Purpose of the Assignment

The purpose of the assignment is two-fold:

• Students will demonstrate their understanding of key group concepts evolving during the exercise, in lectures, and in the readings. Students are encouraged to use the readings and materials from classes 2-4 as resources for this paper.
• Students will apply key concepts of power to demonstrate their understanding of power dynamics active in task groups.

Requirements

Students should reflect on their experience as a group participant in the Flint, Michigan Water Crisis exercise in terms of group concepts discussed in class, course content on power, and as group roles and norms emerged in the exercise itself. Students should give an overview of their personal experience in the exercise and address the following:

• Discuss how their group progressed through the stages of group development using terms, readings, and class discussion. As a reminder, group development stages are usually captured as “forming, storming, norming, preforming, and termination”; however, you may use any of the taxonomies presented in our course readings.
• Identify and discuss the group dynamics (social integration [norms, roles, status]), communication/interaction patterns, cohesion, culture) that contributed to the group’s development, decision-making processes, ability to resolve conflicts, and so on. Be sure to include something about the interaction of these dynamics during the group process.
• Identify and discuss the types of power present in the group using the framework of visible, hidden, and invisible power and/or other power taxonomies from our readings. Identify how these types of power (consciously or unconsciously) affect group process and completion of tasks. Students should be able to link types of power to the impact on group dynamics.
• Discuss how and why your recollection of the group development, process, and products may or may not have been different from the information provided by the group’s note-takers or observer. How might power have influenced perception of the group? How might the different perspectives have responded differently to the process of group development?

Students should use specific examples and observations from their Flint Water Crisis experience to illustrate their points. Be sure to reference (APA 6^th Edition) readings where appropriate. All papers should be 6-8 ages in length, double spaced and formatted according to APA 6^th ed.