Teamwork in medical school - assignments

Introduction

In medical school, we will be doing tasks which are sub-divided in a group, so a maximal amount of work is done with less effort.

for example, in a PBL (Problem-Based-Learning), there may be several learning issues - no doubt the best policy for maximal learning for each student is "Reading everything", but realistically speaking, you probably will not be able to learn everything in the desired depth, and thus a need for teamwork arises. (also, I believe one of the points of PBL is nurturing the teamwork abilities)

the most typical situation in these kinds of PBL is where students will allocate / select their tasks, become the "content expert", and present their findings 2 days later and so forth.

now, to the main topic of this post -

How do we yield maximum gain from shortest amount of time?

set a good division of task. Delegation is KEY

you need to breakdown your tasks (during your group meeting) so that it is;

• fair in amount of time needed to read-up
• fair in terms of content difficulty
• make sure there is no over-lap of tasks. 
• ensure satisfaction by members over the tasks given. Always ask for feedback before giving them another similar task to do
• if the assignment / task is graded, we need to make sure it is of good quality - check everyone's work! make a draft at least a day ahead of presentation / meeting.
• ask for clear direction from the lecturer / facilitator 

set priorities of given tasks immediately

• what is the most needed facts? what kind of information would benefit us best?
• where can I get the information?
• Will I be able to present the findings better with use of graphs / illustrations? 
• how much deeper should I go?
• how long do I have to present / talk?

those are the questions you would be asking yourselves when you set yourself learning issues. 

ask for feedback of performance

Once you've done a certain group assignment, it is always nice to get some feedback for your own performance. It would be a blessing to know where you can improve, so next time you can actually work on that particular aspect. If there is no feedback, it would be more difficult to identify the problems that you may be facing as a group - it would be an idea to do a debriefing to do things better next time. 

lastly.... no hard feelings!

the people you divide work with, are your friends. In the end, grades matter but so does your friendship. If someone in the group is not satisfied, talk about it. if you're not satisfied and feel like you're doing all the work, also talk about it. Don't go bitching to other parties before you actually discuss with your group members because... well because that's what assholes do. Don't become one.