Bad Groups
Group work. Two words that cause people to shit themselves with fear. The fear comes from the horrible possibility of being in a group where nothing goes right and the work is pinned all on one single person.That person being you.
I can’t recall one single instance of bad group work. I mean I’m sure it’s happened. Everyone has been apart of one group where it was a complete disaster. So I decided to google horror stories of group work. I didn’t find anything spectacular, but there were a few stories that were worthy of being talked about.
Here is one from collegeconfidential.com This comes from someone named laurah
“My worst group project was in health sophomore year when we were randomly paired into groups of four. Each person was specifically assigned a different type of disease and they had to make a pamphlet about it and then all the scores were totalled together. Basically, there was no reason for it to even be a group project and there was no way to do my partners’ part. I got 100% on my part but ended up with a C. Not Cool.”
From what I have been reading on this site and another one I found is that people’s gripe comes from their group members. Group members who are lazy and don’t contribute to be specific. Another thing I’ve noticed is that when it comes to the one person who does all the work usually gets an A on the work but the presentation bombs out because the group contributes little to nothing. This next one provides a perfect example. This comes from the democraticunderground.com
The user’s name is distantearlywarning ” In another class, I was in a group where we had to write a paper about a topic and then do a presentation. There were 5 of us in the group. I volunteered to write the paper if they would put together the presentation. The paper got an A and the professor kept it to show future classes an example of what he was looking for in the project. When it came to presentation day, I showed up expecting them to be prepared, and we completely bombed. The presentation got a C-. The professor yelled at me later, saying, “Why didn’t you make sure they were prepared”, as though it were somehow my duty in life to pull 4 unmotivated morons up with me in every single class. I essentially told him I was tired of being my brother’s keeper. I don’t think he got it. “
Interestingly enough this person has become a TA and doesn’t assign group projects. Here is the rest of that post.
“As a TA now, I never force my students to do group projects. I’ve had professors say to me, “How are they going to learn to get along in the real world if they don’t learn how to work with others now”. I always tell them that I’ve worked in the real world, and in the real world if you sit on your co-workers’ coattails you get fired. That’s usually sufficient motivation for the slackers to grow up and get with the program. Why should I make the decent students suffer now for nothing?”
It is interesting that people have the same problems with groups. Whether its middle school, high school, college or even the work place people seem to always have at least one bad experience with groups. You would think after all this time there would be a way to perfect group work. Alas we still have problems with it, amazing.
