I hate group projects.

[smithy_2045]

Sounds like it's your own fault for working as 5 individuals, instead of as one group.

 

[Stall]

No, I'm sorry. This is wrong. I asked them to make sure it was 4 minutes. They did not. We couldn't rehearse together because of scheduling, especially one person who had two jobs (the other person who didn't get to speak). Nor should we need to, it's far easier to rehearse your part by yourself. Anyone else added would have made it extraneous.

They clearly didn't rehearse at all, if they had they would have noticed. I did rehearse. They made mistakes on the project, my only mistake was overestimating their competence and work ethic. Thus I come here to rant. You've never complained about idiots at work?

I suppose I could have spent hours with each person making sure their presentation was excellent, but I really shouldn't have to. I don't expect anyone to make each baby-step with me, not in a 300 class in college. Honestly, if they tried, I would get annoyed. I've done dozens of presentations by this point. I suppose it's the chef's fault if the cook doesn't know how to boil water?

And please, keep your harsh language in its holster. You might frighten the children.

Whatever you need to tell yourself man. If you really have to sit around and pass off all the blame, then go for it. But at the end of the day, you are at fault as well. When a group project fails, it's everyone's fault. You could have taken the initiative and asked them to rehearse together. But you didn't. You didn't have to sit around and baby them like children. All you had to do is say "Hey guys! We really need to rehearse this to get a good grade! When can we meet?". You weren't willing to take that initiative, or assumed you didn't have to, and now you are paying the price.

You did make another mistake: it was not working as a group in a group project. The kind of attitude you are displaying now will cost you promotions and raises in the real world. Hell, it might even cost you a job. You should work on fixing your disdain for working as a group and try to learn from this experience instead learning this the EVEN HARDER way when you get a job as a professional.

 

[Smooth Operator]

They are group projects for a reason, it's not every man for himself, you all should have get together and go through the stuff you all had to see how it fits... the real challenge in these is to coordinate with everyone.

Most jobs will need a group effort, and if you learn to coordinate groups beforehand you have a very high chance of quick progression to higher positions so try to pay attention.
And if that doesn't sell it let me put it like this, ladies love the leaders

 

[similar.squirrel]

They are necessary to some extent in almost every career. That is why they make you do them in college.

 

[evenest]

No, I'm sorry. This is wrong. I asked them to make sure it was 4 minutes. They did not. We couldn't rehearse together because of scheduling, especially one person who had two jobs (the other person who didn't get to speak). Nor should we need to, it's far easier to rehearse your part by yourself. Anyone else added would have made it extraneous.

They clearly didn't rehearse at all, if they had they would have noticed. I did rehearse. They made mistakes on the project, my only mistake was overestimating their competence and work ethic. Thus I come here to rant. You've never complained about idiots at work?

I suppose I could have spent hours with each person making sure their presentation was excellent, but I really shouldn't have to. I don't expect anyone to make each baby-step with me, not in a 300 class in college. Honestly, if they tried, I would get annoyed. I've done dozens of presentations by this point. I suppose it's the chef's fault if the cook doesn't know how to boil water?

There are so many posts in this thread that I want to respond to, but I don't have the time, nor do I think it would be appropriate. As a former instructor, we don't assign group projects to torment students. We were all students at one point. If your instructor models the class and projects on what types of projects students will be doing once they've graduated, you should be thankful that you're being given a space to find out just how badly things can go without the ramification of losing the job.

Rehearsal isn't just so that you can remember your part and be more comfortable with what you are doing, it is (among other things) designed to familiarize the entire group with the complete project so that the individual members can tailor their respective parts to compliment one another. That woman who knew everything and liked to talk probably covered a great deal of what the other speakers were going to be covering. If that's the case, she might have realized it during rehearsal and been able to control herself. If not, the group could have recognized that she should have gone last as a way to sum up what the other members touched upon. You could have critiqued one another and made suggestion on how to improve upon the entire project instead of viewing each others' work as unconnected.

It is each members job to see that the group succeeds in its presentation. To put blame on the "leader" doesn't begin to address the problem. Imagine if this were a presentation for a company that your company wanted to work with. Going over the time permitted, looking disjointed and disconnected with one another would have been disastrous. Having three of the four members on the team looking sloppy would not have earned you the job/contract you were looking for. As a group, the company would have failed, even if one of its members looked brilliant while doing it.

Few jobs have people working by themselves. Even my current job where I am the only paid employee, I still rely on the volunteer membership to help me do my job. Ultimately, if those people didn't do what they were asked for, it would still be me who looked like I had failed. And to touch on the chef analogy, it may not be the chef's fault that the cook can't boil water, but if the chef cannot then make the proper dish in a way that pleases the patron (because the cook failed to do something), that chef and his restaurant are soon going to be without patrons. It would behoove that person to make sure those around him succeed so that he succeeds.

I get the distinct impression that you didn't much buy into the group project either. You wanted to do your individual part and get out. It sounds a great deal like each of you failed one another.

 

[evenest]

It's not that you're alone, it's that educators like to pretend that students who work best alone don't exist. As far as I can tell, about 90% of what they teach prospective teachers about how to do things in class is stuff that was thought up by some psychologist who never actually worked with students, and hasn't been in a classroom since getting that PhD. There is supposed to be some amount of research that shows that working in groups benefits all students, when in reality it's usually one student who takes it seriously and does all of the work, while the rest of them just sit their, thankful that somebody else is doing the work.

You make several assertions here that are troubling. Educators are never that far from their own classwork. They constantly attend lectures and conferences, interact with other educators, etc.

Your claim that they got the "stuff that was thought up by some psychologist who never actually worked with students" is also troubling in that it undercuts a process that does occur and assumes that teachers, like the students you hold up as lazy and/or incompetent, are simply looking to give you busy work without any purpose behind it. First off, class pedagogy is a serious and ever evolving science, and I can think of no one in academia who would work from a premise that doesn't have some foundation of research behind it.

It seems to me that the example you hold up at the end as the rule of all group projects suggests that the individual who did all the work while the others sat on their asses should have taken steps to remedy the problem before the day of the presentation. It may be that the professor in your example didn't take steps to ensure accountability among the project members; all I can say to that is, in my experience of teaching for ten years and being a student for almost fifteen-years, teachers have been around the block a few times and have set up a process that far too many students do not pursue (other than coming to the teacher on the day of the project to air their grievances.

I am sorry that you and many more like you see classroom projects as something designed to annoy the hell out of you and that serve no purpose. It is a shame, and perhaps educators need to do a better job of underpinning their assignments with a real-world antecedent. But my experience suggests to me that it doesn't matter if no one is willing to listen to it. How can you add something to a cup that is already full?

 

[Esotera]

University labs are terrible, it's partnered work, so you're stuck with someone who either doesn't understand english very well, hasn't read the practical brief, or is hungover/still drunk. Or more typically, a combination of all three.

Group projects can work if it's a good group, just the majority of the time it isn't.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

It's not that you're alone, it's that educators like to pretend that students who work best alone don't exist. As far as I can tell, about 90% of what they teach prospective teachers about how to do things in class is stuff that was thought up by some psychologist who never actually worked with students, and hasn't been in a classroom since getting that PhD. There is supposed to be some amount of research that shows that working in groups benefits all students, when in reality it's usually one student who takes it seriously and does all of the work, while the rest of them just sit their, thankful that somebody else is doing the work.

You make several assertions here that are troubling. Educators are never that far from their own classwork. They constantly attend lectures and conferences, interact with other educators, etc.

Your claim that they got the "stuff that was thought up by some psychologist who never actually worked with students" is also troubling in that it undercuts a process that does occur and assumes that teachers, like the students you hold up as lazy and/or incompetent, are simply looking to give you busy work without any purpose behind it. First off, class pedagogy is a serious and ever evolving science, and I can think of no one in academia who would work from a premise that doesn't have some foundation of research behind it.

It seems to me that the example you hold up at the end as the rule of all group projects suggests that the individual who did all the work while the others sat on their asses should have taken steps to remedy the problem before the day of the presentation. It may be that the professor in your example didn't take steps to ensure accountability among the project members; all I can say to that is, in my experience of teaching for ten years and being a student for almost fifteen-years, teachers have been around the block a few times and have set up a process that far too many students do not pursue (other than coming to the teacher on the day of the project to air their grievances.

I am sorry that you and many more like you see classroom projects as something designed to annoy the hell out of you and that serve no purpose. It is a shame, and perhaps educators need to do a better job of underpinning their assignments with a real-world antecedent. But my experience suggests to me that it doesn't matter if no one is willing to listen to it. How can you add something to a cup that is already full?

Hey, that's my experience as a senior in an education department. Pedagogy is so heavily based on fads that it's not even funny. They teach us so little that is actually useful in working with kids, and so much that some bureaucrat somewhere thought was a good idea, that I was seriously considering dropping the program until my microteach finally put me in an actual classroom.

Edit: Basically, there's research, and there's research. Education is the only profession that I know of that goes back to ancient times and still gets complete paradigm shifts every 10 years or so. Other professions do not change how they do things as quickly or to as great a degree as educators do; imagine if Lawyers came up with an entirely new form of logic every 10 or 20 years -- yes, forget laws, we're talking the basic premises you need to read them here -- that's pretty much what teachers do. When you've got a profession that, in a sense goes back to the dawn of time, and has a definite tradition going back at least to Ancient Greece, ordinarily you'd see a bit more stability.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

edit: double post due to lag

 

[Levethian]

Totally agree with OP. Emerged after 5 years studying architecture, and I can safely say that group projects can go and fek themselves.

The university group-work dynamic bears no resemblance to office teamwork in practice, so is staggeringly useless.

Your team-mates screwed up. Each individual team member should have rehearsed their 4 minute part of their presentation.
Your professors screwed up. They should have enforced a time limit on each member.

Presumably you were graded as a group, so should be fine in the end.

 

[Dr.Fantastic]

I hate group projects. I always get paired up with either the Clueless idiot, Procrastinator, Dumb Hot chick, and the "Do all the work or I punch you in the face" Guy.
I RARELY get a good partner.

One shitty group project sticks in my mind. We had to do a history project 6th grade where A greek myth was Given. I was doing the visuals( Had to make a board game based off the myths). I busted my ass to make it look perfect since the project counted for half of your grade(I had a C in history at the time). I spent a good 7 hours on the project(We were given a week). My partner was given the two page essay since my handwriting was and is shitty. So the date comes, I had my portion but did he have the essay? NO HE FUCKING DIDNT! NOT EVEN A SINGLE GODDAMN SENTENCE READY! I told my teacher and she told me that "I was responsible for him not having the essay, since I was his partner". So instead of getting A's and B's, I got an F. 4 A's, 3 B's, and an F.

Fuck Group projects.

 

[JoJo]

Listen, there's a number of issues with rehearsing.

1. I'm not the leader.
2. They were told what was needed (4 minutes) and they all agreed.
3. Everyone has to schedule around work and school, we were lucky there was time to meet at all.
4. We had 9 days to do this project.

So no, it's not my fault. I'm not their mother. Moreover, for a project like this you don't need everyone to meet up. Coordination is hardly the issue when you just need a sequence of people to say their 4 minute sections. You just need people to know their 4 minutes (they said they all did). Is it my fault that my teammates were liars?

Just because you aren't the leader doesn't mean you can't take control or help organise the group. I understand this situation was frustrating but it really is your entire group's (including you) fault for not rehearsing even once. I also don't understand why you let your group members take so long, I would have made angry gestures at them once they had gone over the time limit until they sped up or sat down.

I actually really enjoy group work as I like taking control and making sure the group keeps to schedule, plus it means I can do the parts which interest me and I'm good at. I don't know why people don't like working in groups, it can be the most fun kind of work if you do it right.

 

[SirDoom]

Group projects almost always go badly with me, for various reasons.

Four standard cases.

1- I'm the only interest one, everyone else doesn't care. (I do all the work)
2- Everyone else is more interested than me, and I can't get a word in edgewise (I do little of the work)
3- Nobody cares, really. (We all do an equal share of the work, but the end result sucks.)
4- It actually works!

Of the four, I rarely see that last one. Even the most successful lab I've been in was basically just a "Ok, everyone has the basic numbers. Now go do the calculations on your own- I'm going to lunch." In other words the group is disbanded as soon as everyone has the bare minimum they need for their own individual reports.

Then you have the work speed differences. If you're given one week to do a project, you'll always have the guy who wants to meet up on day 2 of 7 with the finished product ready for team review, the guy who won't do his part until an hour before the actual presentation, and the guy who has a combination of 20+ credit hours of classes, a full time job, and 2 sports taking up all his free time.

To top it all off, style is a big factor as well. It's rare to see a "You do chapter 1, I'll do 2, and he can do 3" situation work out, as the sections won't blend together as they would if it was done by one person.

So, in my mind, group projects are terrible. Unless you get a group of people who have compatible schedules, who can work well together, and who all work at roughly the same speed, you'll end up with a messy thrown-together end result that is worse that what any one of you could have made on your own.

 

[Stall]

It's not that you're alone, it's that educators like to pretend that students who work best alone don't exist.

Or maybe instructors assign group projects because they know that's how the real world works -_-. Working well alone is a worthless skill in the long run, since the number of jobs where you effectively work by yourself are few and far in between. Working with other people is an essential skill in EVERY profession, hence is why instructors assign group projects: so you can LEARN to work with other people.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

It's not that you're alone, it's that educators like to pretend that students who work best alone don't exist.

Or maybe instructors assign group projects because they know that's how the real world works -_-. Working well alone is a worthless skill in the long run, since the number of jobs where you effectively work by yourself are few and far in between. Working with other people is an essential skill in EVERY profession, hence is why instructors assign group projects: so you can LEARN to work with other people.

No, it's literally because there's research that shows that students learn better in groups. I'm an ed major, and we talk about this sort of thing all the time.

 

[Random Encounter]

Usually the complaints about group projects are how their team didn't finish the project in time or some members half assed their part of the assignment.

As bad as I am when it comes to assignments, I still prefer to work by myself.

 

[james0192]

quite clearly the best way to do with a group presentation is do all of it yourself!
Thats what I always did in school, i used to write it all up, give it to the others before its got to be presented and then let them present it. Then again my teachers didn't mind that not everyone presented.
I hate it when everyone is made to present a presentation. It is suposedly to prove that you're all working as a team but that makes no sense to me as in a team everyone plays a different role - you can still have worked perfectly well as a team even if you don't all present, in fact if it's done because one person isn't very good at presenting in front of people then I'd say it show very well that you've worked as a group as you've all worked out your strengths and weaknesses and played to your strengths!
In school group presentations I was involved in went like this:
we split it up into sections
everyone researched those sections and made notes
those notes were given to me (at which point I ignored what they gave me and did it all myself. though i didn't tell them that!)
I wrote it all up, most people didn't write to the standards I liked
It was given to the others who then presented it. I'd probably click the button if it was a powerpoint.

 

[Esotera]

University labs are terrible, it's partnered work, so you're stuck with someone who either doesn't understand english very well, hasn't read the practical brief, or is hungover/still drunk. Or more typically, a combination of all three.

You think that doesn't happen in the "real world"? It's a great lesson for you to learn, you need to figure out how to work within those situations.

I know how to work in these situations well enough and accept that they will happen, it's just annoying that some people aren't prepared or dedicated to something they've deemed important (especially if it happens to you the majority of the time).

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

I never liked group assignments. Mostly because I was always the shy kid at the back of the class, and constantly ended up in groups with students who hadn't paid attention in class, and I ended up having to pick up the slack because I was the only one who actually knew what we were doing a project on.

In your case, I probably would have been that "14 minutes, stammering speaker" that annoyed you so much. I'm better now, due to a couple of semesters taking drama, but back then, I was horribly shy.

 

[AGramatikas]

I hear ya!

For me, going back to school to get my MBA was exciting--after a year of job searching, I was enthusiastic about getting the chance to really appreciate this education opportunity. However, after my first week of classes, I immediately had reservations. Every single one of my teachers had assigned us a group project, and I was flooded with the instant disdain for group projects that I had accumulated in undergrad.

Now, the upside to grad school: we have classes with a lot of the same people; I was able to clench a group that transcended across all three of my group projects; and most importantly, a girl named Brenna was in these groups. Brenna suggested that we use an online source called Group Table. She sent us an e-vite through the site, set up our account and joined the three separate groups that she had set up for each class. From here, we were able to upload and revise all of our documents in our "Binder," schedule due dates and tasks in our "Calendar," and collaborate virtually via live chat on the site.

We too had a power point project similar to yours--20mins divided among four people in the group. The one difference, we had this site to share each of our slides for each of us to review/revise and add to. We ended up getting the highest grade in the class, due to our ability to present a cohesive project that didn't appear to be done separately.

I swear by this site and highly recommend it for any future projects you may have.
www.grouptable.com