how to do a group essay

Group Writing

What this handout is about.

Whether in the academic world or the business world, all of us are likely to participate in some form of group writing—an undergraduate group project for a class, a collaborative research paper or grant proposal, or a report produced by a business team. Writing in a group can have many benefits: multiple brains are better than one, both for generating ideas and for getting a job done. However, working in a group can sometimes be stressful because there are various opinions and writing styles to incorporate into one final product that pleases everyone. This handout will offer an overview of the collaborative process, strategies for writing successfully together, and tips for avoiding common pitfalls. It will also include links to some other handouts that may be especially helpful as your group moves through the writing process.

Disclaimer and disclosure

As this is a group writing handout, several Writing Center coaches worked together to create it. No coaches were harmed in this process; however, we did experience both the pros and the cons of the collaborative process. We have personally tested the various methods for sharing files and scheduling meetings that are described here. However, these are only our suggestions; we do not advocate any particular service or site.

The spectrum of collaboration in group writing

All writing can be considered collaborative in a sense, though we often don’t think of it that way. It would be truly surprising to find an author whose writing, even if it was completed independently, had not been influenced at some point by discussions with friends or colleagues. The range of possible collaboration varies from a group of co-authors who go through each portion of the writing process together, writing as a group with one voice, to a group with a primary author who does the majority of the work and then receives comments or edits from the co-authors.

Group projects for classes should usually fall towards the middle to left side of this diagram, with group members contributing roughly equally. However, in collaborations on research projects, the level of involvement of the various group members may vary widely. The key to success in either case is to be clear about group member responsibilities and expectations and to give credit (authorship) to members who contribute an appropriate amount. It may be useful to credit each group member for their various contributions.

Overview of steps of the collaborative process

Here we outline the steps of the collaborative process. You can use these questions to focus your thinking at each stage.

• Share ideas and brainstorm together.
• Formulate a draft thesis or argument .
• Think about your assignment and the final product. What should it look like? What is its purpose? Who is the intended audience ?
• Decide together who will write which parts of the paper/project.
• What will the final product look like?
• Arrange meetings: How often will the group or subsets of the group meet? When and where will the group meet? If the group doesn’t meet in person, how will information be shared?
• Scheduling: What is the deadline for the final product? What are the deadlines for drafts?
• How will the group find appropriate sources (books, journal articles, newspaper articles, visual media, trustworthy websites, interviews)? If the group will be creating data by conducting research, how will that process work?
• Who will read and process the information found? This task again may be done by all members or divided up amongst members so that each person becomes the expert in one area and then teaches the rest of the group.
• Think critically about the sources and their contributions to your topic. Which evidence should you include or exclude? Do you need more sources?
• Analyze the data. How will you interpret your findings? What is the best way to present any relevant information to your readers-should you include pictures, graphs, tables, and charts, or just written text?
• Note that brainstorming the main points of your paper as a group is helpful, even if separate parts of the writing are assigned to individuals. You’ll want to be sure that everyone agrees on the central ideas.
• Where does your individual writing fit into the whole document?
• Writing together may not be feasible for longer assignments or papers with coauthors at different universities, and it can be time-consuming. However, writing together does ensure that the finished document has one cohesive voice.
• Talk about how the writing session should go BEFORE you get started. What goals do you have? How will you approach the writing task at hand?
• Many people find it helpful to get all of the ideas down on paper in a rough form before discussing exact phrasing.
• Remember that everyone has a different writing style! The most important thing is that your sentences be clear to readers.
• If your group has drafted parts of the document separately, merge your ideas together into a single document first, then focus on meshing the styles. The first concern is to create a coherent product with a logical flow of ideas. Then the stylistic differences of the individual portions must be smoothed over.
• Revise the ideas and structure of the paper before worrying about smaller, sentence-level errors (like problems with punctuation, grammar, or word choice). Is the argument clear? Is the evidence presented in a logical order? Do the transitions connect the ideas effectively?
• Proofreading: Check for typos, spelling errors, punctuation problems, formatting issues, and grammatical mistakes. Reading the paper aloud is a very helpful strategy at this point.

Helpful collaborative writing strategies

Attitude counts for a lot.

Group work can be challenging at times, but a little enthusiasm can go a long way to helping the momentum of the group. Keep in mind that working in a group provides a unique opportunity to see how other people write; as you learn about their writing processes and strategies, you can reflect on your own. Working in a group inherently involves some level of negotiation, which will also facilitate your ability to skillfully work with others in the future.

Remember that respect goes along way! Group members will bring different skill sets and various amounts and types of background knowledge to the table. Show your fellow writers respect by listening carefully, talking to share your ideas, showing up on time for meetings, sending out drafts on schedule, providing positive feedback, and taking responsibility for an appropriate share of the work.

Start early and allow plenty of time for revising

Getting started early is important in individual projects; however, it is absolutely essential in group work. Because of the multiple people involved in researching and writing the paper, there are aspects of group projects that take additional time, such as deciding and agreeing upon a topic. Group projects should be approached in a structured way because there is simply less scheduling flexibility than when you are working alone. The final product should reflect a unified, cohesive voice and argument, and the only way of accomplishing this is by producing multiple drafts and revising them multiple times.

Plan a strategy for scheduling

One of the difficult aspects of collaborative writing is finding times when everyone can meet. Much of the group’s work may be completed individually, but face-to-face meetings are useful for ensuring that everyone is on the same page. Doodle.com , whenisgood.net , and needtomeet.com are free websites that can make scheduling easier. Using these sites, an organizer suggests multiple dates and times for a meeting, and then each group member can indicate whether they are able to meet at the specified times.

It is very important to set deadlines for drafts; people are busy, and not everyone will have time to read and respond at the last minute. It may help to assign a group facilitator who can send out reminders of the deadlines. If the writing is for a co-authored research paper, the lead author can take responsibility for reminding others that comments on a given draft are due by a specific date.

Submitting drafts at least one day ahead of the meeting allows other authors the opportunity to read over them before the meeting and arrive ready for a productive discussion.

Find a convenient and effective way to share files

There are many different ways to share drafts, research materials, and other files. Here we describe a few of the potential options we have explored and found to be functional. We do not advocate any one option, and we realize there are other equally useful options—this list is just a possible starting point for you:

• Email attachments. People often share files by email; however, especially when there are many group members or there is a flurry of writing activity, this can lead to a deluge of emails in everyone’s inboxes and significant confusion about which file version is current.
• Google documents . Files can be shared between group members and are instantaneously updated, even if two members are working at once. Changes made by one member will automatically appear on the document seen by all members. However, to use this option, every group member must have a Gmail account (which is free), and there are often formatting issues when converting Google documents back to Microsoft Word.
• Dropbox . Dropbox.com is free to join. It allows you to share up to 2GB of files, which can then be synched and accessible from multiple computers. The downside of this approach is that everyone has to join, and someone must install the software on at least one personal computer. Dropbox can then be accessed from any computer online by logging onto the website.
• Common server space. If all group members have access to a shared server space, this is often an ideal solution. Members of a lab group or a lab course with available server space typically have these resources. Just be sure to make a folder for your project and clearly label your files.

Note that even when you are sharing or storing files for group writing projects in a common location, it is still essential to periodically make back-up copies and store them on your own computer! It is never fun to lose your (or your group’s) hard work.

Try separating the tasks of revising and editing/proofreading

It may be helpful to assign giving feedback on specific items to particular group members. First, group members should provide general feedback and comments on content. Only after revising and solidifying the main ideas and structure of the paper should you move on to editing and proofreading. After all, there is no point in spending your time making a certain sentence as beautiful and correct as possible when that sentence may later be cut out. When completing your final revisions, it may be helpful to assign various concerns (for example, grammar, organization, flow, transitions, and format) to individual group members to focus this process. This is an excellent time to let group members play to their strengths; if you know that you are good at transitions, offer to take care of that editing task.

Your group project is an opportunity to become experts on your topic. Go to the library (in actuality or online), collect relevant books, articles, and data sources, and consult a reference librarian if you have any issues. Talk to your professor or TA early in the process to ensure that the group is on the right track. Find experts in the field to interview if it is appropriate. If you have data to analyze, meet with a statistician. If you are having issues with the writing, use the online handouts at the Writing Center or come in for a face-to-face meeting: a coach can meet with you as a group or one-on-one.

Immediately dividing the writing into pieces

While this may initially seem to be the best way to approach a group writing process, it can also generate more work later on, when the parts written separately must be put together into a unified document. The different pieces must first be edited to generate a logical flow of ideas, without repetition. Once the pieces have been stuck together, the entire paper must be edited to eliminate differences in style and any inconsistencies between the individual authors’ various chunks. Thus, while it may take more time up-front to write together, in the end a closer collaboration can save you from the difficulties of combining pieces of writing and may create a stronger, more cohesive document.

Procrastination

Although this is solid advice for any project, it is even more essential to start working on group projects in a timely manner. In group writing, there are more people to help with the work-but there are also multiple schedules to juggle and more opinions to seek.

Being a solo group member

Not everyone enjoys working in groups. You may truly desire to go solo on this project, and you may even be capable of doing a great job on your own. However, if this is a group assignment, then the prompt is asking for everyone to participate. If you are feeling the need to take over everything, try discussing expectations with your fellow group members as well as the teaching assistant or professor. However, always address your concerns with group members first. Try to approach the group project as a learning experiment: you are learning not only about the project material but also about how to motivate others and work together.

Waiting for other group members to do all of the work

If this is a project for a class, you are leaving your grade in the control of others. Leaving the work to everyone else is not fair to your group mates. And in the end, if you do not contribute, then you are taking credit for work that you did not do; this is a form of academic dishonesty. To ensure that you can do your share, try to volunteer early for a portion of the work that you are interested in or feel you can manage.

Leaving all the end work to one person

It may be tempting to leave all merging, editing, and/or presentation work to one person. Be careful. There are several reasons why this may be ill-advised. 1) The editor/presenter may not completely understand every idea, sentence, or word that another author wrote, leading to ambiguity or even mistakes in the end paper or presentation. 2) Editing is tough, time-consuming work. The editor often finds himself or herself doing more work than was expected as they try to decipher and merge the original contributions under the time pressure of an approaching deadline. If you decide to follow this path and have one person combine the separate writings of many people, be sure to leave plenty of time for a final review by all of the writers. Ask the editor to send out the final draft of the completed work to each of the authors and let every contributor review and respond to the final product. Ideally, there should also be a test run of any live presentations that the group or a representative may make.

Entirely negative critiques

When giving feedback or commenting on the work of other group members, focusing only on “problems” can be overwhelming and put your colleagues on the defensive. Try to highlight the positive parts of the project in addition to pointing out things that need work. Remember that this is constructive feedback, so don’t forget to add concrete, specific suggestions on how to proceed. It can also be helpful to remind yourself that many of your comments are your own opinions or reactions, not absolute, unquestionable truths, and then phrase what you say accordingly. It is much easier and more helpful to hear “I had trouble understanding this paragraph because I couldn’t see how it tied back to our main argument” than to hear “this paragraph is unclear and irrelevant.”

Writing in a group can be challenging, but it is also a wonderful opportunity to learn about your topic, the writing process, and the best strategies for collaboration. We hope that our tips will help you and your group members have a great experience.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Cross, Geoffrey. 1994. Collaboration and Conflict: A Contextual Exploration of Group Writing and Positive Emphasis . Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Ede, Lisa S., and Andrea Lunsford. 1990. Singular Texts/Plural Authors: Perspectives on Collaborative Writing . Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

Speck, Bruce W. 2002. Facilitating Students’ Collaborative Writing . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Collaborative and Group Writing

Introduction

When it comes to collaborative writing, people often have diametrically opposed ideas. Academics in the sciences often write multi-authored articles that depend on sharing their expertise. Many thrive on the social interaction that collaborative writing enables. Composition scholars Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford enjoyed co-authoring so much that they devoted their career to studying it. For others, however, collaborative writing evokes the memories of group projects gone wrong and inequitable work distribution.

Whatever your prior opinions about collaborative writing, we’re here to tell you that this style of composition may benefit your writing process and may help you produce writing that is cogent and compelling. At its best, collaborative writing can help to slow down the writing process, since it necessitates conversation, planning with group members, and more deliberate revising. A study described in Helen Dale’s “The Influence of Coauthoring on the Writing Process” shows that less experienced writers behave more like experts when they engage in collaborative writing. Students working on collaborative writing projects have said that their collaborative writing process involved more brainstorming, discussion, and diverse opinions from group members. Some even said that collaborative writing entailed less of an individual time commitment than solo papers.

Although collaborative writing implies that every part of a collaborative writing project involves working cooperatively with co-author(s), in practice collaborative writing often includes individual work. In what follows, we’ll walk you through the collaborative writing process, which we’ve divided into three parts: planning, drafting, and revising. As you consider how you’ll structure the writing process for your particular project, think about the expertise and disposition of your co-author(s), your project’s due date, the amount of time that you can devote to the project, and any other relevant factors. For more information about the various types of co-authorship systems you might employ, see “Strategies for Effective Collaborative Manuscript Development in Interdisciplinary Science Teams,” which outlines five different “author-management systems.”

The Collaborative Writing Process

Planning includes everything that is done before writing. In collaborative writing, this is a particularly important step since it’s crucial that all members of a team agree about the basic elements of the project and the logistics that will govern the project’s completion.Collaborative writing—by its very definition—requires more communication than individual work since almost all co-authored projects oblige participants to come to an agreement about what should be written and how to do this writing. And careful communication at the planning stage is usually critical to the creation of a strong collaborative paper. We would recommend assigning team members roles. Ensure that you know who will be initially drafting each section, who will be revising and editing these sections, who will be responsible for confirming that all team members complete their jobs, and who will be submitting the finished project.

Drafting refers to the process of actually writing the paper. We’ve called this part of the process drafting instead of writing to highlight the recursive nature of crafting a compelling paper since strong writing projects are often the product of several rounds of drafts. At this point in the writing process, you’ll need to make a choice: will you write together, individually, or in some combination of these two modes?

Individually

Revising is the final stage in the writing process. It will occur after a draft (either of a particular section or the entire paper) has been written. Revising, for most writing projects, will need to go beyond making line-edits that revise at the sentence-level. Instead, you’ll want to thoroughly consider all aspects of the draft in order to create a version of it that satisfies each member of the team. For more information about revision, check out our Writer’s Handbook page about revising longer papers .Even if your team has drafted the paper individually, we would recommend coming together to discuss revisions. Revising together and making choices about how to improve the draft—either online or in-person— is a good way to build consensus among group members since you’ll all need to agree on the changes you make.After you’ve discussed the revisions as a group, you’ll need to how you want to complete these revisions. Just like in the drafting stage above, you can choose to write together or individually.

Person A writes a section Person B gives suggestions for revision on this section Person A edits the section based on these suggestions

Person A writes a section The entire team meets and gives suggestions for revision on this section Person B edits the section based on these suggestions

Think through the strengths of your co-authoring team and choose a system that will work for your needs.

Suggestions for Efficient and Harmonious Collaborative Writing

Establish ground rules.

Although it can be tempting to jump right into your project—especially when you have limited time—establishing ground rules right from the beginning will help your group navigate the writing process. Conflicts and issues will inevitably arise in during the course of many long-term project. Knowing how you’ll navigate issues before they appear will help to smooth out these wrinkles. For example, you may also want to establish who will be responsible for checking in with authors if they don’t seem to be completing tasks assigned to them by their due dates. You may also want to decide how you will adjudicate disagreements. Will the majority rule? Do you want to hold out for full consensus? Establishing some ground rules will ensure that expectations are clear and that all members of the team are involved in the decision-making process.

Respect your co-author(s)

Everyone has their strengths. If you can recognize this, you’ll be able to harness your co-author(s) assets to write the best paper possible. It can be easy to write someone off if they’re not initially pulling their weight, but this type of attitude can be cancerous to a positive group mindset. Instead, check in with your co-author(s) and figure out how each one can best contribute to the group’s effort.

Be willing to argue

Arguing (respectfully!) with the other members of your writing group is a good thing because it means that you are expressing your deeply held beliefs with your co-author(s). While you don’t need to fight your team members about every feeling you have (after all, group work has to involve compromise!), if there are ideas that you feel strongly about—communicate them and encourage other members of your group to do the same even if they conflict with others’ viewpoints.

Schedule synchronous meetings

While you may be tempted to figure out group work purely by email, there’s really no substitute for talking through ideas with your co-author(s) face-to-face—even if you’re looking at your teammates face through the computer. At the beginning of your project, get a few synchronous meetings on the books in advance of your deadlines so that you can make sure that you’re able to have clear lines of communication throughout the writing process.

Use word processing software that enables collaboration

Sending lots of Word document drafts back-and-forth over email can get tiring and chaotic. Instead, we would recommend using word processing software that allows online collaboration. Right now, we like Google Docs for this since it’s free, easy to use, allows many authors to edit the same document, and has robust collaboration tools like chat and commenting.

Dale, Helen. “The Influence of Coauthoring on the Writing Process.” Journal of Teaching Writing , vol. 15, no. 1, 1996, pp. 65-79.

Lunsford, Andrea A., and Lisa Ede.  Writing Together: Collaboration in Theory and Practice . Bedford St. Martin, 2011.

Oliver, Samantha K., et al. “Strategies for Effective Collaborative Manuscript Development in Interdisciplinary Science Teams.”  Ecosphere , vol. 9, no. 4, Apr. 2018, pp. 1–13., doi:10.1002/ecs2.2206.

Writing Process and Structure

This is an accordion element with a series of buttons that open and close related content panels.

Getting Started with Your Paper

Interpreting Writing Assignments from Your Courses

Generating Ideas for Your Paper

Creating an Argument

Thesis vs. Purpose Statements

Developing a Thesis Statement

Architecture of Arguments

Working with Sources

Quoting and Paraphrasing Sources

Using Literary Quotations

Citing Sources in Your Paper

Drafting Your Paper

Generating Ideas for Your Paper Introductions Paragraphing Developing Strategic Transitions Conclusions

Revising Your Paper

Peer Reviews

Reverse Outlines

Revising an Argumentative Paper

Revision Strategies for Longer Projects

Developing Strategic Transitions

Finishing your Paper

Twelve Common Errors: An Editing Checklist

How to Proofread your Paper

Writing Collaboratively

• Our Mission

Group Work That Really Works

A group essay writing activity pushes every student to contribute—and it can lead to real growth in writing ability.

Group work is a mode of learning I’ve struggled with for much of my teaching career. The concept of students working together to learn is valuable for many reasons, but creating a group activity where all students are engaged in the collective work can be challenging. Recently, I tried a group essay writing activity that not only involved every student in the task but also created conditions for rich student discussion that resulted in some real growth in their writing skills.

A Group Essay How-To

1. On the day before the group essay, each student first writes an essay on their own. I’ve moved more and more over the years toward having the students write their first draft of most of the writing we do in class. This eliminates many of the distractions that can intrude on student writing and ensures that I’m there to support them. If students need additional time to finish their paper after class, I’ll usually accommodate them.

2. I read the essays myself , writing some quick feedback on a separate sheet of paper—usually just a rubric score, one thing the student did well, and one thing they could do to improve their essay. I use the individual scores and feedback for conferencing with students later that week, when we’ll discuss their reflections on their writing and ways to improve. I also assess the essays as a group for areas that seem to call for more instruction for the whole class.

3. I teach a mini-lesson on one or two of those areas of need I’ve identified for the class as a whole (e.g., thesis statements, finding and integrating evidence, transitions, etc.).

4. And then, the group essay. After handing back the individual essays—with no marks on them—and organizing students into groups of four or five, I give them instructions for group work.

First, students take turns sharing their thesis statements with the group. They discuss the relative merits of each and come to consensus on a group thesis statement. They write this in large letters on one regular sheet of paper that I’ve given them.

Next, students decide on supporting points for the thesis. They need to have a number of supporting points equal to the number of the people in the group because each student is responsible for individually writing a body paragraph for one of the supporting points, using evidence and commentary to connect their supporting point back to the thesis. They each write their own body paragraph on another sheet of paper.

Once students have finished writing their supporting body paragraphs, they come back together as a group and puzzle the essay together, adding transitions to connect the body paragraphs and writing a concluding paragraph on a final sheet of paper.

Although this composing step worked well on paper, I’m looking forward to having the students try it out on shared Google docs, as that would make the editing process easier—particularly when the students come together to combine their paragraphs into a cohesive whole.

5. Finally, the groups get up in front of the class and read their essay aloud. After each group reads, we take a few minutes to discuss the strengths of the essay and ask any questions we might have about it.

Why Group Essays Work

The success of this activity stems from the shared responsibility of writing the essay. As I walked around the room while the groups were working, the focus and richness of the discussions showed me just how much impact this activity would have when it came to developing students’ understanding of the elements of an effective essay. Almost every single student was engaged, and those who became distracted were quickly brought back to focus by a group that was relying on their contribution.

Having the students read their essay aloud in front of the class provided some valuable results. The entire class benefited not only from hearing what students had done with the thesis and support but also from the feedback given by me and their classmates. And I was provided with a great formative assessment opportunity and took notes for further mini-lessons my classes might need. In the very next essay we wrote in class, I noticed significant growth in the skills students had worked on in their groups.

One more not-so-small detail: Students loved the group essays. The complaints I sometimes hear about group work—that one person ended up doing all the work, that one or more people weren’t contributing, that it was hard to figure out who was supposed to do what—were rare. All students were essential, the roles and tasks were clearly defined, and the time constraint of needing to get all the writing and discussion done in one class period added an urgency to the task, so that very little time was wasted. (It is possible to break the group activity into two class periods if necessary.)

Students agreed that this was an activity that actually helped them understand how to improve their writing, and they asked if they could do it again for their next essay.

I’m looking forward to trying some variations on the group essay—perhaps having students write the essay together before trying on their own, or having them create mini-lessons for the writing needs they see in the classroom.

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MLA Writing Guide: Formatting for Group Papers

• Formatting for Individual Papers
• Formatting for Group Papers
• In-text Citations
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Writing Center

The Liberty University Writing Center is available to provide writing coaching to students. Residential students should contact the  On-Campus Writing Center  for assistance. Online students should contact the  Online Writing Center  for assistance.

General Rules

Group papers follow exactly the same formatting rules as student papers except for in one area, the title page. Group papers should include a title page that lists all members of the group alphabetically by last name followed by the professor's name, the class name and number, and then the date. The title is centered and two lines down the page.

There is no page number on the title page. Page numbers should start with the second page. In the example below, the last name of each group member should be listed, separated by commas, before the page number.

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Best Practices for Group Writing

• Author By fgacho
• Publication date March 17, 2020
• Categories: Writing Tips

Writing with a group can be challenging. How do you create a document or project that takes into account everyone’s ideas, reconciles what could be different “writerly voices,” and evenly distributes the work of researching, drafting, and editing? Though there are no easy fixes or formulas for group or collaborative writing, a few guidelines can help ensure your collective writing and research experience goes smoothly.

• Decide on the big ideas as a group. Everyone should be clear about the main ideas and purpose of the project. Each member should have a clear sense of how the different parts of the paper/project work together to form a complete thought or argument.
• Don’t divide the work too soon.  It can be tempting to delegate parts of a project immediately to each group member, but effective groups first address the big ideas for the project before breaking it into smaller units. Doing this first can prevent misunderstandings (which might lead to massive rewrites) about the content, structure, and tone of the written project.
• Write together, if possible.  Though it can be challenging to coordinate, writing together as a group allows everyone to 1) get a sense of the tone and “voice” so the writing appears as a coherent document; and 2) address ideas that might contradict or confuse the main point of the project. If it’s not possible to write together, consider working on a collaborative document like Google Docs that allows you to edit in real-time that everyone in the group can access.
• Address big issues when revising and editing before smaller concerns . Big issues include content development, argumentation, logical order of ideas, and evidence. Smaller concerns include transitional phrases, coherence, formatting, grammatical errors, and citation formats.

Doing this remotely and online?

Working with groups remotely and virtually can be challenging, especially if you’re not used to this modality for collaboration.  Writing as a group can even be more challenging as different writers have various styles, approaches, and work habits that can make remote and virtual collaboration challenging. Here are a few strategies for managing virtual and remote collaborative writing projects.

• Use online meeting platforms like Zoom or Google Meet/Hangouts to regularly meet with your team members. Read this list of conferencing options available to USC students.
• Use a shared calendar to keep everyone informed of deadlines, both internal and external, to help everyone keep track. ( Google Calendar  and iCal have options for sharing. USC students have access to Google applications, which ensures everyone has the same accessibility)
• Consider making a task or project list with all the steps necessary to complete the project.  This can help you track your progress and helps everyone stay on the same page. Doing this in the beginning of the project as a group can also help everyone grasp the scope of the project, which might help minimize writing anxiety and procrastination. 
• For example, keep (as much as possible) the same meeting day and time for the group every week that works for every member. Much like attending an in-person class, setting a consistent meeting time ensures that you prioritize the group project as opposed to “finding time” to do it. This also helps the group guarantee a minimum amount of time has been spent working on the project. In short, it helps the group keep a consistent schedule and gain momentum.
• Be flexible. Part of the beauty of remote and virtual work is the relative flexibility it provides to teams. Adjust your group’s work structure and commitments as you see fit. What might have worked at the earlier stages of the project might not work for the final stages, so be open to modifying your group’s process. The writing process is iterative–meaning it doesn’t always go in a linear path–but as long as you have a clear shared goals and approaches, collaborative writing can be manageable and even enjoyable.

More guidelines and tips are found in this PDF: Group Writing .

Writing Manual

Group Effort Analysis & Tips for Writing a Group Paper

Tips for writing a group paper.

Most papers that scientists write result from the collaborative efforts of two or more researchers. There is a clear expectation that all authors listed on primary literature have made significant and equitable contributions to carrying out the research and in writing the paper itself.  In other words, all authors listed should be able to independently answer “big picture” questions ( e.g ., justification for study, conclusions about hypothesis) raised by reviewers about the work presented. We model this collaborative nature of science in Biocore by requiring students to work in teams to carry out lab research projects. We also provide a few opportunities for you to get experience writing a collaborative group paper. Here are our expectations and tips for writing group papers:

• Group papers take longer – Organize your team to begin writing as soon as possible.
• Communicate regularly -make sure everyone has the information they need and understands the scope of the task.
• Each team member must make an equivalent contribution – One person should not shoulder the burden of writing for the team.
• Agree upon a common outline for the paper – The entire team should agree on the conclusions made based on data collected and on the logical argument that will be made to support these conclusions.
• Shoulder to Shoulder OR Divide and Conquer? – Some teams can sit shoulder to shoulder and compose a paper together. Others find it efficient to assign one to two people per section (Intro, Methods etc..) followed by a peer review by each teammate. If you choose the latter, you need to agree as a team on the final structure and content of the paper.
• Make it flow- Once sections of paper have been combined and edited, the draft needs to be reviewed and revised so that it flows logically. Before submitting to your TA each person should have a final review for approval.

You will evaluate your group experience using the following Biocore Group Effort Analysis rubric.

Group Effort Analysis (GEA) Rubric

Peer review.

Another way you will be working in groups or pairs is through peer review, which is an opportunity for you to give and receive peer feedback on your papers before you turn them in to be graded by your TA.  Writing is a form of communication and a peer can tell you whether or not your paper makes sense.  It is to your advantage to take seriously your responsibility to review a peer’s paper .  We find that the review process benefits the reviewer as well as the author because it gives you practice evaluating a paper applying the same criteria your TA will use to evaluate your paper.

Note that you do not need to wait for us to assign a formal review to take advantage of the peer review process.  You can always get together with another student and act as reviewers for each other’s papers even when it is not required as part of an assignment!

Peer review is a skill that takes practice. Use the following criteria when you are learning how to peer review. I n order to help you become a more skilled peer reviewer, we will ask you to hand in your peer review comments to be evaluated by your TA. Your TA will use these same criteria to evaluate your peer review.

Peer Review Rubric

Download Biocore rubrics in PDF format

Process of Science Companion Vol. 1 Copyright © 2017 by University of Wisconsin-Madison Biocore Program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

How to write a Reflection on Group Work Essay

Here are the exact steps you need to follow for a reflection on group work essay.

• Explain what Reflection Is
• Explore the benefits of group work
• Explore the challenges group
• Give examples of the benefits and challenges your group faced
• Discuss how your group handled your challenges
• Discuss what you will do differently next time

Do you have to reflect on how your group work project went?

This is a super common essay that teachers assign. So, let’s have a look at how you can go about writing a superb reflection on your group work project that should get great grades.

The essay structure I outline below takes the funnel approach to essay writing: it starts broad and general, then zooms in on your specific group’s situation.

Disclaimer: Make sure you check with your teacher to see if this is a good style to use for your essay. Take a draft to your teacher to get their feedback on whether it’s what they’re looking for!

This is a 6-step essay (the 7 th step is editing!). Here’s a general rule for how much depth to go into depending on your word count:

• 1500 word essay – one paragraph for each step, plus a paragraph each for the introduction and conclusion ;
• 3000 word essay – two paragraphs for each step, plus a paragraph each for the introduction and conclusion;
• 300 – 500 word essay – one or two sentences for each step.

Adjust this essay plan depending on your teacher’s requirements and remember to always ask your teacher, a classmate or a professional tutor to review the piece before submitting.

Here’s the steps I’ll outline for you in this advice article:

Step 1. Explain what ‘Reflection’ Is

You might have heard that you need to define your terms in essays. Well, the most important term in this essay is ‘reflection’.

So, let’s have a look at what reflection is…

Reflection is the process of:

• Pausing and looking back at what has just happened; then
• Thinking about how you can get better next time.

Reflection is encouraged in most professions because it’s believed that reflection helps you to become better at your job – we could say ‘reflection makes you a better practitioner’.

Think about it: let’s say you did a speech in front of a crowd. Then, you looked at video footage of that speech and realised you said ‘um’ and ‘ah’ too many times. Next time, you’re going to focus on not saying ‘um’ so that you’ll do a better job next time, right?

Well, that’s reflection: thinking about what happened and how you can do better next time.

It’s really important that you do both of the above two points in your essay. You can’t just say what happened. You need to say how you will do better next time in order to get a top grade on this group work reflection essay.

Scholarly Sources to Cite for Step 1

Okay, so you have a good general idea of what reflection is. Now, what scholarly sources should you use when explaining reflection? Below, I’m going to give you two basic sources that would usually be enough for an undergraduate essay. I’ll also suggest two more sources for further reading if you really want to shine!

I recommend these two sources to cite when explaining what reflective practice is and how it occurs. They are two of the central sources on reflective practice:

• Describe what happened during the group work process
• Explain how you felt during the group work process
• Look at the good and bad aspects of the group work process
• What were some of the things that got in the way of success? What were some things that helped you succeed?
• What could you have done differently to improve the situation?
• Action plan. What are you going to do next time to make the group work process better?
• What? Explain what happened
• So What? Explain what you learned
• Now What? What can I do next time to make the group work process better?

Possible Sources:

Bassot, B. (2015).  The reflective practice guide: An interdisciplinary approach to critical reflection . Routledge.

Brock, A. (2014). What is reflection and reflective practice?. In  The Early Years Reflective Practice Handbook  (pp. 25-39). Routledge.

Gibbs, G. (1988)  Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods . Further Education Unit, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford.

Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D., Jasper, M. (2001). Critical reflection in nursing and the helping professions: a user’s guide. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Extension Sources for Top Students

Now, if you want to go deeper and really show off your knowledge, have a look at these two scholars:

• John Dewey – the first major scholar to come up with the idea of reflective practice
• Donald Schön – technical rationality, reflection in action vs. reflection on action

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Step 2. Explore the general benefits of group work for learning

Once you have given an explanation of what group work is (and hopefully cited Gibbs, Rolfe, Dewey or Schon), I recommend digging into the benefits of group work for your own learning.

The teacher gave you a group work task for a reason: what is that reason?

You’ll need to explain the reasons group work is beneficial for you. This will show your teacher that you understand what group work is supposed to achieve. Here’s some ideas:

• Multiple Perspectives. Group work helps you to see things from other people’s perspectives. If you did the task on your own, you might not have thought of some of the ideas that your team members contributed to the project.
• Contribution of Unique Skills. Each team member might have a different set of skills they can bring to the table. You can explain how groups can make the most of different team members’ strengths to make the final contribution as good as it can be. For example, one team member might be good at IT and might be able to put together a strong final presentation, while another member might be a pro at researching using google scholar so they got the task of doing the initial scholarly research.
• Improved Communication Skills. Group work projects help you to work on your communication skills. Communication skills required in group work projects include speaking in turn, speaking up when you have ideas, actively listening to other team members’ contributions, and crucially making compromises for the good of the team.
• Learn to Manage Workplace Conflict. Lastly, your teachers often assign you group work tasks so you can learn to manage conflict and disagreement. You’ll come across this a whole lot in the workplace, so your teachers want you to have some experience being professional while handling disagreements.

You might be able to add more ideas to this list, or you might just want to select one or two from that list to write about depending on the length requirements for the essay.

Scholarly Sources for Step 3

Make sure you provide citations for these points above. You might want to use google scholar or google books and type in ‘Benefits of group work’ to find some quality scholarly sources to cite.

Step 3. Explore the general challenges group work can cause

Step 3 is the mirror image of Step 2. For this step, explore the challenges posed by group work.

Students are usually pretty good at this step because you can usually think of some aspects of group work that made you anxious or frustrated. Here are a few common challenges that group work causes:

• Time Consuming. You need to organize meetups and often can’t move onto the next component of the project until everyone has agree to move on. When working on your own you can just crack on and get it done. So, team work often takes a lot of time and requires significant pre-planning so you don’t miss your submission deadlines!
• Learning Style Conflicts. Different people learn in different ways. Some of us like to get everything done at the last minute or are not very meticulous in our writing. Others of us are very organized and detailed and get anxious when things don’t go exactly how we expect. This leads to conflict and frustration in a group work setting.
• Free Loaders. Usually in a group work project there’s people who do more work than others. The issue of free loaders is always going to be a challenge in group work, and you can discuss in this section how ensuring individual accountability to the group is a common group work issue.
• Communication Breakdown. This is one especially for online students. It’s often the case that you email team members your ideas or to ask them to reply by a deadline and you don’t hear back from them. Regular communication is an important part of group work, yet sometimes your team members will let you down on this part.

As with Step 3, consider adding more points to this list if you need to, or selecting one or two if your essay is only a short one.

8 Pros And Cons Of Group Work At University

You’ll probably find you can cite the same scholarly sources for both steps 2 and 3 because if a source discusses the benefits of group work it’ll probably also discuss the challenges.

Step 4. Explore the specific benefits and challenges your group faced

Step 4 is where you zoom in on your group’s specific challenges. Have a think: what were the issues you really struggled with as a group?

• Was one team member absent for a few of the group meetings?
• Did the group have to change some deadlines due to lack of time?
• Were there any specific disagreements you had to work through?
• Did a group member drop out of the group part way through?
• Were there any communication break downs?

Feel free to also mention some things your group did really well. Have a think about these examples:

• Was one member of the group really good at organizing you all?
• Did you make some good professional relationships?
• Did a group member help you to see something from an entirely new perspective?
• Did working in a group help you to feel like you weren’t lost and alone in the process of completing the group work component of your course?

Here, because you’re talking about your own perspectives, it’s usually okay to use first person language (but check with your teacher). You are also talking about your own point of view so citations might not be quite as necessary, but it’s still a good idea to add in one or two citations – perhaps to the sources you cited in Steps 2 and 3?

Step 5. Discuss how your group managed your challenges

Step 5 is where you can explore how you worked to overcome some of the challenges you mentioned in Step 4.

So, have a think:

• Did your group make any changes part way through the project to address some challenges you faced?
• Did you set roles or delegate tasks to help ensure the group work process went smoothly?
• Did you contact your teacher at any point for advice on how to progress in the group work scenario?
• Did you use technology such as Google Docs or Facebook Messenger to help you to collaborate more effectively as a team?

In this step, you should be showing how your team was proactive in reflecting on your group work progress and making changes throughout the process to ensure it ran as smoothly as possible. This act of making little changes throughout the group work process is what’s called ‘Reflection in Action’ (Schön, 2017).

Scholarly Source for Step 5

Schön, D. A. (2017).  The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action . Routledge.

Step 6. Conclude by exploring what you will do differently next time

Step 6 is the most important step, and the one far too many students skip. For Step 6, you need to show how you not only reflected on what happened but also are able to use that reflection for personal growth into the future.

This is the heart and soul of your piece: here, you’re tying everything together and showing why reflection is so important!

This is the ‘action plan’ step in Gibbs’ cycle (you might want to cite Gibbs in this section!).

For Step 6, make some suggestions about how (based on your reflection) you now have some takeaway tips that you’ll bring forward to improve your group work skills next time. Here’s some ideas:

• Will you work harder next time to set deadlines in advance?
• Will you ensure you set clearer group roles next time to ensure the process runs more smoothly?
• Will you use a different type of technology (such as Google Docs) to ensure group communication goes more smoothly?
• Will you make sure you ask for help from your teacher earlier on in the process when you face challenges?
• Will you try harder to see things from everyone’s perspectives so there’s less conflict?

This step will be personalized based upon your own group work challenges and how you felt about the group work process. Even if you think your group worked really well together, I recommend you still come up with one or two ideas for continual improvement. Your teacher will want to see that you used reflection to strive for continual self-improvement.

Scholarly Source for Step 6

Step 7. edit.

Okay, you’ve got the nuts and bolts of the assessment put together now! Next, all you’ve got to do is write up the introduction and conclusion then edit the piece to make sure you keep growing your grades.

Here’s a few important suggestions for this last point:

• You should always write your introduction and conclusion last. They will be easier to write now that you’ve completed the main ‘body’ of the essay;
• Use my 5-step I.N.T.R.O method to write your introduction;
• Use my 5 C’s Conclusion method to write your conclusion;
• Use my 5 tips for editing an essay to edit it;
• Use the ProWritingAid app to get advice on how to improve your grammar and spelling. Make sure to also use the report on sentence length. It finds sentences that are too long and gives you advice on how to shorten them – such a good strategy for improving evaluative essay  quality!
• Make sure you contact your teacher and ask for a one-to-one tutorial to go through the piece before submitting. This article only gives general advice, and you might need to make changes based upon the specific essay requirements that your teacher has provided.

That’s it! 7 steps to writing a quality group work reflection essay. I hope you found it useful. If you liked this post and want more clear and specific advice on writing great essays, I recommend signing up to my personal tutor mailing list.

Let’s sum up with those 7 steps one last time:

• Explain what ‘Reflection’ Is
• Explore the benefits of group work for learning
• Explore the challenges of group work for learning
• Explore the specific benefits and challenges your group faced
• Discuss how your group managed your challenges
• Conclude by exploring what you will do differently next time

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 15 Animism Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 10 Magical Thinking Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ Social-Emotional Learning (Definition, Examples, Pros & Cons)
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ What is Educational Psychology?

2 thoughts on “How to write a Reflection on Group Work Essay”

Great instructions on writing a reflection essay. I would not change anything.

Thanks so much for your feedback! I really appreciate it. – Chris.

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My Experience Working in a Group: a Reflection

Table of contents, challenges of group work, benefits and learning opportunities, lessons learned.

• Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (2009). An educational psychology success story: Social interdependence theory and cooperative learning. Educational researcher, 38(5), 365-379.
• Belbin, R. M. (2012). Team roles at work. Taylor & Francis.
• Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), 384-399.
• Forsyth, D. R. (2014). Group dynamics (6th ed.). Cengage Learning.
• Katzenbach, J. R., & Smith, D. K. (2015). The wisdom of teams: Creating the high-performance organization. Harvard Business Review Press.

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How Can I Be Free When My Child Is Incarcerated?

I t began during the COVID-19 pandemic. LA was shut down, and I got a phone call from my mother telling me that my son, Damiani, had done something he shouldn't have. It was Mother’s Day, and my son called me from a burner phone saying he was going to be on the run for a while. Towards the end of 2020, he got caught for a home invasion. Everything was virtual, so I couldn’t go into the courtroom, and he eventually got transferred to a maximum prison, sentenced to 9 years and 9 months.,

That's where my journey began. 

I believe in God, I go to church. But as I tried searching for communities that could speak to my specific experience as a mother with an incarcerated child, I couldn’t find anything. I went on YouTube and saw a few shortclips. I typed “moms with incarcerated kids” in my podcast app only to find episodes generally about prisons. Nothing was about the walk of a mother. 

I am the kind of person who has a glass of wine with Jesus on the balcony. Next thing I know, I'm hearing, ‘Why don't you start the podcast?’ So, a couple of months later, I did

So I ordered a mic, created a little studio in my apartment, and set up shop. A few months later, I launched my podcast and started just talking about the day in the life of a mother like me—how my family doesn’t understand, how people judge you as mothers, like “Oh, you failed as a mother, you should do better.” I had a lot of anger issues that I took out on my family and friends because I was so mad at my son for what he was doing. I thought it was my fault, and I learned that it wasn't. I shared that it was hard. That never in a million years did I think I was going to be here. I shared that I thought my son was going to get a scholarship to go to college for football, but things shifted. I shared that I still have to get up and go to work, and, with a team of 10 employees, leave my problems at the door. I cry in the car, put my makeup back on, and walk in like nothing's wrong. I try my best to keep it all together. 

After I started the podcast, I went to Facebook to see if there were any groups for mothers with incarcerated kids. There were a couple out there, and I joined, but the one thing I didn't like about the other groups is they lacked a positive, good flow of energy. Some of these mothers had children that were doing 20 years to life. One mother told a story about how her son died in prison. I started to get anxious, so I thought, let me create my own Facebook community and set the tone differently than everybody else’s. I created it in July of 2022. I called it “The Impact of Incarceration on Mothers, ”

Read More: The Destructive Lie Behind “Mass Incarceration”

In this group, you can cry, laugh, vent, and, most of all, there’s a sentiment that we're going to get through this. We’re stronger together. We’re at 1,600 women, with 300 new members as of April. And we’re not just in California, we’re all over the U.S. I'm very transparent about my journey, and I have mothers messaging me saying “I’m so happy I found you because nobody understands how I feel.” Trust is why the group is what it is—and why it keeps growing every day. (On a recent morning, for instance, I got another 20 notifications of women joining). This is a safe place for mothers, and we're not pointing fingers.

Mothers share their stories in posts and comments, and sometimes over Zoom calls. We have a mother that has three children in prison, 22 to 30, and she travels to three different states to see them. She lives in Atlanta, and she makes the trip with her husband to California where one of her sons is incarcerated in Long Beach. There's a mother who has to figure out how she’s going to come up with $20,000 for a lawyer, who asks about churches and nonprofit organizations who could help her. There's another woman with a disability who needs to find someone to give her a ride to visit her son. Oftentimes we ask questions: Do I use my money for my child inside or do I cover the cost of school backpacks for my two at home? My son is about to come up on his sentence; what does the parole situation look like? Can you guys help me find a lawyer? And all the mothers jump in. 

I shared my own story, too. I put in the group that it was my son’s first time in solitary confinement, and I hadn’t heard from him in two months. One woman told me I could call up the prison and ask for a wellness check, where a counselor would speak to my son and report back. I didn’t know that, but the community that I’m building did, so I was able to hear the basics about how my son was doing. One mother shared that there was a lockdown at her son’s prison in Texas, and so many moms started responding saying ‘wait a minute my son is there too!’ Then another mom shared why there was a lockdown, because she was super in tune with what was going on. So we’re able to share news with each other in real time.

Read More: Confronting Youth Incarceration

When I started the group, the more I kept reading the comments like, “I don't want to get out of bed today,” or “the doctor told me to start walking but I can’t,” I began to think of how I could shift this atmosphere while supporting these moms. So, I proposed a 21 day workout challenge and my notifications started going off with moms saying, “Yes, let's do something.” Next thing I knew women were posting selfies on hikes and moving their bodies. We’re a funny group. We do videos, we cry together, we post pictures of our dogs for National Dog Day, we’ll ask each other about recent dates, or who just got their hair done. We don’t always have to talk about our children being incarcerated.

I'm embracing this time because I feel like it's growing me as a mother. I was young when I had my son, and didn't know what I was doing. I would still do the basic things like pick my son up from school, but I would drop him off at his grandmother's house and go to parties. We were raising each other. I would share things about my life and he’d give me advice. Sometimes I didn't know if I was his mom or his sister. 

Damiani is unique. He’s always been different in a crowd, even his teachers would tell me that. He has a smile on him that just lights up the room, and he’s like a spitting image of me. He can gather people together, especially when there's dysfunction going on, and he has a great sense of humor. So in the midst of all of this, my son and I have a dynamic relationship. I told him about the Facebook group and he said he was so proud of me. He laughed and said, "It took me going to prison for you to find your purpose.”

My son’s middle name is Nassir. Since he’s been locked up, every time he calls or I write to him I call him King Nassir, because I can't imagine what it's like being locked up for 23 hours, what it’s like being in that prison. I always tell the mothers when you speak to your child, you have to speak life into them. I just told my son in a letter the other day that I'm proud of him. I know that sounds crazy to say that you're proud of your child being in prison. It's not the prison part. I'm proud of the fact that his mentality is changing. 

He’s always had no hair. Now, he has these long dreads. When he gets out, I just want to feel this hair of his. Like, what’s up with these dreads? That’s the first thing I want to do—put my hands through it. He's in Chicago, and the goal is to get him parole in the state of California. So we have to see what that looks like. He’s up for parole in 2025, and one of the moms in the group let me know I need to get in touch with the parole officer four months ahead of time to get him transferred to California. When he comes home, I want to employ him, because they say 50% of people in prison end up going back. So, he’ll join me as co-host on our podcast and we want to do a YouTube channel together. We want to share how he was raised with me, what type of mother I was, and how he got here. We want to be transparent with our story. We’re thinking of having a therapist on the show for both of us, because he’s not the same person and I’m not the same person. And I want to show this to other mothers and children.

I didn’t hear my son’s voice for eight months while he was in solitary, but not once did I drop the mic on my podcast or stop talking to mothers. The mothers in the group are powerful, each with their own set of experiences and emotions. When it comes to society pointing fingers, the first thing they say is, “Oh, they probably grew up in poverty, or there probably wasn't a father in the household.” That’s not the case. Some of these mothers are in two parent households. We have a mother who is a politician, with a daughter who is a prom queen, a son who is an athlete, and another son is in prison. It doesn’t look one way. And you don't have to hide behind it. One lady in the group told her neighbors her son was in the military because she was so embarrassed. But I’m not ashamed. 

We're in this boat together. No matter how rough the waters are, we’re still gonna get to the other side of victory. We're learning from each other, and we're literally leaning on each other.  We can't do this alone. We're mothers. 

The other day, I learned Damiani was finally out of the hole. He sent me a message from his tablet saying the warden let him out early. (He was supposed to be out May 20). I wasn’t going to pay for a flight to Chicago to see my son behind glass, because that felt like too much. But now that he’s out? I’m booking my flight. —As told to Abigail Glasgow

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How to Present to an Audience That Knows More Than You

• Deborah Grayson Riegel

Lean into being a facilitator — not an expert.

What happens when you have to give a presentation to an audience that might have some professionals who have more expertise on the topic than you do? While it can be intimidating, it can also be an opportunity to leverage their deep and diverse expertise in service of the group’s learning. And it’s an opportunity to exercise some intellectual humility, which includes having respect for other viewpoints, not being intellectually overconfident, separating your ego from your intellect, and being willing to revise your own viewpoint — especially in the face of new information. This article offers several tips for how you might approach a roomful of experts, including how to invite them into the discussion without allowing them to completely take over, as well as how to pivot on the proposed topic when necessary.

I was five years into my executive coaching practice when I was invited to lead a workshop on “Coaching Skills for Human Resource Leaders” at a global conference. As the room filled up with participants, I identified a few colleagues who had already been coaching professionally for more than a decade. I felt self-doubt start to kick in: Why were they even here? What did they come to learn? Why do they want to hear from me?

• Deborah Grayson Riegel is a professional speaker and facilitator, as well as a communication and presentation skills coach. She teaches leadership communication at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and has taught for Wharton Business School, Columbia Business School’s Women in Leadership Program, and Peking University’s International MBA Program. She is the author of Overcoming Overthinking: 36 Ways to Tame Anxiety for Work, School, and Life and the best-selling Go To Help: 31 Strategies to Offer, Ask for, and Accept Help .

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After 20 years, I met my childhood hero: The local news anchor who looked like me

This story was first published on May 28, 2021.

If you ask kids who their childhood heroes are, they’ll probably mention characters and celebrities they see on-screen. If you’re my age (turning 30 this summer,  despite not fully being ready for it ), you might remember looking up to the Power Rangers or Britney Spears.

I, however, looked up to Ellee Pai Hong.

That’s not an obscure actor’s name or an early ‘90s pop star that slipped your mind; Ellee Pai Hong was the morning news anchor on NBC Chicago in the early-mid 2000s.

My mother has faithfully watched the TODAY Show and the morning local news every day in our suburban Chicago home since before I was born. She still does, actually, and wants Al Roker to know that he should go easy on Craig Melvin.

It’s a matter of luck or fate that I now work for TODAY, the show I have genuinely watched since birth, and Ellee Pai Hong was the person I saw each morning before catching the bus. There were a few days I didn’t tune in — I was tired, running late, finishing some sort of homework — but most days, I watched attentively as a well-dressed Asian American woman delivered the news in my hometown.

As anyone who is a devout watcher of morning news will tell you, it’s easy to grow attached to the anchors who you welcome into your home each day. For me, it wasn’t just that Ellee Pai Hong was cool and funny — though she obviously was — it was that she was one of the few faces that looked like mine on TV at the time.

I soon discovered that my life skills involved, almost exclusively, talking to others and writing, so I decided to pursue a career in journalism. And I can safely say that I believed I could follow my dreams, at least in part, because I had watched Ellee Pai Hong do it for all those years.

When I stepped foot on campus at the University of Missouri, which is home to one of the nation’s best journalism programs, I had a bit of culture shock. People there were constantly asking me “What are you?” and the only other Asian faces I recognized were exchange students coming to study from the other side of the globe. I wasn’t sure where I fit in.

Later, as a reporter/anchor on the local NBC station in Columbia, Missouri, I took phone calls, emails, tweets and comments from local viewers who complained about my appearance on air. And at least some of the responses were  tied to my ethnic identity .

But through it all, I tried to channel the journalists who came before me, especially Ellee Pai Hong.

I decided to track her down for this piece to let her know just how much her presence and success meant to me. She was kind enough to chat with one of her biggest fans and shared that she still works in TV, serving as a host for  Comcast Newsmakers .

It turns out that while growing up in Los Angeles, she looked up to another Asian American newscaster. Hong told me she used to trick her two sisters into watching the afternoon news so she could catch KCBS anchor Tritia Toyota.

“We only had one TV … and they never wanted to watch news,” she said with a laugh. “I’d say, ‘Well, don’t you want to watch the weather so you can figure out what you’re wearing to school tomorrow?’”

Toyota actually co-founded the Asian American Journalists Association in 1981. (Disclaimer: I’m a member of AAJA, which is now a nationwide organization with more than 1,500 members across the country).

“That’s who I used to watch, and I’d be like, ‘Oh, that looks interesting,’” Hong said. “And to see someone doing something like that (who) looks like me made it possible in my head. I totally believe you need to see people in different like diverse people in different areas because it connects you with that job or career.”

She added that she didn’t realize until later that she wanted to go into television broadcasting herself.

“Honestly, I wanted to be a Broadway star,” she said with a chuckle. “I’ve always been a little bit of a ham. But I realized I’m not that great of a singer.”

Like anyone meeting their career role model, I also had to ask for Hong’s professional advice.

Her first tip was to approach stories from all angles. She explained that her first boss (a “hardass”) in a small local news market had made her approach a family grieving after their two children died in a fire. Hong said she didn’t want to do the story but felt pressure from her boss, so asked the mother to tell her about her children’s lives before their untimely deaths.

“I took the position of, you know, let’s talk about your children, how great they were. Tell me about all the great stuff they did and what kind of kids they were and how much you love them” she said. “Just like with everything, it’s about how you approach things. Don’t get stuck in thinking you need to approach things one way — you can come at it from all different angles.”

Another piece of advice: “You’ve got to manage up, as well as manage down,” referring to how important it is to maintain workplace relationships with both subordinates and those you report to.

“Obviously … being good is just the baseline, you have to be good at what you do,” she said.“But you have to manage those relationships within your workspace … it’s always people problems, relationship problems that gets in the way of being more productive and more creative.”

As of late, there have been a slew of problems facing the  Asian American community . As I spoke with Hong in late April, there were ongoing attacks against people of Asian descent happening across the country.

Hong told me a story about how her daughter had faced racism at school and how she’d coached her to stick up for herself. She thinks the entire community should come together to stand up for themselves as well and hopes for lasting change.

“I feel like Asian Americans, we need a person or a group or several people to say something and be loud about it,” she said. “Culturally speaking, we as Asian Americans, we grow up to be considerate of others. It’s not ‘me first,’ it’s consideration of others, work hard and do what you’re supposed to do.

“But, you know, silence never inspired change, right, so to be silent about what happens to you, about the derogatory comments that are aimed at you, about the hate crimes — more seriously — that happened to you, it doesn’t do anything,” she continued. “It doesn’t prompt change so I feel like as a community, we cannot be silenced. And we cannot be silent.”

Sam Kubota is a senior digital editor and journalist for TODAY Digital based in Los Angeles. She joined NBC News in 2019.

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This group is fixing up broken homes for free. Do you qualify? | Calavia-Robertson

• Updated: May. 19, 2024, 10:00 a.m. |
• Published: May. 19, 2024, 10:00 a.m.

Anthony Barcia, a retired Toms River resident, on Monday, May 13, 2024, shows his mobile home's new roof. It was installed for free last month by Project Home Repair workers. Jim Lowney | For NJ Advance Media

• Daysi Calavia-Robertson | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

For years, rainy, windy days were the enemy of the frail, aging roof on Anthony Barcia’s mobile home. The 67-year-old Toms River resident tells me the bad weather would always send its shingles “flying right off.” “It was old, very old, probably about 20 years old,” he says of the roof, “I knew it had to be repaired or replaced, but I’m a retired, low-income person and there’s no way I could ever afford that.”

Enter: Project Home Repair , a new program, founded by a coalition of four Ocean County nonprofits, that’s helping area residents who are “aging, disabled, and vulnerable” with free, critical home repairs.

Last month, a couple of workers enlisted by Homes for All — one of the groups in the Project Home Repair coalition — showed up at Anthony’s home and got right to work on replacing his roof. (It’s a job that Glen McDonald, director of Homes for All, says can typically cost upwards of $10,000.)

“In just a matter of hours, I had a whole new roof,” Anthony says. “Now, I don’t have to worry about it breaking down, or about leaks or rain or wind or flying shingles or anything, and I thank God for that and I thank this group.”

In another Toms River neighborhood, Linda Tirone, a retired waitress who’s 72, is also filled with gratitude over the recent repairs to her home done by workers of Project Home Repair.

She tells me she lives alone and doesn’t have any family members close by she can call on for help with “all the little and big things” around the house that break or are in disrepair. “I used to call my son but he passed away eight years ago and without him, it’s hard,” she says sadly. “I don’t have anyone to turn to.”

The wood on her home’s small front porch had started to rot and she says because of it, there was an area where a large hole had formed. “I was afraid to fall in so I put a board over it,” she says, “but I knew it wasn’t too safe because it wasn’t flat or leveled.”

In her bathroom, the floor, which was damaged by a leak from a nearby water heater, was rotting, too.

“These are all things I knew I had to fix but I can’t afford to call workers for stuff like that,” Linda says. Instead, she went to a community meeting about local groups that help low-income seniors, learned about the program, and applied for the help.

Now, months later, she has a new, hole-free — and most importantly, safe — porch and fresh tile in her bathroom. “What these people are doing for people like me, it’s truly wonderful,” she tells me happily.

And it fills me with joy to hear it, knowing that Linda and others, who like her, may have felt they didn’t have anyone to turn to for help with repairs that can improve their quality of life, now know that’s not true.

“If you can donate money to them you should, it’ll really go a long way,” she says matter-of-factly. And she tells me that despite not having much money herself, she decided to dip into her wallet for “a few dollars” so she could help the group help someone else.

Project Home Repair, in its short time in operation, has already helped a handful of other area residents through a variety of projects, including new roofs, the installation of ramps for greater wheelchair access, and the remodeling of bathrooms with added safety features for seniors.

And it’s all largely been possible, thanks to Dave C. Wintrode, the president of the Causeway Family of Dealerships and its charitable arm Causeway CARes . He’s the person, who came up with the idea for the program, and who committed $500,000 — $100,000 over the next five years — towards kicking it off.

“He was the catalyst for all this,” Glen, of Homes for All, tells me of Dave. “He has a big heart and had this idea of us all working together to help as many people as we can and he put his money where his mouth is to make it happen.” Now, that it has, I’m hoping others with equally big hearts — and wallets of all sizes! — can keep the repairs coming by supporting this group in its mission to help others.

Interested in help with repairs and live in Ocean County? Reach out to any of the four groups in the Project Home Repair coalition: Homes for All, Habitat for Humanity of Southern Ocean County , Northern Ocean Habitat for Humanity , and Starve Poverty. Or apply online here .

Stories by Daysi Calavia-Robertson

• Beloved ex-football star’s murder is city’s 1st in 2 years, leaving residents shaken | Calavia-Robertson
• At this LGBTQ+ co-working space, you can leave ‘corporate culture’ at the door | Calavia-Robertson
• N.J. empanada restaurant squeezed out by gentrification. ‘We were basically kicked out.’ | Calavia-Robertson

Daysi Calavia-Robertson may be reached at [email protected] . Follow her on Instagram at @presspassdaysi or Twitter @presspassdaysi . Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com . Here’s how to submit an op-ed or Letter to the Editor . Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion . Follow us on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and on Facebook at NJ.com Opinion . Get the latest news updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.com’s newsletters

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Fatphobia Hurts Thin People Too

You can look healthy and still be at risk for metabolic diseases..

In 2020 more than 40 percent of Americans reported experiencing weight stigma , not only from friends and family members but also from their nurses and doctors . Whether the issue is scoliosis or cancer , patients often find that their health care professionals can’t see beyond their obesity, and their concerns are drowned out by tired demands of weight loss. The doctor’s office, in turn, becomes yet another untrustworthy place to seek help.

Fatphobia is undoubtedly pernicious, and we believe that its perils are broader than generally recognized. Just as many presume that people with obesity are unhealthy, the same bias reinforces that people of normal weight must be healthy, contributing to the neglect of hypertension, diabetes, and other metabolic diseases in which the body’s ability to process energy and nutrients malfunctions. These diseases, due to fatphobia, are too often assumed to affect only people with visible fat, so today’s Health at Every Size movement tries to address this issue by suggesting that all body types can be healthy. But the inverse is also true: All body types can be unhealthy. Thin people can harbor fat that threatens their well-being. And for those people, weight loss isn’t the answer.

Body mass index, a metric that tries to assess body fat using height and weight, is well known for its inaccuracies and biased methodology. For instance, Hispanic and Asian people with seemingly normal BMIs are more likely to have obesity—taking the form of fat deeper in their bodies—than white people are. South Asians in particular are prone to high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes regardless of weight, and on average, heart disease strikes them a decade earlier, with 40 percent increased mortality. One factor driving these health disparities might be diagnostic overshadowing, in which one visible condition obscures other clinically relevant signals. In other words, doctors might overlook that their thin patients can still get sick with metabolic diseases.

Having a normal BMI with high body fat levels is called “ normal weight obesity .” It affects 30 million Americans—nearly 10 percent of the population—although researchers believe that this number may be on the rise. Several studies emphasize this condition’s ability to go unrecognized and untreated, due at least partially to its murky diagnostic criteria.

Experts point to the difference between subcutaneous and visceral fat as a reason BMI underestimates obesity in some groups. Subcutaneous fat is under our skin, the kind we can all see; however, visceral fat covers our internal organs, like the liver, pancreas, and intestines. Although too much of either kind of fat can be problematic, visceral fat—the type we can’t see and a small fraction of total body fat, adding negligible amounts to our weight—especially increases one’s risk of metabolic disease.

Normal weight obesity might be tricky to detect, but there are ways. One indicator, for example, is an abnormal adipokine ratio , which refers to the molecules secreted by visceral fat cells to help regulate metabolism; a simple blood test can check for this. Another emerging lab test is the cardiometabolic index , which assesses a patient’s waist size–to–height ratio, “good cholesterol” levels, and ratio of triglycerides—a type of fat found in the blood. With these different diagnostic signals, doctors can better detect normal weight obesity early.

The problem is that doctors might sign a clean bill of health without knocking around or conducting these tests because patients with normal weight obesity can appear to be physically fit. Preventive measures and lifestyle counseling, in turn, may be neglected even though they promote health and well-being for everyone, whatever their body shape.

We are both of South Asian descent and, looking at our own families, you can find every kind of metabolic disease within a few generations, including one skinny uncle who nearly died of a heart attack at age 44. He can’t remember a time a doctor talked to him about improving his diet and exercise, let alone broached the topic of heart disease—themes that, for fat people, can dominate medical visits to the exclusion of other issues. The double standards regarding obesity benefit nobody.

It’s true that BMI can serve as a loose signal for metabolic disease risk and that excess weight is associated with worse health outcomes . But we have allowed this rule of thumb to shape individual treatment plans. Health care practitioners do their best work when they look at patients as a whole, considering all the numbers, from insulin to blood pressure to cholesterol levels to liver function tests. This deeper understanding is generally reassuring for patients—that their doctors see them as a person rather than just a number on the scale.

Such holistic attention is crucial to identify normal weight obesity. Doctors should assess thin patients’ risk by specifically looking for a family history of metabolic diseases. An additional step could include estimating visceral fat through a bioelectrical impedance weighing scale, which passes a small electrical current through the body to estimate fat quantities; it’s cheaper but admittedly less precise than full-body imaging scans.

Treating normal weight obesity could also be simpler than addressing typical obesity. Although diet and exercise are important for health, they seldom achieve sustained weight loss, with an estimated 80 percent of efforts failing after a year . But for patients with normal weight obesity, that’s actually OK: They don’t need to lose weight. Just fat.

So, rather than Ozempic , Zepbound , and other GLP-1 drugs that cause 15–21 percent weight loss, a Mediterranean diet and intense aerobic exercise might be treatment enough, with research showing that these interventions lower visceral fat with little effect on subcutaneous fat. Doctors just need to more consistently recommend these lifestyle changes for normal weight obesity, instead of so quickly stamping thin patients with a clean bill of health. Down the road, perhaps someone will invent an Ozempic that doesn’t cause patients to shed so many pounds, maintaining the drug’s benefits to metabolic health independent of weight loss .

All of us, not just physicians and pharmaceutical companies, can play a part. Our culture is obsessed with thinness, enamored with the aesthetics of smaller bodies, so changing cultural perceptions inevitably requires broad social advocacy and political will. The standard-bearers of weight-inclusive efforts have long been people with excess weight—and understandably so. But in a world where weight has become a cheap heuristic for health, fatphobia threatens us all.

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Why Do People Make Music?

In a new study, researchers found universal features of songs across many cultures, suggesting that music evolved in our distant ancestors.

A research team that comprised musicologists, psychologists, linguists, evolutionary biologists and professional musicians recorded songs in 55 languages to find that songs share certain features not found in speech. Credit... Album/Alamy

Supported by

By Carl Zimmer

• May 15, 2024

Music baffled Charles Darwin. Mankind’s ability to produce and enjoy melodies, he wrote in 1874, “must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed.”

All human societies made music, and yet, for Darwin, it seemed to offer no advantage to our survival. He speculated that music evolved as a way to win over potential mates. Our “half-human ancestors,” as he called them, “aroused each other’s ardent passions during their courtship and rivalry.”

Other Victorian scientists were skeptical. William James brushed off Darwin’s idea, arguing that music is simply a byproduct of how our minds work — a “mere incidental peculiarity of the nervous system.”

That debate continues to this day. Some researchers are developing new evolutionary explanations for music. Others maintain that music is a cultural invention, like writing, that did not need natural selection to come into existence.

In recent years, scientists have investigated these ideas with big data. They have analyzed the acoustic properties of thousands of songs recorded in dozens of cultures. On Wednesday, a team of 75 researchers published a more personal investigation of music . For the study, all of the researchers sang songs from their own cultures.

The team, which comprised musicologists, psychologists, linguists, evolutionary biologists and professional musicians, recorded songs in 55 languages, including Arabic, Balinese, Basque, Cherokee, Maori, Ukrainian and Yoruba. Across cultures, the researchers found, songs share certain features not found in speech, suggesting that Darwin might have been right: Despite its diversity today, music might have evolved in our distant ancestors.

“It shows us that there may be really something that is universal to all humans that cannot simply be explained by culture,” said Daniela Sammler, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt who was not involved in the study.

Databases of songs collected by ethnomusicologists sometimes lack important details. It can also be hard for researchers to make sense of the structure and lyrics of songs from other cultures. Computers, likewise, are not very good at recognizing many features of music.

“We thought we should involve the insiders,” said Yuto Ozaki, who earned his doctorate at Keio University in Japan by helping to lead the project.

Dr. Ozaki’s colleague, Patrick Savage, took on the job of recruiting the singers. “It was a combination of the network I’d already built up through the first decade of my career along with going to conferences and making small talk and meeting people,” said Dr. Savage, now a musicologist at the University of Auckland.

All of the team members picked traditional songs from their cultures to record.

Asabanabushi Song (Amami Island, Japan)

Petara Song (Brazil)

Éiníní Song (Ireland)

In addition to singing, they recited the lyrics of the songs without a melody so that the team could later compare the music and speech. And for a further point of comparison, the researchers played their songs on a wide range of instruments, including sitars and melodicas.

Petara on Bamboo Flute (Brazil)

In each recording, the researchers measured six features, such as pitch and tempo. Despite their variety, all of the songs shared a number of features that set them apart from speech. The pitch was higher and more stable, for example, and the tempo was slower.

Dr. Sammler cautioned that the singers in the new study were mostly academics, and that the songs they chose might have introduced some bias into the research. “It’s essentially academics singing material that may not be representative,” she said.

But she also noted that another study , not yet published in a scientific journal, came to a similar conclusion. In that study, researchers analyzed songs from 18 languages and pinpointed many of the same features.

It’s possible that songs have distinct features because they have a special role in human communication separate from speech, said Aniruddh Patel, a psychologist at Tufts University who was not involved in the study. What’s more, our brains appear to be sensitive to those features. In 2022, Dr. Patel pointed out, researchers discovered human neurons that only responded to singing — not speech or music played on instruments.

“There is something distinctive about song all around the world as an acoustic signal that perhaps our brains have become attuned to over evolutionary time,” Dr. Patel said.

What sort of evolutionary benefit would come from that signal is still a matter of debate.

“Maybe music was needed to improve group cohesion,” Dr. Ozaki said. Singing in choruses, sharing rhythms and melodies, could have brought people together whether as a community or in preparation for a battle.

But Dr. Sammler didn’t think that the new study ruled out other roles for music, such as helping parents bond with their children . “It could support a lot of theories,” she said.

Audio courtesy of Patrick Savage. Songs by Marin Naruse, Tutushamum Puri Teyxokawa and Tadhg Ó Meachair. Instrumental by Tutushamum Puri Teyxokawa.

Carl Zimmer covers news about science for The Times and writes the Origins column . More about Carl Zimmer

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