Group projects

[jedusor]

So, I survived my honors seminar presentation, algebra quiz, and English presentation today. Remind me to post my seminar presentation background, because it was a pain in the ass and I want recognition for it.

Now I shall rant about group presentations.

I have never worked on a group project in which all members contributed equally. There is inevitably at least one slacker, and other people have to do extra work to make up, otherwise the presentation looks badly put together. I wouldn't mind so much if we were actually learning something from this, but we aren't. The slackers get the good grades they didn't earn, which doesn't exactly prevent them from doing it again (after all, what have they got to lose?) and the same thing happens the next time. There's no incentive to work hard in a group project unless no one else is, and people tend to assume someone else is.

Also, there's no real way to tell who did the most work. If the hard-working students accomplish their goal of giving a good presentation, the teacher can easily assume that everyone contributed equally and give good grades to everyone, which only perpetuates the behavior. Of course, I (being, of course, one of the slack-pick-uppers) could rat on the slackers, which teachers generally encourage, but I don't do that unless it's an anonymous peer grade. That's only happened once, in my biology class last spring, and the fact that I did practically the entire presentation and got the peer grades I deserved for it probably saved my A in that class. Still, helping one person's grade is not the purpose of group projects.

I know the logistics of individual presentations are much more difficult, especially with large class sizes, but I really, really wish teachers would assign them more.

Comments

[mh75.livejournal.com]

There is another point to group presentations which is that you rarely get to work entirely alone in the Real World. In a job people slack the same way. Doing group presenations should help you develop skills to deal with that situation. Or at least not sugar-coat the fact that basically the world sucks sometimes.

It may help, in the future, to specifically dictate jobs to those people who aren't really pulling their weight. For example, A should return tomorrow with a graph of the data, made on a computer, printed in color, that can be added to the presentation.

In the mean time, good job finishing all those things today!

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

This is exactly right. The Real World is, alas, no different.

One of the things you will learn is how to deal with working in groups in which (at LEAST) one person isn't doing their fair share.

Ideally, you will learn to deal with it by figuring out how to make them.

[elainetyger.livejournal.com]

One way is to become the secretary/recordkeeper of the group, so you can note exactly who did what for posterity.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

That works for big projects, but we don't get many of those in basic community college classes. We don't really keep records in small projects.