This is why I hate group assignments

[42_42_42]

So far we've had 2 major assignments in one of my nursing classes and both are group assignments with the professor assigning us to the groups. The groups are the same for both assignments.

The first was a presentation to the class covering a concept we'd previously been lectured on. Because I couldn't get the others in my group to ever respond to my emails for help, I ended up creating the entire power point presentation. Then, the day of, we split it up and each talked about a section of the presentation. I had also written up the talking points to go with each slide. I ended up do most of the talking as well because my other group members didn't feel comfortable talking in front of the rest of the class.

The second is a 5-6 page research paper. Again, I've had to take the lead because no one else in my group is really comfortable with the idea of writing such a long paper (insert me rolling my eyes because 5-6 pages is not a long paper, now the 20 and 40 page papers I had to write for some of my classes the first time I went to college, yeah, those took a while!). We broke our topic down into subsections, with each person supposed to write about 1-1/2 pages on their subsection. So far, only my and one other person's subsections are usable. I cannot use the others because one person's is plagiarized from the source material and the other person didn't write on the subsection they picked, but went off on some random tangent that has nothing to do with our overall paper.

I don't understand why they can't do what they are supposed to do for this. Everyone in the program has had to pass two English writing courses with at least a B. Makes me wonder what kind of work the profs of those classes were handing out B's for.

I've messaged the professor about the situation. I had already filled her in on what happened with the presentation. I emailed the group members and asked the two to redo their parts. The paper is due at 11:59 pm on 7/21. If they don't get them to me by 8 am tomorrow, I'm just going to have to turn in what the one girl and I did that is actually usable. Fortunately, we both wrote about 2-1/2 pages of material, so we'll still be within the page requirements, we'll just not have two of our subsections covered. What they don't seem to understand is that if they don't take this seriously, they could be kicked out of the program!

If this had been an individual paper, I'd have had it all wrapped up and turned in days ago.

Honestly, if they can't take their classes seriously, then I don't want them to stay in the program because I don't want to have to work with nurses that don't have any work ethic.

[EricKei]

5-6 pages isn't a big deal o_O Once the research is done, 5-6 pages is a couple of hours with nothing else to do, tops. Well, for me, anyway The others only have small chunks of that to worry about. Geez.

[Aethian]

Crap...my ex has to do 2-5 pages over several things a day for work. And these people want to be nurses? Hopefully not in a hospital I have to go to.

[mathnerd]

From a teacher's point of view...

I assign group projects because the real world is not a solitary place. When you go to work you will have to work with your colleagues for various projects and job duties, and working with your classmates on a paper or project gives you some experience in handling split duties and even handling problems with your groupmates. I would expect any of my students in a situation which you have described to come to me and explain the problem in a professional manner in order to come up with a solution, just as you would go to a boss if there's a problem with a colleague once you get out into a nursing job.

While it stinks that your group is dropping the ball like this, go back and document what you can in regards to the problems and present them to your professor in a professional manner (something like "here are the problems I've been experiencing, can you please help me find a solution that is more equitable to me?"). If you have documentation and you don't whine, and assuming your professor isn't a total prick, she should help you resolve the issues in a manner that's more fair to you.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

In a group project, if you have group members that don't care to do the work, you really can't make them. All you can do is maybe lower their grade if there's a group self-grading system in place. There's lots of students going to school on their parents' dime, or even their own, who just don't care enough to show up to class or group meetings and pull their weight.

At least in the workplace you can tell the boss about it and maybe they won't be your co-worker for too much longer.

This being said, I was fortunate to have mostly good experiences with group projects. I had maybe one group member who blew the whole thing off, and we were able to prevent them from getting credit for out work. And this was at a school that was very big on group projects. Perhaps part of my good experiences can be attributed through going through a program with the same people and everybody getting used to everybody else's work habits.

[Greenday]

Most of the time, I've been screwed over by group projects. And most of the time, teachers refuse to do anything about it. I once got a 25 on a homework quiz because my partner wouldn't answer my phone or facebook messages OR my emails. I went to the teacher a few days before it was due (We had lab once a week) and she told me that sometimes, that's just how it turns out in the real world. Apparently she didn't like my response that any employee that acts like that in the real world should be fired immediately.

[Pixilated]

I've had both good and bad experiences with group projects, but luckily, in the cases of the crappy experiences, the teachers were willing to work with group members who were actually participating. In one case, the teacher explained that two of the group members -- twins -- had an almost pathological fear of speaking in public, which was a part of the project. Okay, that's fine ... but they weren't doing any damn research or writing either. I for one would be happy to give someone like that a pass on the actual speaking part, but the fact they were just totally nonresponsive to any of our attempts to communicate with them soured any sympathy we had fairly quickly. In another case, the teacher, as far as I know, finally had a chat with the student and officially removed them from the group. No idea whether they lost the marks and the rest of us really didn't care. We just didn't want them to get marks for work they hadn't done, nor did we want to lose marks because of slipshod or missing work.

I understand the reasons behind group projects, but I seriously hate them.

[EricKei]

I never had a truly successful group project when I was in school

In a group project, if you have group members that don't care to do the work, you really can't make them.

I went to the teacher a few days before it was due (We had lab once a week) and she told me that sometimes, that's just how it turns out in the real world. Apparently she didn't like my response that any employee that acts like that in the real world should be fired immediately.

These two issues were the problem -- It's all but impossible for a student to get lazy partners to step up to the plate (what are you gonna do, fire them?), and I almost always got at least one lazy partner x.x Unfortunately, this reflects poorly on the people doing the actual work. The teachers' responses were as above -- basically, "Tough shit."

[mathnerd]

It's all but impossible for a student to get lazy partners to step up to the plate (what are you gonna do, fire them?),

I actually did let group members "fire" slackers. If the rest of the group could document that one or more members weren't pulling their own weight, they could get rid of the offending member. If said member wanted to be a part of another group, they could look to get "hired", but that was generally difficult, and the fired person was normally on their own for the rest of the term, as my groups were kept the same for the entire class. I also allowed a person who, like the OP, wound up in a group of all slackers to hire themselves out to a better functioning group. I don't know, maybe the reason I didn't have too many complaints was because I had the whole thing structured so that there were real consequences for not pulling your part.

[fireheart]

I've actually heard of scenarios on NotAlwaysLearning (which may need to be taken with a grain of salt) where the teacher has actually picked up on who wasn't doing the work and marked each group member individually.

I've gotten lucky so far on group work. In all the cases I've been able to pick my group. In fact, it actually got to the point where I HAD been contributing to the group, but they decided that because I was going on a prac soon, that I didn't need to contribute. I submitted my contribution to them and skipped that lesson (this was cleared with the teacher and I just had to submit a unit plan from my prac instead)

ETA: @mathnerd, I'll have to try that in my classroom. (I CAN teach K-7, although I'll be likely teaching K-4/5 since I lack the balls to tackle the other grades)

[mathnerd]

Another point, in the cases described where the teachers didn't give a damn, I would consider that a failure on the teacher's part to do his/her job, and worthy of a complaint up the line of command. I also generally recommend that these conversations take place via email, so the student has written documentation when he/she goes to the department head or dean. I realize that not every school takes complaints seriously, but then again, neither does every job. If they did, we wouldn't have a section here called Morons in Management.

[Pixilated]

I actually did let group members "fire" slackers. If the rest of the group could document that one or more members weren't pulling their own weight, they could get rid of the offending member. If said member wanted to be a part of another group, they could look to get "hired", but that was generally difficult ... *snip*

I've heard that that is standard in many business programs and courses, and that seems a very reasonable way to handle group work ... because that is what's most likely to happen in the real world. For a teacher to just say "too bad" indicates to me that the teacher is in the same league as the slackoff students.

[Lyse]

One of our instructors included peer reviews as part of the turned in assignments. Each person had to rate each of the other four people in the groups efforts, productivity, and communication. We kept the same group for the entire term, and only one person ever ended up with a lower grade on an assignment then the rest of the group - after getting a 20% for the first assignment when the other four of us got 100% she shaped up quickly.

[Amina516]

I absolutely HATE group work for those reasons. I play better alone and i cant stand when other people dont do their parts.

You did the right thing in letting the teacher know what happened. I have done that and more once I realized people werent putting their effort into it but expected to have a good grade. We generally had to evaluate group members after such projects; dont feel bad and give them a good group grade if they sucked Thatll hit them more than you telling them they dropped the ball. They'll also feel it at the end of the semester when theyre like 1 point away from being able pass the class and now they cant.

Hang in there. Keep us updated.

[42_42_42]

Fortunately, the professor is awesome. I've kept her in the loop about what's going on. She wants me to let her know exactly who did what for the paper and they'll be graded on what they did or didn't do, not on the overall paper. So, that's good, but the entire situation is extremely frustrating. Our program is incredibly difficult to get into (over 400 people applied for 80 slots), so you'd think the people in it would be a little more motivated.