Group projects aren’t for college

I’ve never had much luck with group projects.

Thinking back over the countless dioramas, science experiments, written reports and Powerpoint projects that I have completed in group assignments leaves me feeling bitter. In fifth grade, my group had to perform a scene from a play and two people forgot to memorize their lines. Then there was the 10th grade film project that I had to stay up all night editing after my teammates went home.

The list goes on: book reports where some students barely skimmed Sparknotes and a math assignment where four students and I met up at a boy’s house. While the girls in the group researched famous mathematicians, the boys in the group honed their video game skills, raving about the host’s extensive collection of Nintendo games. I will also never forget the mousetrap race car project that cost me and my teammates almost $30 and still ended up looking like a heap of balsa wood and duct tape. Although other groups included students who built robots for fun on the weekends, our group took at least an hour just to find the hardware store.

I thought that the tedious and rarely-equal work put into group projects would finally be over when I came to college. I was, sadly, mistaken.

The rationale behind making students work in groups is logical. Teachers hope that group projects will prepare students for future life situations where they will have to work with others effectively. Once students have reached college, however, they can benefit more from using their people skills in the real-life situations that they’ve prepared for.

Theoretically, students are also able to collaborate and learn more together than they would alone. In reality, though, this is rarely the case.

Because of busy schedules, fast-approaching deadlines and the sheer amount of work dumped on students, group members often choose to divide up the project tasks. This eliminates the collaborative aspect of the project altogether.

Even if the students do meet up to complete an assignment, the grading of group projects often breeds resentment within the group, counteracting the teamwork spirit. If the team is given one grade for the whole group, then some team members invariably end up doing more work than others. Whereas some people in the group might be perfectly happy getting a “C,” others might be satisfied with nothing less than an “A.” The overachiever will put in the extra work to make the project perfect, and the rest of the group members will get the good grade for free.

On the other hand, grading group members individually is far from a flawless system. Group members are left with the feeling that they are competing with each other, hardly cultivating a sense of teamwork. In a debate project I had during winter quarter, group members from another team actually started arguing with each other about who got to talk the most in the limited amount of time. Grading in that situation, where one student’s potential grade improvement leads to another’s loss, is unfair.

Because of the challenges and inconveniences associated with group projects, professors should not give graded group assignments. To reap the benefits of collaborative group learning, students should have more opportunities for peer review and collaborative questions in discussion sections. Unfortunately, there is no denying that attaching a grade to an assignment makes some students go crazy. This GPA-hungry atmosphere undermines the cooperative spirit that is truly beneficial in group situations. If only individual assignments were graded, then group activities, whether they are debates, discussions or study groups, could be used as breaks from the competitive in-class atmosphere.

Some people might argue that working in a group is important because you have to learn interpersonal skills, including how to work with all kinds of people. This is true for the years leading up to college, but once we’re here we’ve had plenty of experience dealing with slackers, overachievers and everyone in between. In fact, it’s that exact experience that has prepared us for life in the dorms, where you can’t control who you live near, shower next to or rely on for a late-night snack.

Being in college gives students so much real-life experience negotiating and working with others that they don’t need professors to pair them up for practice. In the 12 years of school leading up to college, students are given plenty of opportunities to perform academically in a group. College should be a time to take those skills and apply them to real-life situations, not use them to agree on which slide background color to choose for a Powerpoint presentation.

Up late finishing the lab report your partners were supposed to e-mail you yesterday? E-mail Goodrich at [email protected]. Send general comments to [email protected].