There are no words in the English language that make me rip my headphones off and quit my Zoom app faster than “group project”. The words “group” and “project” continue their reign on my brain’s billboard chart of most hated words, followed by: experience, essay, word count, pages, multi-faceted, lucrative, deadline and so on. Anyway, today I’m here to discuss the fear-inducing model of the group project that has traumatized generations of students. We all have an instinctive, panicked impulse to drop a course at the sight of “Group Project – 35%” on the outline.
There has never been a lack of protest from students against all the plot-holes of this model. All the tweets and memes point to one blatant revelation that is somehow invisible to every professor – group projects RARELY work. If a pandemic couldn’t save us from them, I’ve lost all hope in my campaign of their abolishment. However, if there’s one thing the past year has taught us all, it’s how to make do with a bad situation. So, here’s my little proposal to help ease the dreaded group project.
- Acknowledge The Last Minute Submission
-
Everyone knows that when briefing the project, profs either tell you that you can come report the classic “useless” member to them and they’ll handle it, or that you simply have to deal with it. But the situation they don’t even realize exists is the last minute submission! It’s the night before the presentation when you go to bed peacefully, despite that one member not completing their part. All because the professor said they’ll handle it. But then you wake up to find out your nightmares can’t be ended by an alarm. This member has submitted something so low-quality at 3AM that you have no time to fix it and no option but to present! As a professor, I’d honestly give this a bigger penalty than I would to a student with no contribution at all. It drags down every other member’s mark and leaves them with no way to salvage the good marks they were hoping to get!
- Grant The Ability to Simply “Fire” Members
-
Profs and their scripts are more predictable to us than Marvel movies. Every student has heard the iconic “this is what it’s like in real life” speech, as a defense of group projects. While it is absolutely correct that one day we’ll have to deal with all kinds of coworkers, the real world has this other phenomenon called firing. If students really should be facing the pressures of the real world in educational institutions, there should be fair rules. As a prof I would literally grant my students the ability to submit “firing proposals” for group members not carrying their weight. As long as the reasons are plausible, and the fired student doesn’t have a strong defense, they’re welcome to complete an independent version of the project! If we want to get really detailed, I think a “one-time warning” system could be a useful tool to jumpstart some contribution too!
- Grant The Ability to Always Pick Your Own Members
-
Here’s another popular defense that gets overused in the first year of university: how premade groups help students “meet new people”. Recently, I, a second year social life-deprived student, got my one friend to be in a group with me, who was then able to get another, who got another. And voila! A group full of people introduced to each other! But at the same time, the members were picked by one another out of trust, not luck. Additionally, I have also been in classes where students were assigned the same group for multiple projects! And I have yet to hear a defense for this conveniently multiplied catastrophe. Thus, if I were a professor, everyone would be free to choose their own group unless they need help finding members. It is a simple model that is already in use, but in my opinion needs to become a requirement.
To conclude, there are enough unavoidable challenges presented by group projects such as scheduling meetings, making agreed-upon decisions, and the fair division of work. And I do agree that these experiences are important for teaching us real-life skills like leadership and collaboration. However, there are certain rules in place that add unnecessary levels of stress to already exhausted university students. Therefore it’s time to introduce some much-needed changes to the group project model that we’ve been working with for generations!