Group projects/presentations in school

[Xargoth6634]

So this thread http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ailed-me-by-18 got me thinking. I've never been a fan of unnecessary group work myself in a scholastic setting, and I was wondering what your takes on it are. I understand that group projects are fundamental to some majors or forms of study but it's particularly frustrating to me in gen ed courses, particularly since in that setting many students are apathetic about the subject and only care about passing the class. Obviously you can talk to your teacher/prof about it, but not all are sympathetic or willing to change things. I was recently at a teacher round table where we met with a bunch of high school teachers (I'm a history/education major) and all four at my table were very averse to assigning group projects. They had all had poor experiences with it when they were in college, and argued that it tended to lead to a major inequity in the division of work unless you put really tight controls on the assignment. Obviously this is all anecdotal, but I thought it was interesting.

So what do you think? Are group work and group projects a worthwhile teaching tool, and if so when? If you feel like contributing, please share at what level of education the your experiences occurred. (High school, college, post grad) Also, poll.

[Deleted]

They are a good life lesson, almost every job in the world will have you working as part of a team, if one fails it can bring down everyone else.

[Deleted]

Not a fan of it at all.

[Elegiac]

I enjoy it when the other people I am working with are one of three things:

- Competent and outspoken
- Competent but can be cowed
- Incompetent but can be cowed

People who are incompetent and outspoken make me want to bash my head against a wall since they disrupt the process rather than contribute to it.

[Xargoth6634]

They are a good life lesson, almost every job in the world will have you working as part of a team, if one fails it can bring down everyone else.

So how would you deal with slackers bringing the rest of the group down? Do you institute controls, such as peer evaluations? Do you tell people to seek you out individually if they're having problems with group members? The issue that I have is I've been put in situations in the past where the good workers in the group had no recourse when one or two members with the attitude "Do 'A' work for all of us or we fail, I'm not doing shit." (And believe me when I say that I sought out the professors to try and resolve the situation, two in particular were not accommodating.)

I guess what I'm saying is that while I understand the practicality of a "real world work" situation, it breaks down in that in some cases people who don't do any work can get equal credit; and while that may be a legitimate parallel to real life at times, it shouldn't be how things are done in a scholastic environment.

[Very Tired]

In theory yes, you will have many group projects when you get a job they are trying to prepare you for. But in actual execution... it is hardly comparable to a job setting most of the time in my experience.

[Xargoth6634]

I enjoy it when the other people I am working with are one of three things:

- Competent and outspoken
- Competent but can be cowed
- Incompetent but can be cowed

People who are incompetent and outspoken make me want to bash my head against a wall since they disrupt the process rather than contribute to it.

That's hilarious, and I 100% agree with it. =)

[zealo]

Had positive experiences with these in high school and below, did not like them very much, but i do understand the purpose of them, being to teach you to cooperate and work with others more than the subject at hand.

[Elegiac]

I really only prefer the first option. I'm generally really apathetic and would prefer other people make a lot of the small decisions I have no interest in either way.

I actually prefer a mixture of the three. Generally one to two of the outspoken people to direct the process, a couple of other competent people who can follow directions and get the job done, and a few incompetent people to whom you can delegate the small tasks but otherwise ignore.

[Pitkanen]

Painful but necessary. One key point though: The grading structure needs to compartmentalize the project enough that they can deal with large variances in apathy.

I usually alpha dog'ed and set micromanager specific tasks in most groups. It makes it much harder for one person to come up short when their task has a clear end-point.

[Deleted]

Why are you purple? What happened to the plastic face thing?

Got tired of it. O_o

[Kaizun]

As a high school English teacher, I feel students of all ages need group work experience, as many tasks in life require individuals to work together or as part of a group. However! I also know that groups seldom work out. Almost always one student 'the smart one' ends up doing all the work, despite my best efforts. To counter this to some extent, I take care to assign 'parts' to each student in a group project and try to grade students only on their part rather than the group effort as a whole. I also have students do a reflection at the end of the group work, so they can discuss any issues they had, and I typically don't penalize them if they explain themselves.

[Deleted]

My groups at uni were awesome apart from one. Meet at spoons, chill out, head to the library do some work, ace some presentation. I'd always try and get chicks I wanted to bang in my group if they weren't predetermined. Standard procedures with varying success.

Worst group I had was a predetermined one and they were a husband and wife on the course, my pal dave (legend) and some chick. The husband and wife argued and were control freaks. They just made it more difficult than it needed to be, proper flaky when it came to showing up and always wanted to get an idea and take it home to work on instead of just fucking doing it. Got through it in the end but they were a fucking pain. (the husband unexpectedly died in 2nd year probably because of stress being married to that harpy)

Its good socially and being able to successfully work in a team is a good skill to develop.

[braeldiil]

Group school work is unfair - someone is always going to get carried, and someone is always doing more work. But you know what? That's just groups, in general. It happens everywhere - at work, in sports (Lebron carried that slacker Wade this season!), in gaming, everywhere. Managing the group is a skill, and if you want to be more than a worker bee*, it's probably the most important skill. You have to know the team and figure out how to get the most work. Sometimes that's just a matter of splitting up the tasks properly, matching aptitudes to the tasks. Sometimes you need to sit someone out, because their help really isn't. Sometimes you create a distraction task (we call this "designing a flag" at work) that doesn't matter but they can putter on while you do real work. And so on. You'll almost never have the authority/opportunity to just get rid of someone, so figuring out how to work with or around people is a very important skill.

*There's nothing wrong with being a worker bee. Good workers are worth their weight in gold in any industry. But getting 10 slacker bees to work at 60% of the best worker bees is a different and usually more valuable skill. It's good to have both in your toolkit.

[Endus]

For primary or secondary school, I think group work is best used as a tool to foster group discussions and interaction between students.

In post-secondary, though, it's time to learn about the real world. Group projects require student-initiated cooperation and division of labor, and organizational skills. If any of your group mates is getting "carried", then you should have brought it to the prof. Each individual is responsible for the entire group's work. That's how it works, in the real world. If your team's supposed to get the product finalized by Friday, your boss doesn't care that Suzanne was out sick on Wednesday and Thursday and didn't contribute equally. Your team was given an assignment, and you failed to produce, and that's all that matters. Post-secondary is where this realization starts to set in.

[Xargoth6634]

As a high school English teacher, I feel students of all ages need group work experience, as many tasks in life require individuals to work together or as part of a group. However! I also know that groups seldom work out. Almost always one student 'the smart one' ends up doing all the work, despite my best efforts. To counter this to some extent, I take care to assign 'parts' to each student in a group project and try to grade students only on their part rather than the group effort as a whole. I also have students do a reflection at the end of the group work, so they can discuss any issues they had, and I typically don't penalize them if they explain themselves.

Very cool, thanks for the teacher perspective!

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Overall good. For me personally, it's a pain in the ass due to the fact of my introvertive nature >_<

[Symphonic]

I like group projects, have had good experiences with it (I went to film school, pretty much every project was a group project). The trouble, though, is that I don't want my project to be bad. So, I was willing to make it better, if someone else wasn't pulling their weight (aka doing nothing). So, the trouble, is that these kids who didn't do anything get a great grade on the assignment because it's a group project. There were actually a couple of them who graduated with a bachelor's degree that I KNOW do not have the ethics to find work in film, because they're lazy bums. But, they graduated anyway. I find solace in the fact that they spent so much money to graduate, and they're not going to do anything related to this field.

[kendro1200]

Rarely is group work ever divided evenly, at least here in the U.S. Most of the time it's one kid who cares about their grade and everyone else who could care less, but can't get failed because of bad educational laws and reforms. Last semester I had one particular class that had a research paper and presentation that spanned the course of the entire semester. Out of the eight people in the group, only one person did work consistently throughout the semester. One person put together the presentation, and that same person wrote an overwhelming majority of the report. In the last four hours before the paper's deadline, other group members started panicking because they hadn't contributed in the slightest to the presentation or paper and were afraid they'd not be given credit and all of the sudden wanted to help. They were more harm than good because they had to be babysat to do work, and I really should have just ignored them and just done work. I've only had TWO joint effort assignments in my entire academic career where others actually helped doing work. My definition of 'help' is fairly kind as well, they have to constructively contribute at least 10% to the assignment (assuming small group of less than five).