In a major like communication, where our grades rely much less on quizzes, tests and exams, we are required to complete a lot of projects. I fully understand the benefit of projects. They allow us to actually use what we’ve learned and they give us an end product that can be saved and used as portfolio material or examples for future endeavors.
However, a solo is one thing, a group project is something completely different. I have noticed recently that I have group projects going on in almost all of my classes. In some classes, I am in more than one group and working on several different assignments.
I fully understand how group projects can be beneficial in some cases. Collaboration is important because it allows students to learn from each other and mimics the world we will be walking into once we graduate, a world where we will have to be constantly working with and relying on other people.
But I think I speak for a lot of college students when I say that I hate group projects. Perhaps this is just a personal character flaw, but I get so much more stressed out and frustrated when working in a group. Over the past few weeks, I have come up with a few reasons why group projects get under my skin.
Someone is always completing the bulk of the work. Even if everyone had a part in the presentation or everyone’s name appeared on the report…I repeat, one person probably did the bulk of the work.
Unfortunately, if you are a good student and you care a lot about your grades, that person is going to be you, simply because you refuse to fail. The worst part is, early on in your interaction with your group, the lazier members of the group will identify the hard workers and exploit them. And sometimes you have a few members who are just shy and don’t speak up so they end up taking on less responsibility as well.
And to top it all off, everyone is going to get the grade that only one or two people really worked for. Now this is not always the case, but I find it to be true more often than not.
I tend to be a pretty proactive student when it comes to group projects. I understand that whatever my group produces reflects me, whether I took part in it or not, and that my grade will suffer if the final product is not on par with the expectations of the professor. I am normally more than willing to take the lead in a project or help the group get organized, but I do not like it when other members use my willingness as an excuse to sit there and do nothing.
So, as an experiment, I decided to see what would happen if I sat back and did nothing. My professor assigned a short, in-class, group project that ended in a brief presentation to the whole class.
We had about forty five minutes to do some research and put together a presentation. As communication majors, we’re used to fast research and presenting so we have been prepared to handle this type of assignment.
I decided to sit in my chair and say nothing until I was asked to do something by another group member. And that is exactly what I did. I sat there as other group members pretended to read through the text to find information and clearly waited for me to start typing things, gathering information and telling them what to say when we get up to present.
I was not surprised to discover that not much work got done and, as time began to tick away, our group had just about nothing to say to the rest of the class regarding our topic.
As I noticed that we had just about twenty minutes left, I started to panic a little. I had never really gotten up in front of a class with nothing prepared. So the perfectionist in me began feverishly researching and typing and delegating until we had at least something to say.
Some may call it leadership, but I think that’s pretty unfair. I know a lot of other students that take on that same role in group projects time and time again and, unfortunately, those students are rarely paired up.
So my final questions are as follows…do professors notice this trend? When a group gets up to present a project, can a professor tell who carried most of the work on their shoulders? If so, does everyone deserve the same grade? Are group projects really fair?
Bridget Goedke
Senior Viewpoints Editor