Has anyone got any funny/frustrating group project stories?

I’ve dealt with two, both of them being a month from each other.

The first one was in ICT, when the two group members left me with 80% of the project, which included spending 5-6 hours making a video and programming a drag and drop game. There were 16 slides in that project. I did 7 of them.

The second one was in Drama, where we had to get into partners. Because I’m kinda a loner I let the other 5 girls choose. The girl I ended up with stormed out of the room. After about a week of thinking it was my fault, we found out that she was jealous that her friends didn’t pick her even though getting stuck with me was going to happen to one of them. She took that week off out of frustration then had the nerve to apologise then lie about why she was off. This project is still going.

So anyone else have similar experiences?

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 1

username2775168

Glad that your hard work paid off (at least for you, they didn’t deserve it). My ICT was very similar in the “roles” the other members played.

Reply 2

TomW624

One year I managed to be in the same group as this nightmare of a girl for all 3 group tasks (3 person groups, same third person twice who was good, another third person who was good).

Task 1 : She didn't reply to emails or communications, didn't show up at arranged meetings, when she gave us her part of the presentation we basically had to re structure and re-write it all to make sense, during the presentation she got confused by her part and what she was actually meant to be talking about and the worst part of all is during the Q&A she was answering wrong then asked the panel if she could get her own flash drive and put up some more of her own slides... (also the other two of us knew the answer and her the slides she described weren't even close to relevant).

Task 2: During the planning stages she essentially acted the same as above. The during this presentation while in the middle of her part she decided her calculations were wrong (even though as a group we had checked them and decided as a group they were right), stopped in the middle, sat down with a pen and paper and started re-doing them (which there was no time for) and again faltered during the Q&A not being able to explain her part.

Task 3: This was half practical based half presentation, in this task 6 constituent tasks were divided between us, 2 each, based on work we'd previously done as a group. From that point on the paperwork and presentation were individual, the only group mark was the initial gathering of samples and organisation of tasks. It was just hard to watch her work and I am glad I wasn't marked with her. We were given 2 days a week for 12 weeks to do sample prep, analysis and interpretation, obviously weeks 1-2 were mostly prep then book instrumentation like 3 weeks in advance (30 people 1 of each instrument obviously lots of time constraints). By about week 7/8 this girl was still prepping slides, had about 200 by this point, and had not booked any instruments for analysis. On average most people had 20-40 slides and had analysed them by week 10. Again this didn't effect my grade but it was easily a task which could have been marked as a group in the end.

She ended up having to repeat the year and then dropping out I think, this was in year 3 out of 4 (Scottish Uni).

Reply 3

username2775168

Original post by TomW624

Glad she ended up repeating. There’s always one person who is like that.

Reply 4

TomW624

Original post by Squishy Pixelz

Glad she ended up repeating. There’s always one person who is like that.

Just the sheer awkwardness of her asking the panel if she could show her own slides in a second presentation. The other guy and I just wanted to die. The lecturers were gobsmacked too.

Reply 5

Haviland-Tuf

Great story and I have been in similar situations before. Just one little correction: if the module is worth 50% of the final grade achieving 80% on the coursework doesn't mean 'we passed the unit on coursework alone'. :wink:

Reply 6

Haviland-Tuf

Thanks for clearing it up. My university has this rule where you need to pass every module component (cw or exam) with a minimum of 40% regardless if you can pass the module with just one component.

Reply 7

TomW624

Original post by Haviland-Tuf

Thanks for clearing it up. My university has this rule where you need to pass every module component (cw or exam) with a minimum of 40% regardless if you can pass the module with just one component.

Yeah my uni was the same. I think you could get a condoned pass for the module if you got less than 40% in a component. Can't remember the margin and don't think I ever heard of it happening for anyone. Everyone I knew that got less than 40% in a component failed the module and had to resit that component, or all components, at the next available sitting, so the next year.

But yeah not even completing a component was basically an immediate fail for the module.