When you were in school, were group projects beneficial?

[FO4UR]

Mostly no, sometimes yes.

 

I think the tasks have to be clearly defined and the teacher has to give grades based upon individual contribution and not just a blanket grade for the whole group. I had a few projects where MY grade was a composite of the overall group grade + my personal contribution + an evaluation of my peers. Those were effective imho.

 

I have been the "smart quiet" kid if FAR too many projects...:glare:

[elise1mds]

If I got to choose my partners, I like group projects. I always chose people who had the same expectations and me. If the group was random...nope!

 

This is pretty much true. I really didn't like being paired up/in a group with the kids in the class who weren't doing as well. I actually did have that Spanish teacher who paired us up for conjugating verbs. He always stuck me with the guy who was truant half the time. We had absolutely NOTHING to say to one another, so we'd only act like we were working when the teacher got close.

 

The only time a group project really worked for me was for cooking in home ec my freshman year of high school. I got paired up with two guys who hated each other's guts and one guy who was the slacker. The slacker guy refused to do anything, and since he was sitting at his table instead of being in the kitchen, it was pretty obvious. We talked to the teacher, and she made sure we knew that he couldn't bring down our grade. The other two guys did anything I said as long as they didn't have to talk to each other in the process. Did I mention I was a skinny blonde with hair down to my butt? :lol: To this day, if you mention one to the other, they growl. It's pretty funny.

[eternalknot]

Well, I never liked them, but they probably were somewhat beneficial at times. There are interpersonal skills that you develop when working with others, that you can't really develop on your own. I don't think the grading is usually fair *at all,* because normally one or two people are doing all the work for everyone, and if someone is assigned a portion and doesn't do it well, then everyone suffers... so I don't like that part of it at all. But overall, I do think that occasional group projects do teach some valuable things about working with people.

 

 

:iagree:

 

I learned a lot from group projects, particularly interpersonal skills. They definitely helped me prepare for 'the real world' work force, at a time when the stakes were so much lower (even if they didn't seem lower at the time). And even though I'm one of eight kids, I think group projects helped me to learn how to navigate different personalities - people whom I didn't have the advantage of being familiar with. This, too, helped me professionally but more importantly - it helped me in my personal life.

 

I usually did the bulk of the work when I was in groups. I noticed, but it didn't always bother me because I'm a control freak (in recovery!) so getting paired with slackers wasn't such a bad thing.

 

The job I'm in now is essentially one big team project. There are definitely people that don't do well in this dynamic, but I'm not sure an excess of group projects would have helped them. Seems to be a personality quirk more than anything LOL. As for me, my experience with group projects has helped me learn to adapt some of my own quirks - and to embrace others.

[KidsHappen]

Yeah, for the people who didn't do a darn thing. Once I got out into the real world, I learned to fire them post haste. :D

[lgm]

The group projects in high school for me were:

home ec

band

 

That's it. Nothing academically was done in small group. Most classes were taught in large group format where the teacher was the group leader if there was going to be discussion of the lecture points.

 

Were they beneficial? Yes, it showed me where my classmates motivation came from. This came in handy in later years in managing at work. It also showed me how a small unit can affect a bigger unit. Yes, one group of bad apples or untrained people can bring down the whole team.

 

I am grateful though that my academics weren't subject to other people's lack of participation or ignorance. Here the group projects are mostly in social studies; they won't change a student's quarter grade very much..but for some students it's enough that they do miss out on NHS or NJSH if they are assigned partners that do nothing or those with big egos that missed the point& took over. Extra credit usually can make up for that.