Group projects

[Wheetsin 714]

This is truly just a rant b/c I'm fuming about something. It's my catharsis. Please don't even read unless you're really bored.

My graduate program unfortunately involves a lot of group projects. They're not my favorite, but I understand why they do them. So far, they've been tolerable experiences, and a few have been positive (was in a group of self-starters, we could agree on natural work divisions, etc.)

This semester is a completely different story. I was put in a group with 3 other people. At first it seemed ok - up until it was too late to request a group change, anyway.

We have a project due tomorrow. It's a very large project that required several additional documents, a lot of research, a nice presentation, etc. As of Friday, two of us had submitted work for the project - kind of. I had submitted several paragraphs to paste into a final presentation, and all of the attachments we needed except for one. One other person in the group had submitted a half-assed final project document (the skeleton -- still needed all the text/attachments/etc.) -- based on a template I built and submitted. It had a total of about 6 sentences in it.

Of the two other people in the group, one had offered a lot of criticism on the work I had done, but had not offered up anything of her own. The fourth person has not contributed one single piece of anything. She has asked us for clarification on the assignment, and told this week she wouldn't have internet access for one day (that was on Wed). We haven't heard from her since.

I'm working to maintain my GPA and this is my last required course so I'm being extra careful. So I took about 10 hours yesterday and built the entire document. Places where I didn't have the data, I just made something up as a placeholder, then highlighted it so it could easily be found when whomever owned that piece decided to get it done. I created about 3 powerpoints, 5 word documents, tons of tables & graphs, etc.

I then told the peolpe in my group that since the template was hard to use, please don't make changes to the document directly. If you don't like the template, that's fine -- you're welcomed to redo it. But if you are ok with it, just printscreen or copy what you want to change into a basic word doc and indicate what you think should be changed. Do you think anyone did that? Nope. They made their suggestions right into the document, so not only did I have to line-y-line compare with the original to see what was different, I also had to spend about an hour reformatting everything.

Then, they had a lot of criticism on some of my tables. I told them "These are just drafts I created so we would have something there, these will need to be refined for submission." I guess they can't read, because those disclaimers were completely ignored and they kinda jumped on me about how they want to see something more professional (umm... then freaking SUBMIT SOMETHING?!)

One girl, while making changes, managed to delete 11 of the 14 pages in the document. When I reverted it back to a version that had all the pages, she became irate that I had "disregarded her feedback." Umm -- no, I just had to get back the content. I figured that was more important than your suggested revisions, which were poor quality and not accurate anyway.

I've written the proffessor, emphasizing that I'm not a whiner or tattletale, but trying to elicit her help in getting these people motivated. This project, though it's large, is just a very small piece of an overall semester-long project and I can't solo that one. I did make it clear that the one person had contributed nothing. She hasn't yet responded to me.

The rules for grading this are -- everyone shares 95% of the grade, with the last 5% coming from peer evaluations that the rest of the group does on you. That means that if our group gets 100% on the project, everyone is guaranteed a score of 95%. Including the one person who has done zero. And I've been pretty direct wtih them, telling them they need to quit deleting the content, quit messing up the template because it costs me more time, etc. Of course part of the peer evaluation is how well they liked working with you. And Ive butted heads with 2 of these people in prior classes, and two of them are buddy-buddy. If we get 100% and everyone has their 95%, it's within the realm of possiblities that the buddies could give each other good feedback, give me crappy feedback, and they'd walk away with a higher score than me even though I've essentially soloed the entire project, and have to submit it with the group's names.

I hate it when dead weight gets free rides.

This professor has been very reasonable about some things that have happened in other classes I've taken with her. Hopefully she will be able to do something in this case. If not, I'm one irritated student, and going to have a serious talk with my group about the amount of effort they expect from me toward the larger semester project.

Fooking deadbeats.

[Oregondaisy 2,021]

That's a bummer. You have a lot to deal with, now with your new little addition to your family coming!

[Jachut 487]

Ah, gosh, I know JUST how you feel. Group assignments, I loathe them. Particularly since I am always the one mature age student with a group of 20 year olds. I naturally have a more mature perspective and in what I"m doing, that gets me good grades.

I want my high distinctions and i've found that in group assignments that usually means doing all the bloody work. It drives me nuts. I always have to end up electing myself group leader, taking over the lions share and the younger ones happily go along, simply look to me to come up with all the ideas and never offer feedback, argument or input.

I feel that personally, conceited as it may sound, I have single handedly dragged at least six reluctant groups of students up into High Distinction category through my own hard work, they've had a free ride.

The rationale is that as teachers, we will have to work together. No shit sherlock. Working together in a professional team is a helluva lot different than trying to motivate a bunch of 20 year olds who are more interested in drinking and partying and thinking that you have soooo much time on your hands because you dont have a part time job. I hate it hate it hate it.

But what choice do you have. You always end up letting others take the credit for your work. You can really only hope that it will be noted that if the buddies feedback for each other differs markedly from yours then it might be considered! Good luck.

[Pix 4]

I loath LOATH group projects. I am a perfectionist and 9 times out or 10 if I am stuck with a group project I wind up pulling the weight of the group.

The last group project we had, each of us were assigned a specific portion to work, we would only be graded on our portion, but if there were missing parts we would be marked down for each missing part. It was a 5 person group, 3 of us were thankfully perfectionists. The other two were 20 something airheads who thought they would get carried. Needless to say the 3 of us drew straws to finish the last two parts. I was not the lucky one and got tagged with extra work. I finished it as did the other person in the group. We had two presentations written up, the actual "group" project and the one the 3 of us did together (hoping the other two would wake up). Well we submitted our 3 man group project with OUR work. We got full marks and the two brain dead students couldn't understand why they got failing marks.

Sad part is they weren't stupid kids, quite smart but I think this was there first go with a college level group project. Second group project, same 5, the two brain dead ones did much better, even apologized for failing to do there part in the first one. *shrugs* Well one of the two showed marked improvement, the youngest of the group did bare minimum and it showed in the final project. Thankfully the rest of us weren't marked down on this, but his final grade showed his lack of effort.

[KathrynRose 0]

My favorite grading on a group project happened when I was a junior in college. There were four people in the group. One person and I did the bulk of the work, the other two were complete slackers. At the end we had to write an evaluation of each other's work. I got a 95%, the other girl got a 97% (she did slightly more work than I did, and I agree with the grade), the third girl got a 72%, and the boy got an 80%. This was the fairest grading I had ever seen on a group project, and I was really glad they did not get good grades based on the work the first girl and I did. I think basically the teacher gave our project a grade and prorated us on the amount of work we did.

In some ways I don't begrudge the boy his slacker tendancy, he was having a lot of financial struggles and so he, his wife, and their three kids were living in a tent at a campsite nearby, I don't know how he got any work done. The third girl was just into partying.

[Wheetsin 714]

The girl who didn't contribute finally responded (after the final project was sumitted) saying that we had been posting too many versions & comments back and forth (online class), and she didn't know how to join in. IMO this tried to spin it so it was our fault for not specifically giving her a fixed way to contribute (even though I had asked her if she could handle X and X part, asked her to review X, etc. -- and she never even responded.)

I'm thinking -- umm, just jump in? If you really care about helping/inputting, that's what you're going to do, right? Here, we don't wait for someone to post "So and so, please insert your opinion here", we just jump in. That's a sad excuse.

[anonemouse 1]

Ugh, I HATE group work. I mean, really, REALLY despise it. I always get stuck doing more than my fair share and trying not to piss everyone off by telling them that the work that they're doing is not up to my standard. That's why I usually volunteer to proof the shit before it gets turned in. It's nicer than telling my fellow group members, "I'm sorry, your work is crap, so I need to fix it before I stick my name on it." :biggrin:

[BabyNicole 0]

I understand what you mean! I have my master's in education, and I was lucky. My best friend and I went together, so we were always the "group." There was a time or two when we had to work with other people, and I hated that! Regina and I work very hard, and our group never worked to our standards. :huh2:

I am a teacher, hence the master's in education. I give projects frequently, but the students have a choice. If they want to work by themselves, they may. Some students choose this option b/c they know if they work with some people they will wind up doing all the work. I'm also one of those teachers that doesn't put them with people. They choose their own partner/group. Some teachers don't believe in that, but I find they work better that way.

[Wheetsin 714]

Well here's the thing. I'm pulling a 4.0 in the program right now and this is my last required course. All of my individual work for the class is at 100/100. This group project, which was something like 25% of our grade, has brought me down to a "B" for the course -- some of the others in the group got THAT low on their contributions.

I'm trying to appeal to my teacher's sensible side. Everyone had to list who did what part, so she knows who contributed what. She also has the online posting record where - when I reviewed their work (the ones who did any) -- I made recommendations/suggestions for changes. Most of these were not made, and accounted for most of the points that were deducted. My parts received full score. The parts I was responsible for all got full score.

The group is supposed to share a grade, and that's the most unfair thing (I know, life isn't fair). So I've sent a note to the teacher asking her -- if I take it on myself to change the others' parts, and get full scores on it, will you change my grade accordingly? Or if I can convince them to make th changes, will you update all our grades accordingly? I'm fighting for a GPA here, and others obviously don't care. I don't think it's "fair" that my GPA may now be knocked because other people chose not to listen to my feedback, or chose not to even participate in the project, when I did 80% of the work and got full points for everything I did.

God that makes me sound like such a whiney baby, but this whole situation is really aggravating me. And we have a much larger project due, and I'm having an equally hard time onboarding the others to get moving on it. (I've shared this with the teach).

[Wheetsin 714]

When I assemble a performance program I too always make group work optional. Some shine that way, and some drown. It should never be forced. If we'd had the option to do this project solo, I most certainly would have volunteered to go that route, even with the extra work it would have put on my shoulders (which come to find out is still there anyway, only now they're pulling me down with them).

The teach should know better. She's a good learning theorist (learnign psychology, adult learning theory, performance engineering, etc. is the basis of this whole program I'm in) and should know better than to make something like this mandatory. That's why I'm hoping an appeal to her rational side will work. I've had her before, and she knows I do good work, and knows I do not do my best in groups with people who are not high acheivers.

[BabyNicole 0]

I really hope your appeal works. I too had a Gpa of 4.0 and would have been fuming if group work messed me up! I did graduate with a 4.0 and 3.5 undergrad. Good luck!