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(the loud-shouters, not the smart-thinkers)

A good clue that you are on the express train to Dysfunction Junction is if the emerging group leadership are asking questions based on the concept “do we have to”? As a general rule, in both individual and group assignments, even if you do not “have to”, if you can think of that thing as a possibly relevant thing to do, you almost always should do it, because that could be the thing that makes the difference between a C and a B (if in fact you do have to do it) or between a B and an A (if you don’t have to do it, and you do it, then it gives a good impression of your initiative). It may be true that the majority of the group are not interested in the element being proposed by some of the members. Why not agree that members explore the various angles and elements and bring them back to pool the knowledge? Try to find ways to incorporate multiple perspectives within some kind of a unifying framework. Discouraging group members from adding new layers to the project is a red flag of dysfunction.

(you also fail when you give up on the team)

The complementary factor that leads to dysfunction is that the people with the wiser suggestions give up trying to persuade the others or cannot put their ideas across persuasively. The A+++ student doing a group project on a topic that is years beneath him or her is not going to learn anything new within the content material in the topic, but that does not mean there is nothing to be learned. For those with great ideas who just cannot get the teammates on board, the learning goal is all about teamwork. There is no point having good ideas if you are not persuasive, so if you are the person with the best ideas, it is perhaps time to put “get better ideas” on hold, and start learning “get more persuasion skills” at the top of your learning priority list. Look for strategies to bring the team back from the brink of dysfunction. For example, sometimes the problem is that the majority of the group just cannot visualize the significance of the suggestion. Rather than giving up on the team and just keeping out of the drama, those who know better can take extra personal initiative and develop the proposal a little further so that the other teammates can appreciate what it means to them. Those who know full well that the group contributions are poorly written and formatted can take the initiative to offer to proofread the final edition rather than taking the hit when the inevitable deductions are made. This is an example of taking one for the team, going above and beyond for the good of the team. Even if one does not get any extra marks compared with the others on the team, one gets extra marks by bringing the group mark up.