The Glade 4.0

So our research paper is due in my English class this week. I'm in a group with three people total, two of which are young (18-20) females. Take in mind that this is a research paper; I'm now thoroughly convinced that normal college students have no idea what a research paper actually is.

We each wrote a separate section for our paper, all under the same general topic but hitting different points. The girls decided they wanted to write a paper on whether or not celebrities were good examples. They both ended up picking similar topics, while mine was substantially different.

That's not the problem though, those things are fine. The problem is that their sections are almost completely anecdotal, with really no evidence beyond their own. They both have references that I'm sure they didn't actually use beyond reading through once or twice.

We had peer reviews in class this morning, and the couple I reviewed were absolutely terrible. The only thing I could think of to change on one of them to make it better would be to rewrite the entire paper. The first page and a half were almost incomprehensible, and the paper jumped around from topic to topic. The second was actually better, but still very anecdotal and didn't appear to have much actual research involved despite the full page long works cited page at the end.

Now I realize I'm not the best writer in the world, and most of the time when I write I write how I speak. But I also realize that when I am writing a paper that I can't do that, and it needs to be well written. I have two english degrees in the family that I have check everything I write, as well as going to the writing lab at school if I feel it's necessary. I'll rewrite large portions of my papers to make things sound write, and almost never feel that my paper is done even when it's been gone over and I can't find anything else to change.

I've had to rewrite significant portions of my groups work. I wrote the introduction/conclusion myself, despite them being written during one of my groups "meetings" which are really just the three of us sitting there and neither of them saying anything. I'm amazed at how often this exact scenario has played itself out over my time since I started going back to school. Last semester I wrote a ten page paper and created the powerpoint for a presentation by myself even though it was supposed to be a "group" project. At least that time I could tell the professor that I was the only one that did anything, this time I just feel like I'm the only one doing anything.

I'm tired of forced group work where I have to do most, if no everything, myself. It would be nice to have a class where the big semester long assignments didn't require me to try to force someone into helping that isn't interested. I'm sick of it. I don't know why so many professors have such a hard on for group projects, but please stop.

They think that's how the real world works, as some sort of magical team commune where people at a business all have equal roles in project implementation.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

H9 group projects. H9 with a passion.

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Holy shitsnacks!

It's not just professors. This nonsense pervades high school and junior high as well. 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. This is only remedied the night before, usually by the unpopular kid.

Regardless, everyone shares the entire grade.

Actually, I remember one exception in junior high. 5 people in the group, 4 of whom worked. The other one didn't do jack and didn't even show in school on the day we presented it. The teacher did ask us if he'd really worked on it. Final grade: 85% for the group, 80% for the lazy bastard. Token justice at its finest.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

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.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

His name is Peter. And there is a principle named after him.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Yeah, most college kids are borderline imbeciles.

On the plus side, I have a class that has a group project, but I get to work with some of my friends. Makes it more than tolerable.

I feel your pain on the group assignments, even in my upper division classes, there are still far too many applications for working in groups. The one plus side is that most of the idiots have been weeded out by now.

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"I've got twenty ways to tell you shut the f*ck up / nineteen of them are twenty-four bars long / the other one goes: SHUT THE F*CK UP" - Aesop Rock
"There is no God higher than truth." -- Gandhi
Formerly: Tulamian

Once upon a time in a far away land (my high school) a friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, got utterly fed up with the way she always carried group projects. So fed up, in fact, that she did the project twice... once badly, knowing that her 'team' wasn't going to even look over it, and once well, which she turned in at the end of the class to the teacher with an explanation.


The result? You tell me. Did the teacher:

A) give the rest of the team a grade on the team paper and give my friend a grade on the one she turned in after class?

OR

B) tell my friend that the purpose of team assignments is to work together and hope the good students drag the others up to their level, and stick her with the lower grade?

I could fathom a guess.

And the answer to the question is, because they are commies.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

B, almost certainly.

The complaint, by the way, has been around since group projects began. Teachers know that a lot of students will not try, and others will basically do the work, pull the load for the others. The idea is not to teach teamwork so much as team dynamics. It is also a way to ferret out people with leadership abilities.

Sometimes, a cigar is much more than just a cigar.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

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.

I had a teacher let me do A.... Not a guy I liked, but he said if I was OK doing double the work, he was fine with it.

Turned out that once I gave my portion (over 2/3rds of the entire project) to the rest of the group, they never actually bothered to put the whole thing together and turn it in.

I turned in a separate one by myself, and it got a perfect grade while they all failed. I was quite happy.

My problem is not usually that other people do shoddy work, it's that they get upset when I edit said shoddy work into something workable.

And it has been my experience that while I hate group projects with a passion, I have been able to learn something from the experience, IF it was managed well. Mostly, it's taught me to be very careful about trusting group members who I don't know to do things right, not lie about data they gathered, etc. I just double check everything to make sure it all works out.

The best group projects I've seen, the teachers request a list of who did what sections/which tasks, which allows a much easier assignment of grades to those that worked, v. those that didn't. All the benefits of learning how to work with a group, without having your grade drug down because they're idiots.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

The difference is, most times proactive steps can be taken to manage the lazy person into doing their job acceptably before the project fails. This isn't always the case with school projects.

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The Dude abides.

Government mandated schooling would of course be based on the Government work model.

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The differene being that in the real world someone is actually in charge.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

What DE said. Also, there's also a major difference in that while work ethics and personal levels of responsibilities will differ among coworkers, they are all (for the most part) at least qualified to perform the tasks assigned.

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).

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I don't pretend to think I am the only one who's experienced these things. However, folks posting thus far seem to indicate that the behaviors and experiences one goes through in a school group project are completely foreign to anything that one finds in the "real world" which I completely disagree with.

Indeed



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.

Finally a good teacher will also be able to determine who did and didn't contribute. As you mentioned about managers and raid leaders, that teachers ability or inability to do that is their own failing. And the students ability to cope with that is also another valuable life skill as well. I'm sure everyone here has had a crappy or ineffectual boss at one point or another.

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

In any situation where I have had this happen, there has either been a designated person in charge or it has been an instructional setting. The only instructional setting other than regular school where this happened, performance by everyone was pretty much a given due to the fact that they had to put in significant effort to be there in the first place, and failure at the course of instruction was essentially not an option.

Any organization that makes people do a group project without designating a person who is in charge is incompetant, unless it's being done for instructional purposes. Even then, there really should be someone in charge unless the primary objective is to teach group dynamics. Part of group dynamics, however, is learning how to be in charge, or deal with it when you aren't. Teaching people how to deal with a group that's been organized by an incompetant higher headquarters is really not that productive a use of time.

Finally a good teacher will also be able to determine who did and didn't contribute. As you mentioned about managers and raid leaders, that teachers ability or inability to do that is their own failing. And the students ability to cope with that is also another valuable life skill as well. I'm sure everyone here has had a crappy or ineffectual boss at one point or another.[/quote]

Except that the teacher or manager is not the raid leader in this situation; the group's designated leader would be. A group without one is about as effective as a guild trying to raid by democracy.

Moreover, dealing with a crappy or ineffectual boss is not the same skill as dealing with a lazy or incompetant partner.

A good teacher may be able to determine who did what, but as a practical matter they won't differentiate in gterms of grades in order to avoid irate phone calls from parents.



That's the problem. Certain specific school settings may be appropriate for such lessons, but most of them are not. Science class, for example, is not about group dynamics.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Ha x 10^Infinity

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It's been my experience that the instructors who most enjoyed assigning group work were the ones who least enjoyed grading assignments. Strange coincidence, that.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.