I hate it when people say “group work prepares you for real life”. Well, one too many times I worked in a group where I did all the work and/or placed trust in others to do their share only for them to back out at the last minute. So you know what I learned? You can’t trust anyone but yourself. If that is the message group work is supposed to convey about the real world, then its doing its job.

Sometimes I will want to willingly do all the work myself (and let the other members have full credit) because I know that they’d bring down the grade if I let them do anything. I remember a high school teacher getting made at me because I wanted to make sure a project was done correctly since I was forced to work with 2 students both of whom were repeating their junior year. I am sorry, but am I supposed to put my grade in the trust of 2 flunkies????

Now that I am in college, I still can’t believe how much professors like to make us do school work. It is not even realistically or logically possible considering no one has the time to get together (and professors almost never provide class time), the people are nothing but strangers, and the assignment is something I’d rather do myself. The ONLY reason any professor is doing projects at the collegiate level is because they are too lazy. I hate having teachers who think they are the only class you have and therefore have several precious hours to give every single day for their class.

Group projects are only useful for 2 reasons and 2 reasons ONLY. 1. if you don’t understand the assignment and never will, and 2. if you are not able to get a hold of necessary supplies to do it yourself. Other than that, why do with a group what you can do by yourself?

What I would like to know is how to ensure you land in a group with a high gpa, seeing that group work is unavoidable?

I hate knowing that my grade relies on someone else, and a lot of the time that person has lower standards. So rather than take the risk, I would much rather do it by myself. Group work just creates unneeded conflict within the class room. Also by just grading the group, many students get a free ride. That’s ok for them, maybe, yet it’s just not fair on those who did the work. As said before, another major issue is standards. My standard isn’t the same as others; and when those others have tried their personal best it feels terrible to have to tell them that it’s just not right. It then adds the extra work of editing their parts, yet attempting to interpret what they were trying to say.

In conclusion, group work simply doesn’t work. I hate doing all of the work, but I’m not about to let someone lower my grade.

As Set says, its one thing in the work field…but its a whole different animal in college/high school/middle school.

I have more horror stories than good.

I don’t like the grading system of failing all over the actions of one. I have had to countlessly on a whim do their parts for them as they either don’t show up or don’t do their part.

I find it to be an oxymoron that group work is supposed to help us. How can being docked a letter grade possibly help you at all? Especially if the only reason your grade isn’t what it should be is because your group didn’t do their parts they way they should have.

I am also an introvert which makes group work hard on that front alone. Not everyone wants to be group oriented in life. Not everyone needs the approval of others. Not everyone wants their life to depend on the actions of someone else.

Not everyone wants to be social.

It shouldn’t be forced because its not the only way to do things and its not the only way to live.

Also, not everyone will choose to work in a highly group-centric field.

There is a host of other problems with high stakes group work in college. Ultimately, we don’t have group tests, group GPAs, or group interviews. So it is unfair to force students into high stakes group work.

I see the value in group discussions that allow students to engage and exchange ideas. Also, low stakes group assignments if they are well designed can be valuable. But please do not force your students into high stakes group work. The best thing you can do for your students is to encourage them to stand or fall on the merits of their own work. That is the skill that will be most useful in the real world.

Bravo….no, it is not inherent to work as a group/team. It requires the acquisition of knowledge and skill and the application of behavior in the context of learning. Communication, negotiation, and conflict resolutions skills are bext learned through intentional curricular design. In the health sciences, these skills are essential to teaching diverse health professionals how to function as an interprofessional team for the safety of the patient and for effectiveness of care. In fact, I cannot think of a discipline that does not need these skills…..even academics have to serve on committees. It is always a challenge and requires more energy to place our personal agendas to oneside and incorporate the ideas of others as a collective thought into a product. Even those of us who love to work alone must admit…that is our interaction and exposure to others that fuels our thoughts.

Three principles emerging from the longitudinal study are validating students as knowers, situating learning in students’ own experience, and defining learning as mutually construing meaning.
Validating students as knowers means acknowledging their capacity to hold a point of view, recognizing their current understandings, and supporting them explaining their current views. Validation as a knower helps students view themselves as capable of learning and knowing, heightening their engagement in learning.
Situating learning in students’ own experience means using students’ experience, lives, and current knowledge as a starting point for learning. This places learning in a context students can readily understand. Situating learning in students’ experience can draw existing experiences into the learning context or create experiences within the learning context from which students can work. It also means connecting to students’ ways of making meaning.
Defining learning as mutually constructing meaning makes both teacher and student active players in learning. It suggests that the teacher and the students put their understandings together by exploring students’ experiences and views in the context of knowledge the teachers introduces. Together they construct knowledge that takes experience and evidence into account. Through this mutual construction, misunderstandings in previous knowledge are resolved; thus validating students as knowers does not mean endorsing misunderstandings. (Italics in the original.)

The first principle is about helping students understand themselves as learners. A key to this is to put their ideas into play with those of other students. You can’t know yourself as a learner without knowing both who you are and aren’t. Putting your ideas into play with those of others forces you to encounter multiple perspectives and understandings (even just different interpretations of the meaning of a given passage from the text). As learners encounter different interpretations of the key ideas of a course, they must move epistemologically toward more complex understandings of themselves and the content of our courses. Another key idea in the process of working out understanding of self is the building of trust and community in the group of learners. Group work often fails because we do not help students build trust. The semester system and the atomization of knowledge into courses and disciplines also undermine community.

The second principle relates to creating a context for buy-in. Learners resist new ideas for which they have no context or connection. They need to build on and make connections to what they already know. It is much easier to understand new ideas for which you can make connections to ideas with which you are comfortable. Often our biggest hurdle to engaging students is an assumption that what we want them to learn bears almost no relation to what they have learned before. The most successful teachers are ones who can help their students make connections. As students share their different experiences and understandings, they deepen knowledge of themselves as learners in the context of others as learners. In engaging in interactions centered on the course content learners who have different experience have to engage in higher level thinking and processing of ideas. This may not always be fun and comfortable but it will very likely be productive learning. Again, the semester system and faculty commitments to “covering all the material” work against using class time to develop the kinds of community and trust necessary to have productive group work. It is our fault, not theirs.

Finally the third principle moves us beyond the notion that there is only one correct understanding of the content we are teaching. Students test answers document that there are multiple understandings of the materials. We can agree that some of these student answers are better or more useful than other ones. We cannot dismiss the multiplicity. What we need to do is help students develop an understanding of that multiplicity so they can use reason and experience in the discipline to put different answers into a broader perspective. Learning includes developing the capacity to sift through perspectives and pick the ones that are most useful and consistent. We want to develop problem solvers not dictation robots. Because we value the product (the report) more than the learning process, we are less likely to put the energy into making the process a productive one.

Despite my personal bent, I always try to incorporate at least one collaborative, group assignment for each of my classes. From what I have read and experienced, collaborative work is key to learning, and I’ve seen some very successful projects, but these invariably require a high degree of instructor design and regulation.

Grading group projects is a special challenge. I’ve heard that if an instructor uses group grades rather than evaluating individual performance in a group, then it is best to have group members evaluate their teammates. This ensures a higher degree of individual accountability and makes assessment part of the learning process. Of course, the instructor must carefully design the assessment method too.