication Skills: In a Group Discussion there is fair possibility that you improve your communication skills. Communication skills are considered as necessary to do well in the UPSC civil Services Exam. In a group while sharing your opinions and exchanging views with others you will automatically improve your communication skills.

Divergent Thinking: Group Discussion enables a participating candidate to think in divergent directions to generate more points and a good presentation of the topic in the group. In a group when you present your points you would think and consider all possible points on the topic and thus you improve your thinking process also.

Analytical skills: In the Group Discussion you have to be careful about the points you discuss. You should have enough analytical ability to analyse the topic and the points and then present them in front of others for discussion. You need to be careful so that there is no logical inconsistency in your points. Thus while doing Group Discussion you get to improve your analytical skills.

Group Discussions should be polite and friendly. There should not be any attitude of hard competition, as it will not bring the desired benefit for the participating members. Group Discussions should be held with the intention of learning well and improve more.

Thank you.

Answer 3

Advantages

Enhances learning in both the affective and cognitive domains.

Is both learner-centered and subject-centered.

Stimulates learners to think about issues and problems.

Encourages learners to exchanges their own expereinces, thereby making learning more active and less isolating.

Provides the opportunity for sharing of ideas and concerns.

Fosters positive peer support and feelings of belonging.

Reinforces previous learning.

More simply put:

• Ideas can be generated.

• Ideas can be shared.

• Ideas can be 'tried out'.

• Ideas can be responded to by others.

Disadvantages

One member of the group can dominate the discussion.

Easy to digress from the topic.

Shy learners may refuse to become involved or may need a great deal of encouragement to participate.

Requires skill to tactfully redirect learners who digress or dominate without losing their trust and that of other group members.

Particularly challenging for the novice teacher when group members do not interact easily.

More time consuming for the transmission of information than other methods such as lecture.

Requires the teacher's presence at all sessions to act as a facilitator and resource person.

Answer 4

Advantages of working in a group are that you could get your work done quicker and with extra brains and eyes to learn more and pick out the mistakes. It can be very good working with more people and you can all share parts of the task. But there disadvantages such as people in your group not doing the work or being fair, simply not having a very friendly person your together with or you just don't get along, following the wrong answer and then some of us just worry about the lazy ones in the group who did nothing getting your good grade! Don't worry, some like working with others and some don't, whatever way they both have their advantages and disadvantages!

Hope this helped!

Answer 5

• What are the advantages of group decision making?

Whether or not one would resort to group decision making in a particular scenario would depend on whether the advantages of group decision making justify it. There are numerous advantages of group decision making:

1. Diversity: Varied cultures, age groups, gender, etc all add to the diversity of group which gives us varied perspectives and enhances the kind of ideas the group can come up with.

2. Varied experiences: There are difference in fields of experience and amount of experience and there differences in the life experiences and the kind of experiences people have had even with the same problem. This pool of experience can be a great advantage.

3. Enhanced memory for facts: An individual may forget a particular piece of information, but as there are a number of people involved here, there is the combined memory of all members to recollect data.

4. Greater Acceptability of decisions: As everyone has made some contribution to the decision, people tend to be more accepting of the decision. Also those who may not have contributed still support it as "the group" has come to this decision.

5. Error detection: When there are many people working together, mistakes and errors that may have accidentally gone unnoticed and had serious consequences are spotted by other team members.

6. collective understanding: The members together come to a decision after much deliberation and discussions and so everyone has a better understanding of the course of action to be followed.

7. Less influence of bias: Individual biases can be challenged and individuals may have to recognize and eliminate them.

8. more creative solutions: With so many people involved, more creative and innovative solutions to problems may emerge than an individual may have been able to develop.

9. shared responsibility: There are a number of people involved, so no one person has to shoulder the burden of work or of single-handedly making a decision.

10. motivational effect: The group decision making may even have a motivational effect on the team if the team is a successful one.

11. simplifies complex decisions: Many complex decisions can be made by the group decision making process which an individual may not have been able to tackle.

• What are the disadvantages of group decision making?

While group decision making has numerous advantages there are times when individual members may outperform the group. In fact, at times, what are the very advantages of group decision making become disadvantages.

1. Diversity: Too much diversity, or diversity when diversity is not needed, can reduce cohesiveness and affect the group decision making process.

2. Time used: With too many people involved, more time is required to reach a decision which reduces efficiency.

3. Group think: If members strive for agreement at the cost of accurate assessment of required information, the group decision making falls prey to the problem of group think and individual performances may reflect better results. This is particularly true for highly cohesive groups.

4. diffusion of responsibility: As numerous people are involved, no one person wants to assume responsibility which may lead to lesser results.

5. potential for conflict: If the group is too large, or low on cohesiveness or too diverse, and sometimes even if none of these factors are present, there is the potential for conflict which may reduce output.

6. group polarization: People sometimes tend to make more extreme or radical decisions in a group than individually. This is an advantage so far as it offers new solutions but extreme solutions may present more problems than anticipated.

7. cost to organizations: The cost in terms of time, money and resources is high where group decision making is involved which may not always be viable.

8. competition: If individual performance is also rewarded in groups in a manner that is not motivational, group decision making may inadvertently lead to competition among individual members.

9. lack of objective direction: In a group without a leader, there may be a lack of direction and the decisions arrived at may be vague or ambiguous.

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Answer 6

Advantages and disadvantages of meetings you should also expand the question to best and worst meetings.

Meetings are great for people who work best face to face. The advantage of meetings is it allows them to see the progress of what they are doing or what are others are doing in terms of everyday work or projects. Meetings are a great way to explain complex and non-complex ideas and offer a great format to exchange ideas and really think them out. Meetings are a great way to communicate lots of information a short amount of time and create a "game plan for the future ahead.

The best meeting is one with an agenda and a time frame of how long the meeting will take.

The disadvantages of meeting they are time consuming and at times tedious. They can become a tool of grandstanding, boasting, and aa format for picking on people. The worst meetings are those where you meet to talk about the