I don't know why so many professors have such a hard on for group projects, but please stop.

I'm tired of forced group work where I have to do most, if no everything, myself.

Hey DE,

Any idea what the lazy bastard is doing today?

I think he may reside somewhere in my management chain :p

From the look of the world, someone used him to perfect human cloning.

Actually I can't even remember his name.

In the business world, everyone does get graded on the final product, regardless of who put in what amount of effort. At least initially. If you have a well sorted out management, over time the weak players should be removed or re-assigned to where they are effective, but sadly that doesn't happen nearly as often as it should.

It's even worse there because either A) One or two kids do all the work while 3 or 4 others do nothing B) 3 or 4 do all the work while 1 or 2 lazy bastards do nothing or C) nothing gets done because the group includes the unpopular kid and they spend all their time antagonizing him or her instead of doing any work.

It's interesting how folks are commenting about these projects. It's been my experience in the professional world that the trials and tribulations of team projects in school often very much reflect the realities of the real world. You get grouped with folks of very different abilities, personalities and motivation, and somehow have to figure out how to make it work.

In the business world, everyone does get graded on the final product, regardless of who put in what amount of effort. At least initially. If you have a well sorted out management, over time the weak players should be removed or re-assigned to where they are effective, but sadly that doesn't happen nearly as often as it should.

Ideally yes, both of those things are true. However, in practice, it gets a little more complicated. Personality and inter-departmental politics often come into play.

DE and Farsky:

Ideally yes, both of those things are true. However, in practice, it gets a little more complicated. Personality and inter-departmental politics often come into play. I've also been in situations where someone isn't qualified from my perspective, but yet is performing the tasks anyway, and I or someone else has to help carry them.

Think of it like a raid in WoW. You've got a DPS that is "qualified" in the fact that they know they shouldn't get aggro, and should attack the boss, etc. However, they are completley clueless about not standing in the fire, kill order, positioning, gear/spec, etc. So sure they contribute a bit to the project perhaps, but sometimes depending on the project are more of a liability.

And as for someone being "in charge", there is a great big difference between having a manager and having a manager who will actually confront someone about their poor performance and do something about it. The latter doesn't always happen.

Aizle,



You are talking like you are the only person here who has experienced these things...

Trust me... you aren't

Obviously not. However, school is no less laden with drama and politics than the working world; often far more so.

However, in the working world or in a WoW raid someone is in charge and can be assigned responsibility for project success or raid success and can boot the offending DPS or depending ont he company do a number of different things to discipline or otherwise correct the offending worker, if only reporting the situation to the next higher manager and asking that it be rectified.

The fact that some GLs and some project leaders don't do this only reflects on their personal failings.

In a school situation, no student is ever assigned meaningful authority (that I've ever heard of) to make the others perform. The closest I've ever seen was when the entire peer group was allowed to dime out a nonperformer. Similarly, no one person can be assigned responsibility for success or failure. In fact, the entire point of the project is the benefot of the people doing it, not the profit of some larger entity. That makes it, practically speaking, impossible to put one student in charge without changing the fundamental learning experience (or lack thereof).

Correct, and some of the things you bring up are IMHO the exact point of the group projects. As I'm sure you know, there are times where you have a group of "equals" that have to work together for some goal. Natural leaders will rise and attempt to provide direction to the group and they will have to figure out how to work together to be successful. So from that perspective, a crappy grade because the group as a whole isn't able to work well together is appropriate. Even if one individual could do the "work" solo and not need assistance from the others.

Not all of one's school experience is just learning the specific material.