Comments on: working in a group

By: RB

RB — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 13:56:24 +0000

During my MBA program at GSU we had one group project like yours. The guy barely delivered a first draft of his part, and it was completely unrelated to the work the rest of us did. He then started so late on his other assignment that we did it without him. Fortunately we all had a chance to “grade” our group members; I hope he got an F on that project.
Worse, though, was the group project in our marketing class. The other students and the professor didn’t really get what we were trying to sell; we got a B on the project. The next semester a friend told me that our project was held up as the example of a great project! WTF!?!?!?!

By: Doug

Doug — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 11:35:48 +0000

I hate group projects. I am always nervous about getting it done so I start work early, and you have the procrastinators that hold everything until the end so you end up doing more than your share because you are afraid it wont get done. Sigh

By: j. brotherlove

j. brotherlove — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 23:02:56 +0000

I abhor group projects in school. They always do more than my share of the work (excuse me for wanted to get an ‘A’) and there’s that one person who gets carried through.

I’ve always felt teaches assigned group projects because it cuts down on the amount of work they have to grade.

By: Sean

Sean — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 22:52:33 +0000

Hi Duane-

All I can say is…get used to it! There will be group projects a’plenty in nursing school. Luckily, you won’t be in a virtual classroom setting. You’ll get to feel people out before commiting to working with them. I won’t team up with slackers. Fortunately, those are rare in program.

Oh, and pay attention. I took a year of stats for my BSBA degree thinking I would never use it again. Wrong! Wait ’til you take nursing research as part of your BSN program. Of course, I’m trying to remember the courses I took twenty years ago. At least it’ll be fresh in your head when you go for the BSN.

By: mingaling

mingaling — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 22:36:21 +0000

When I taught, I only assigned group projects when I decided the class was annoying me.

Karma works in many ways

By: duane

duane — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 22:09:09 +0000

Dave, I totally hear what you are saying, and to some degree, we tried that. Unfortunately, neither of them did what they were supposed to do, and in the end, I had to do the entire project alone. From them, I got maybe a page’s worth of text, and all in all, the project ended up being 8 pages long with graphs.

Not happy. I am going to say something to the professor, so that I don’t have to work with at least the “assumer” again.

By: dpb

dpb — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 21:54:56 +0000

The majority of my college career consisted of night classes at State and almost all my classes had at least one group project. Most of my classmates, like myself, were taking night classes because we worked during the day. Needless to say, none of us had too much time to meet. I experienced what you mentioned on just about every project I had.

What I finally started doing was, as soon as a projected was assigned, I would break it into as many logical pieces as possible. I would then send an email to the group asking people which part they wanted to tackle. I would then have them send me what they did and compile it into the final project.

There were always plenty of slackers and over-achievers to deal with but this worked for me pretty well.

By: Audacity

Audacity — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 21:29:02 +0000

In law school, one professor asked whether we wanted to work in groups or alone. He left the room to allow us to discuss. I usually vote to work alone because I HATE pulling other people’s loads. In the end, the class voted to work in groups.