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I am in the Masters program and am sick of group work. Why do the professors think its useful?
I have a group presentation on Thursday, one of the group members has yet to attend, yet to acknowledge the assignment except to send a 12 page case study asking members to read and give their opinion. Her part of the presentation was to be received by all in an attempt to have our presentation and materials ready, to date, nothing!
Another project was due tonight, professor surprised us with the project on the internet and asked us to discuss with our group via message board. I did the project alone tonight, tonight was when it was due. Three postings with no responses, I had no choice.
I want to work for my grade, I want to know if I do it the grade is mine and I earned it. If I choose to not do it my grade will reflect that, however that is not the case for group members who are riding my apron!
I am so frustrated with this and the professors at my college reply with, that is the way it is in the real world!
I can certainly sympathize with this. I've also had 2 group projects this semester where one person in the group did absolutely n o t h i n g and received the same grade as the rest of the group.
We got the same "real world" speech. I totally disagree with that line of thought. Yes, it is important to learn to work with all different types of people. I understand the premise of and the benefits associated with group work.
However, in a real world job setting there would be consequences for an employee who was found not to be doing their job. They certainly wouldn't receive an "Excellent" performance review based on a group project if it was brought to the employers attention that they did not participate at all.
Ok, rant over. Just wanted to let you know that someone else understands.
Ugg, I'm dealing with this now. Sure it's a small scale thing at a CC but still...it's due this week so after playing email games and getting the 'I can't do it at that time" run around I said fine and sent out a blanket email stating that I will be here, at my house where we are working on this project, between these hours on this day so either come don't come, I'm doing it either way.
I always hated group work assignments my kids got in high school too. It was even harder for them to get together since most didn't drive and parents schedules were all over the map and nobody lived near anyone else. There is no point whatsoever to any of it. NONE. And I can say that with confidence I have worked in "the real world" for years and years. People will learn about real world stuff when they are in the real world, until then...stop trying to simulate it because it doesn't work!
However, in a real world job setting there would be consequences for an employee who was found not to be doing their job. They certainly wouldn't receive an "Excellent" performance review based on a group project if it was brought to the employers attention that they did not participate at all.
Not necessarily, what happens when the individual is very tight with the manager and/or boss? What happens when the manager does not notice that the individual is sub-par because he is always riding coattails?
The sorts of situations one deals with in group in college are representative of the "real world". Better get use to it.
College professors have it tough, if they try to import some real world skills into the class room kids complain. If they don't then they complain after graduation when they have trouble finding a job, working with others, etc. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
I can certainly sympathize with this. I've also had 2 group projects this semester where one person in the group did absolutely n o t h i n g and received the same grade as the rest of the group.
We got the same "real world" speech. I totally disagree with that line of thought. Yes, it is important to learn to work with all different types of people. I understand the premise of and the benefits associated with group work.
However, in a real world job setting there would be consequences for an employee who was found not to be doing their job. They certainly wouldn't receive an "Excellent" performance review based on a group project if it was brought to the employers attention that they did not participate at all.
Ok, rant over. Just wanted to let you know that someone else understands.
In most group projects I did you had to grade the other members of the group so everyone wouldn't always get the same grade. There's definitely a benefit to group work, but I agree that professors are starting to do it way too much.
90% of my classes have always been group work because I was a theater major and that is an incredibly collaborative process. It never bothered me in other classes because I was so used to it. In most of the group work I've ever done, all the students had to present on the project and it was easy to tell if someone hadn't participated. I can only think of one time I had someone in a group who didn't participate, and the rest of us went to the professor with our complaints, and he graded the guy separately from the rest of the group based on his contributions (or lack thereof) in our presentation. I know not all professors are that accommodating, but I haven't really had any terrible group work experiences.
Learning to collaborate effectively with others is a useful life skill and one that should be practiced more. I'm all for the group work. To circumvent the temptation for group members to slack off because there are others who can do the work for them, group members should have to give performance evaluations of each other as part of the final grade. You can even be more specific and ask group members to divy up responsibilities and provide a list of what each member is responsible for...that way they get held accountable for that part of the process.
I am in the Masters program and am sick of group work. Why do the professors think its useful?
I have a group presentation on Thursday, one of the group members has yet to attend, yet to acknowledge the assignment except to send a 12 page case study asking members to read and give their opinion. Her part of the presentation was to be received by all in an attempt to have our presentation and materials ready, to date, nothing!
Another project was due tonight, professor surprised us with the project on the internet and asked us to discuss with our group via message board. I did the project alone tonight, tonight was when it was due. Three postings with no responses, I had no choice.
I want to work for my grade, I want to know if I do it the grade is mine and I earned it. If I choose to not do it my grade will reflect that, however that is not the case for group members who are riding my apron!
I am so frustrated with this and the professors at my college reply with, that is the way it is in the real world!
Your professors are correct and they are actually giving you the opportunity to learn a valuable lesson. Unless you plan on living in a cave and never interacting with anyone, you will need to learn how to navigate group projects as they are an important part of the workplace. Even if you don't regularly work on projects where everyone's performance is dependent on each other, you'll still have to learn to interact with your colleagues on a professional level. Always working alone and having no one else contributing to your evaluation tends to give people tunnel vision and isn't productive because ultimately, even if you're working for yourself, you are working for a larger entity towards a greater goal. There will of course be times when not everyone is pulling their weight, but this is the perfect opportunity to learn how to appropriately inform your supervisor (or in this case your professor) in a way that will make you look better and still accomplish the goals of the project. Learning to live in the real world can be tough sometimes, but none of us can be completely independent of others and it's a good lesson to learn early.
I was a business major--learning to deal with good and bad groups, managing schedules for multiple people, and bringing different thought processes (or lack of thought processes) together were by far the most useful things I learned in all of college.
It isn't important to my daily work that I know how to analyze economic curves or program in VB or optimize a process flow. It is SUPER important that I can work on a team with some really difficult people and still get the job done.
(Life isn't fair--those slackers still get good ratings in the office sometimes.)
Other than the real-world applicability, there are a few reasons why educators use group work. I didn't understand it either until I took teacher education courses.
If teachers call on people to volunteer information, only the students who know the answer will respond. If you make the work a group project, then students are less self-conscious about answering; they are sharing the product of a group are are less likely to feel deflated if the answer isn't what the prof. is looking for. In short, more students participate in groups. That's probably why your prof. structured the online assignment the way he/she did.
Profs. can assign more complicated projects to groups than they can to individuals. that makes it easier to create meaningful assessments for higher-level courses. You might not have time to research and write about all of the sections of the assignment, but, through group work, you can at least have some exposure to each.
Group work is one way of accommodating different learning styles. Individual students essentially tutor each other.
Group work helps you learn to collaborate with people who think differently from you.
Before anyone jumps on me to tell me that group dysfunction overrides all of these concerns, I will also say that the professor has a role in setting up projects to maximize the positive aspects and minimize the negative aspects. Grading should always include a chance to evaluate one's group members; groups need to be well composed; everyone in the group needs to have a defined role; and enough time needs to be given so that group members can meaningfully collaborate.
One big part of group work in school and in real life is learning how to deal with the dysfunctional member. Taking on all of his/her work is not an effective way of dealing with that person. Have you had a conversation? Have you been specific about what work product he/she could produce that would fulfill an appropriate responsibility to the group? If you say, "everybody do research tonight," that might be too vague an instruction for someone who is inclined to coast anyway. The students who do the entire project themselves, though better students than the slacker, actually aren't very helpful to the group. Less able students can feel intimidated about stepping in or defeated, "why do my ideas matter if she's just going to do it all for me?" No one learns what an appropriate level of responsibility is or how to negotiate a conflict.
Lastly, have you talked to the prof? They usually know who the slacker students are. He/she likely will not be surprised, and may be able to offer you a work-around like weighting your grade to show the work you did or allowing you to consult with other groups. The professor may also be unaware of how hard it has been for you to reach your group member, such as when you posted messages online to which he/she did not respond. These are concrete examples that a good instructor can help you with.
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