At the start of Unit X we were put into groups of three, we were told that from week 3 of the unit we would have to work within those groups to create weekly infographics. As soon as I found out who was in my group I created a Facebook group chat for us to contact and arrange a suitable day to meet. We decided the best day for us to meet would be a Thursday morning before our seminar. We all took an equal share in terms of roles and duties, we all had an input into the design and information put on the infographic. We were also each able to contribute things we had learnt from the talks we had attended, as I was number 3 of the group I had to attend an InDesign workshop. The workshop gave me an insight into how to create posters and flyers, I felt this allowed me to help contribute to how we could lay out our infrographics.
We decided to create the first infographic based on the lecture about superheroes and the film of the week, which was Batman vs Superman. We then decided for the second infographic to do the evolution of Disney, as we were going to watch a new Disney film that week and we were interested by the change of stories over time. However the last two infrographics were a more random choice and seemed to be more celebrity based as we did the top award show moments and the other about the met ball. We were lucky as we had very little disagreements in regards to picking a topic, however we did have some when choosing how to layout the infrographic and what information to put onto it. We overcame this problem by trying everyone’s suggestions and making a group decision on what looked best.
I do enjoy working as a group as long as everyone gives an equal contribution, it can allow you to do a lot more work within a smaller amount of time. I do however find it is sometimes more difficult than individual work, in terms of agreeing on shared ideas and finding a suitable time to meet up. There was a week when we could not make the designated Thursday which meant we had to send each other different things to add to the overall infographic, this made the task a lot more tedious as we had to wait for each other to send things and it would have probably been easier to do it individually.
I think group work can offer you different insights and approaches to things, I ended up researching about superheroes and actually found myself enjoying it, I probably would not have done that topic if I was working individually. I also found that I was able to learn new skills from my group as we each helped each other understand how to use PiktoChart, if I wasn’t in a group I may have struggled to use it. If I was to think of some improvements for our group I would suggest we could have put more time into the infographics rather than just a couple of hours a week, however we still managed to produce professional looking work. I think on a personal level I could have possibly made some templates and gathered more information and pictures to help make our work even better.
Overall however the group work aspect of the unit has been very enjoyable and I intend to use infographics within the future.
elliewhittammedia 