Thoughts on group projects

[Pegasus]

I'm looking for tips and suggestions for college students in managing group projects.  Both of my DDs are very frustrated with their group project assignments.  The elder DD just turned in a "group" paper for one course in which she generated 85% of the text and re-wrote the other 15% that was contributed by the other 3 group members because it was poorly written and included things like direct quotes with no citations.  Her texts and emails pleading for others to work on the paper went largely unacknowledged, with only one team member responding "Looks good to me!"  

Younger DD was assigned to a group for a final physics project. The groups are supposed to consist of 4 students but her group only has 3.  One of those 3 is flunking out and not planning to return next semester.  The other is usually a no-show when they arrange a meet up. So the work intended to be spread across four students is largely on her.

I know this is a common problem with group projects so I'm not sure why they are so routinely assigned.

[regentrude]

This is typical. If the group is more than two people, chances are one person will end up doing the lion's share of the work. Group projects teach one thing: if you want something done right, do it yourself and don't rely on anybody else. 

I do not assign group projects in any of my classes. I am frustrated when it comes to team projects in my instructor team because inevitably another person and I are thorough, and the others can't be bothered to follow through with detail. The only way to make team projects work is for the manager/instructor to assign clear responsibilities for individual parts of the project to each member of the team, so that nobody can hide behind the group. If I send something out for proofreading to the entire group, one person finds mistakes,  two reply "looks good", two don't bother at all. If I assign each person a specific section for which they are responsible, I get results.

Edited November 29, 2018 by regentrude

[Bootsie]

I found group projects problematic as a student, and I find them problematic as a professor.  

I would encourage a student to know what a professor is expecting and what the professor's policy regarding group projects are.  Some professors assign a group project, everyone will get the same grade, and the professor expects the group to manage any issues and doesn't want to hear about any issues.  If this is the situation, the only thing the student can do is to make sure that he or she puts in the time and effort so that the overall project is of the quality the student wants.  

Some professors ask students to rate the participation of other group members, and use that as a basis for assigning grades.  If that is the case, it is important that the student doing the work provides correct, honest feedback to the professor.  (I taught at a school that had really nice students--they would give every one on the team equal weighting of the work, except in extremely rare instances.  I had one situation where I knew a student was failing tests and not doing other work and was probably a drag on the group.  The student walked into class halfway through the group's presentation and just went up to the front and joined them, clueless about what the group was presenting.  But the other students provided evaluations stating that they all did equal work.)

Other professors will clearly delineate a process for handling slackers.  Most want to see that the group has tried to handle the situation first and then will meet with the group collectively to resolve the problem, perhaps removing the problem team member.

I have found that groups work best when you are at a school with a group/team culture and where cohorts move together through classes.  This helps scheduling group meetings, it increases group effectiveness as the group learns each others strengths and weaknesses, and it gives some incentive for students not to be slackers because they have a reputation to uphold for the next class and don't want to get left out of study sessions or not chosen for productive teams because of past behavior.   

[easypeasy]

ohhhhh, group projects! The worst!

DDs worst experience was freshman year in a group of 4, they divided their tasks evenly (three girls, one guy). The guy would do nothing except complain about anything/everything the girls said or did. He skipped out on their final group meeting, so the three girls cobbled together his part of the project.

Right before class (day of their presentation), he finally opened the google doc on his computer and said he hated it. He kept complaining and the girls basically told him to suck it up, buttercup because they were presenting that day. They were one of the last groups to go.

The girls stand up, their power point pops up on the screen - and it was DIFFERENT. The guy hops out of his chair, puts on his charismatic face, and starts talking to the class. He introduces their project, clicking through screens that he'd either A) created while sitting there in class or B) created earlier, but not bothered to share with the girls. Problem is... he just made up the facts to support his argument... AND HE CHANGED THEIR ARGUMENT! He argued the OTHER SIDE (which wasn't really arguable, since that ACTUAL facts supported the other side!). So when it came time for the girls' to present their parts (he'd left those slides alone...)... they felt like idiots because nothing they said went along with what he'd just talked about for 5 minutes and his data contradicted theirs.

🙄 

Luckily, since freshman year dd really hasn't had too many group projects. She is so grateful for that!

[J-rap]

Ugh, my kids rarely liked group projects, and there were sooo many of them in college.  

I think what you describe is very typical, and there really is no way around it.  Maybe that's part of the learning?  In life, you're forced to work with other people, and many will slack if they can.  If you want it done right, you either have to figure out how to motivate them, or you do it yourself.  

I have wondered why they're so commonly assigned in college though.  Does it make it easier on the professor?  Does the professor think it's a good learning experience, or does she think it's not as much work for students when several people are working together on one thing?

 

[regentrude]

2 hours ago, J-rap said:

I have wondered why they're so commonly assigned in college though.  Does it make it easier on the professor?  Does the professor think it's a good learning experience, or does she think it's not as much work for students when several people are working together on one thing?

If assigned well: because it allows students to work on a larger project than they could do by themselves. 

(But some are assigned because of misguided ideas about fostering teamwork and communication skills)

Group projects in upper level electives in the student's major usually work well, because the entire group is composed of students who have chosen to be there, are excited about the subject, and want to learn. Group projects for freshmen in mandatory intro classes sound awful.

Edited November 30, 2018 by regentrude

[RootAnn]

3 hours ago, regentrude said:

Group projects in upper level electives in the student's major usually work well, because the entire group is composed of students who have chosen to be there, are excited about the subject, and want to learn. Group projects for freshmen in mandatory intro classes sound awful.

I bolded the "usually." My senior level mechanical engineering final projects course had us work with a local company to solve one of their on-gping problems. Three people on the team but only two of us did the work. The third kid kept not showing up or doing his share of the work.  (We broke it up and each took what they were strongest in.) So, the other guy and I did his share and our shares and put together our presentation. His name was on the report, but he didn't do any of the actual work. I hate school-based group projects.

[Bootsie]

8 hours ago, J-rap said:

Ugh, my kids rarely liked group projects, and there were sooo many of them in college.  

I think what you describe is very typical, and there really is no way around it.  Maybe that's part of the learning?  In life, you're forced to work with other people, and many will slack if they can.  If you want it done right, you either have to figure out how to motivate them, or you do it yourself.  

I have wondered why they're so commonly assigned in college though.  Does it make it easier on the professor?  Does the professor think it's a good learning experience, or does she think it's not as much work for students when several people are working together on one thing?

 

They are commonly assigned for a number of reasons:

• Some students like them; It is a way to appeal to a number of different learning styles; students find a syllabus that lists three exams and quizzes boring; they would rather active learning with their peers and a group project looks like that
• In some situations it is the only way that makes sense in a class to get a required task done--if you have 50 students in a class that has "oral presentation skills" as a required component, having 10 presentations made by 5 person teams takes up a lot less class time than 50 presentations
• encourage students to share their experiences and build on each others' knowledge.  Those who are excelling in a subject get to learn by teaching their peers and those who are behind do better learning from a peer than the professor.
• it mimics work experience; it builds team work--a soft skill that employers say they want
• it reduces grading to grade 10 projects rather than 50 papers
• It is rewarded (or even required) by administration.  It shows up on reviews as "innovative teaching" 
• it is a way to motivate students; they are more likely to be motivated by their peers than by their professors
• certain types of learning occur when discussing issues with others (for example a business case analysis) and that discussion is more practical within a small group of students than the entire classroom
• having groups/teams builds in a safety net for some students; if a student must be absent from class, the student can rely on the team members to get caught up on the material

I am not saying that I agree with the above reasons (In fact, for many of them, I think there are serious problems, especially when it is not thought out well by the professor of why a group project is being assigned and why the learning will best take place in a group)

[G5052]

I personally abhor them.

Some years ago I was taking a class with other professors for an online teaching certification. My father passed away, and I was home dealing with that and my mother's dementia right when our final project was due. My mother had no internet because she forgot to pay the bill, and my aunt had only dial-up, so I had to go to a local library to work. I emailed the professor teaching it, and she said "no exceptions." And you guessed right, everyone in my group had excuses and the work wasn't at all coming together just four hours before it was due. I took a deep breath, made sure my aunt was staying with my mom for a few hours, and cranked out the last of the project. The library I was at closed an hour before it was due, so I kept checking while I pulled everything together. An hour before it was due, I emailed everyone that I had finished the work and uploaded it. And of course some were mad that I did that and some were apologetic. But I got an "A" in the course, and it worked out.

My older one is an upperclassman in a competitive business school that teaches with case studies, and nearly everything has group projects. He pulled together Powerpoints last night after working until 10pm for a 9am class because no one else was doing anything. He's exhausted today, but they did well.

You just have to deal with it. When I was in scientific research that sort of thing as the norm. Once I did all of the data analysis for a renowned scientist who didn't have time to finish the analysis for a paper he had to present, and I came up with a different conclusion! He was overseas, so I went to the group leader and showed him what happened. He told me to massage the data to match the desired conclusion. Being just out of college, I did, and then told them not to put my name on the paper. And the paper was submitted for peer review and presentation, and no one ever knew but me and the group leader. After that, I was very, very careful who I worked with.

[MerryAtHope]

You know, now that I think about it--I was never assigned a group project in college! I had several throughout my other school years though. I preferred ones where I worked with just one partner--I had a couple that were really good that way. Some larger group ones were discouraging when one or more members wouldn't participate--but I remember one larger group project that had the opposite problem. One kid just took over and did everything and wouldn't let anyone else have input. I guess he was so used to kids not participating that he just wasn't going to do the "group" thing. It was hard to fight that!

My oldest hasn't had any really bad experiences in college. His first "group" project they all chose groups & he asked to do it by himself & the teacher let him! He memorized his presentation and she said she'd never had anyone do that before. After that, he could do no wrong in that class! Another one was 4 people where they could never get a hold of the 4th member, but they were able to "assign" him some smaller tasks that he eventually completed so they got it to work out okay. Then he did several with one other student through a series of classes they did together, and it was quite entertaining to hear about some of their discussions! 

[iamonlyone]

22 hours ago, easypeasy said:

The girls stand up, their power point pops up on the screen - and it was DIFFERENT. The guy hops out of his chair, puts on his charismatic face, and starts talking to the class. He introduces their project, clicking through screens that he'd either A) created while sitting there in class or B) created earlier, but not bothered to share with the girls. Problem is... he just made up the facts to support his argument... AND HE CHANGED THEIR ARGUMENT! He argued the OTHER SIDE (which wasn't really arguable, since that ACTUAL facts supported the other side!). So when it came time for the girls' to present their parts (he'd left those slides alone...)... they felt like idiots because nothing they said went along with what he'd just talked about for 5 minutes and his data contradicted theirs.

🙄

Luckily, since freshman year dd really hasn't had too many group projects. She is so grateful for that!

That sounds truly awful—like a weird nightmare come to life!

[JanetC]

So, my college-freshman daughter just finished probably the most amazing group project experience she’s had in her academic life so far. It’s a student team project for the NASA L’Space program. (Https://Lspace.asu.edu)

One unique thing about this program versus any other class she’s done: The program taught project management alongside the technical curriculum. The students were expected to create project timelines, keep a running status board on Trello, and otherwise gain skills on how to work with each other well. They had multiple lectures on these things. The project itself was based on the NASA standards for a mission preliminary design review (PDR) so they were creating their project based on a well-established, highly-structured framework. NASA project managers talked to them about the different roles they would need to fill and how to do it.

There were a lot of things that could have gone wrong (like, her team had people in three different time zones, from colleges of different levels of selectivity) But overall it was a fantastic experience. The last page of their (75 page, group written, not going to get any academic credit) paper gushed about the friendships and the meaning they found in their teamwork experience.

I never had anything remotely like that when I was in college. 

L’Space is an ongoing program for STEM majors if you want to check it out at the link above. 

[Tree Frog]

10 hours ago, JanetC said:

So, my college-freshman daughter just finished probably the most amazing group project experience she’s had in her academic life so far. It’s a student team project for the NASA L’Space program. (Https://Lspace.asu.edu)

One unique thing about this program versus any other class she’s done: The program taught project management alongside the technical curriculum. The students were expected to create project timelines, keep a running status board on Trello, and otherwise gain skills on how to work with each other well. They had multiple lectures on these things. The project itself was based on the NASA standards for a mission preliminary design review (PDR) so they were creating their project based on a well-established, highly-structured framework. NASA project managers talked to them about the different roles they would need to fill and how to do it.

There were a lot of things that could have gone wrong (like, her team had people in three different time zones, from colleges of different levels of selectivity) But overall it was a fantastic experience. The last page of their (75 page, group written, not going to get any academic credit) paper gushed about the friendships and the meaning they found in their teamwork experience.

I never had anything remotely like that when I was in college. 

L’Space is an ongoing program for STEM majors if you want to check it out at the link above. 

Wow! Thanks for mentioning this! This sounds like something my ds would enjoy. He'll be a college freshman next year and would like to work for NASA. What were the time constraints for your dd as a freshman? How did the virtual learning occur? Any other details you can share? 

[Mbelle]

My college student is in a group project.  She's doing all the work.  One of them has not done a single thing so far.

We have found 2 issues with group projects.  One being the lazy and unmotivated who do nothing and the other being the know it all who is obnoxious and won't listen to the other capable person and want to make every decision. Then they complain about no one doing anything right! 

We despise group projects. 

[Farrar]

At one point, I went looking to see what studies had been done about group projects (though at the K12 level) and was shocked to find that most studies were positive about them - teachers reported positive outcomes (though I wonder if they were deluding themselves) but also in at least one I looked at, information was retained better by students. Also, students themselves reported liking them, which floored me. Who are these people? How is this possible? I mean, the dynamic is often different in schools than at the college level - more work is done during class time, for example. But still. I have had some good group experiences as a student - but the downsides nearly always outweighed the positive ones.

[JanetC]

8 hours ago, wilrunner said:

Wow! Thanks for mentioning this! This sounds like something my ds would enjoy. He'll be a college freshman next year and would like to work for NASA. What were the time constraints for your dd as a freshman? How did the virtual learning occur? Any other details you can share? 

 

The virtual learning environment was through zoom meetings. (If you’re not familiar, their website is zoom.us), plus email and file sharing sites. As I mentioned before, the group was required to do project tracking in Trello as well. They become familiar with several different tools.

The general class time is listed on the application (her class met on Tuesday afternoons), and then each PDR team sets their own meetings for the team work. 

The class schedule runs on ASU’s academic calendar — so for my kiddo it started two weeks before her regular classes started and ends just before “dead week” (the study break before finals). One of her team members has it ending during her finals week. It really just depends on what his and his college’s schedules are like. 

The project is a ton of work, but they try their best to balance team members among the different majors (engineers/scientists/math people) and the class levels from freshmen to seniors in each group. They also built the teams with a little extra wiggle room. DD’s team started with 9 and ended with 7 as two dropped out.

[Tree Frog]

2 minutes ago, JanetC said:

 

The virtual learning environment was through zoom meetings. (If you’re not familiar, their website is zoom.us), plus email and file sharing sites. As I mentioned before, the group was required to do project tracking in Trello as well. They become familiar with several different tools.

The general class time is listed on the application (her class met on Tuesday afternoons), and then each PDR team sets their own meetings for the team work. 

The class schedule runs on ASU’s academic calendar — so for my kiddo it started two weeks before her regular classes started and ends just before “dead week” (the study break before finals). One of her team members has it ending during her finals week. It really just depends on what his and his college’s schedules are like. 

The project is a ton of work, but they try their best to balance team members among the different majors (engineers/scientists/math people) and the class levels from freshmen to seniors in each group. They also built the teams with a little extra wiggle room. DD’s team started with 9 and ended with 7 as two dropped out.

Thank you very much!

[JanetC]

5 hours ago, Farrar said:

 Also, students themselves reported liking them, which floored me. Who are these people? How is this possible? 

 

I’d bet it’s the nature of studies. The study designers probably trained the teachers in the technique that they wanted to test, so the group projects probably had a lot of best practices built in. Moreover, the teachers knew that they were in a study and their students would be tested for retention (it’s hard to do a “control” in these sorts of things). So, there was definite incentive to make sure the kids learned from their experience. 

[easypeasy]

On 12/1/2018 at 9:05 PM, JanetC said:

The project is a ton of work, but they try their best to balance team members among the different majors (engineers/scientists/math people) and the class levels from freshmen to seniors in each group. They also built the teams with a little extra wiggle room. DD’s team started with 9 and ended with 7 as two dropped out.

 

Their website says science and engineering students only - but you mention "math people." I was going to forward the information to dd... but she's a math major, so I wasn't sure if I should bother passing it along to her?

[easypeasy]

On 12/1/2018 at 3:27 PM, Farrar said:

At one point, I went looking to see what studies had been done about group projects (though at the K12 level) and was shocked to find that most studies were positive about them - teachers reported positive outcomes (though I wonder if they were deluding themselves) but also in at least one I looked at, information was retained better by students. Also, students themselves reported liking them, which floored me. Who are these people? How is this possible? I mean, the dynamic is often different in schools than at the college level - more work is done during class time, for example. But still. I have had some good group experiences as a student - but the downsides nearly always outweighed the positive ones.

 

It'd be those kids who let everyone else do the work? Those kids who barely show up for anything and manage to get a Magical A on a big-points assignment for the semester? The kids who goof off, spending hours making a "pretty powerpoint," but not adding any of the actual data or doing any of the actual research?

That's who "those people" are.

Back when I was in high school, our teachers usually assigned our groups. It never failed that I was put into a group of four - three of them being "those people." They had a great time! They caught up on each other's social lives, shot spitballs at people at other tables, laughed at any upper-level vocabulary or science word that resembled a "dirty word." They ESPECIALLY loved when they were assigned to a group project with me! Because a beautifully completed project would magically appear on the due date (usually complete with a script for them if we had to present the project). We'd usually get the highest grade in the class and have no revisions to do (the teachers would often assign revisions to teams who didn't achieve all the checkpoints on their project, giving them another shot to gain back some of the lost points).

The teachers were fully aware of this dynamic - many of them were tough graders who knew those kids were not going to get a 99% on anything. And yet... nothing was ever said or done. Not one teacher divided our grades into how much work any one person put in to it (and sometimes I even had to fake the other kids' handwriting because the teacher would have specifically said that all four people needed to contribute their notes and rough drafts). They certainly knew when Timmy or Steffie suddenly turned in 10 pages of notes that something was not right. I could see if it I were a super-inspirational social butterfly who somehow inspired these kids to greatness... but no. I was the surly blonde shooting death-glares at everyone else in the class. 😣 😂

Oh, the worst was when I was in a coach's class! The number of nearly-failing football players I was "randomly assigned' to be in groups with!!! OMGosh! LOLOL

I'm sure they tell their kids all about how awesome group projects are! 🙄

#groupprojectPTSD #stillhaveissues 🙃🤣

Edited December 3, 2018 by easypeasy

[JanetC]

10 hours ago, easypeasy said:

Their website says science and engineering students only - but you mention "math people." I was going to forward the information to dd... but she's a math major, so I wasn't sure if I should bother passing it along to her?

 

They're looking for the future NASA workforce type people, so I'm guessing data analysts/stats/computer math, not theoretical math. There were some math people in the program, but I do not know if they were double-majors with something else.

Best to ask the program manager directly if she's not sure she's a fit.

Edited December 3, 2018 by JanetC