Rant: Group Projects in School

[cardinalkarp]

What a bunch of [expletive]. You'd think that these people we're still in high school w/ the consideration they show to other group members.

Look, I don't give a [expletive] if they wait until the last possible minute to complete their individual assignments & hand in [expletive] work....but when you have others relying on you to get your [expletive] done please don't turn your portion in the night before it's due since it's left me having to scramble all day at work to fix to crap you've handed in.

This applies to 3 out of the 5 in the group.

Sigh, in your experience is anything able to be done if our group gets a crappy grade do to the fact that my group consisted of inconsiderate pricks?

[stlouie_lipp]

When I was getting my M.B.A. every frickin class had a group project. Me, this other guy, and this girl worked good together so we made sure we scheduled the same classes each semester so that we wouldn't be stuck in some sucky group.

[Diddy]

From my experience, no, all my teachers said that part of the reasoning for a group assignment was to learn how to work as a group and that if one failed they all failed. Fortunately I had pretty good groups for most of my group assignments but I had friends that got in the same boat your in.

[cardinalkarp]

Well, part of the blame can be put on the teacher. Why on the first class she would have group presentations start week 3 (when we only meet once a week) is a little BS. We're the first group that has to go of course, but man....other than one guy the rest of the group was awful.

We met once, and I tried to get people to meet again & got no response...tried emailing & people would SAY they would get it in and never did....well until last night rolled around.

Basing my grade on someone else's effort is crap IMO.

[Arthur Dent]

Basing my grade on someone else's effort is crap IMO.

Is this business school?

[Socnorb11]

I can see both sides of it. Yes, it sucks that you're dependent on others for the grade. However, it's pretty commonplace to be dependent upon others once you actually enter the work force. One of the hardest things for me over the years has been trying to get different personalities pulling in the same direction. It sucks, but I don't know that there's any way to avoid it.

[cardinalkarp]

Basing my grade on someone else's effort is crap IMO.

Is this business school?

Yeah

[sighyoung]

Is there any way to contact the professor, detail the work the two of you have done, and explain the steps you've taken to try to contact the other members? Or even to boot the other three out of the group?

This is one reason I don't assign group assignments.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Back in college, I was in this hydrology/hydraulics lab and the professor was known to be an [expletive]/good-but-tough depending on your view. The class had maybe 5-6 groups. When we got our first lab report back, the professor was in there to answer questions.

One lady raised her hand and said something along the lines of *[expletive] tone* our group spent at least 10 hours per person and we have 5 people, so that's over 50 hours spent on a report and we only got a 72 (out of 100)...do you think that's fair?

The prof walked over, looked at the report and said Well, despite devoting 50+ manhours to this project, you got the conclusion wrong. So, no. I'd say a 'C' for coming to the wrong conclusion is more than fair. Despite effort, anywhere in life, you must to be correct.

She started crying, but it was hilarious.

[cardinalkarp]

Is there any way to contact the professor, detail the work the two of you have done, and explain the steps you've taken to try to contact the other members? Or even to boot the other three out of the group?

This is one reason I don't assign group assignments.

Yeah, I kept all the emails of trying to communicate w/ the group. Ended up that the presentation went really well so I think we'll get a pretty good grade.

And the teacher handed out evaluation forms on the other group members so I was able to express my opinion a bit.