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How do others feel about group assignments?

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They're a complete pain, to be honest. You'll always get somebody who's happy with pathetic marks and will drag the group down through sheer deliberate laziness and not doing their share, yet biting your head off like a shark if you dare question it. Thank Christ for peer assessment forms.

Luckily there aren't really any group assignments at MSc level (and, on my course, not even a single exam :woo:

) although you do get people discussing individual assignments with each other, which is acceptable as long as you're not plagiarising.

Unfortunately, a lot of students aren't mature enough to properly divide work and motivate each other. It usually ends up with one or two people carrying the whole group, and those who are left freeload their way to decent marks or, alternatively, find themselves feeling pretty stupid.

Reply 21

joey11223

I don't hate them but as others have said the issue with freeloaders or not sticking to the plan is annoying. As long as you can choose who you work with they're generally fine and quite fun.

Reply 22

rachelkeira

I always get it the worst with group work at uni. My first assignment was worth 50% of a 20cp module, and I was stuck with 2 international students who could barely speak, read or write at primary school level in English! I did all the work for that and definitely begrudged sharing the 80% mark with them! Then in my most recent, I wrote what I felt was a really good section for my part and sent it to the person putting the report together, only to find out after printing that he has changed more or less everything I had written, taken out all the big words because he didn't know what they meant, leaving it making no sense whatsoever; GRRRRRR!

Hate.

Original post by lizlaz350

It's hard to express the amount I hate group work.
Obviously, I don't know about university level, but I hate, hate, hate having to do any form of group based project in lessons.

People never do what they're supposed to and just expect everyone else to do their bit for them.

I thought that by the time we reached year 13, the teachers would let us work more independently but no :frown:

I think it really depends on who is in your group. If your working with any of friends or people who you know will work really well, then group work can be ok.
The problem comes when you work with people you either don't like or people who don't do any work. If that's the case, then I completely agree with you; it can be awful and you just end up doing all the work on your own anyway, making the point of group work completely irrerlevant.

Reply 25

lizlaz350

Original post by Lelkins2010

Ahh, I think you're luckier than me when it comes to group work, as I tend to get shoved with people that don't do much! It usually gets split down the middle, where half the group does the work and the other half doesn't :/

I dunno, I just learn better from working by myself and find it a lot less frustrating :P

Reply 26

Lelkins2010

Original post by lizlaz350

I'm having flashbacks to all the group work we had to do in RS now :smile:

Reply 27

username430180

I hate when my history teacher puts us in pairs and puts us with someone we don't normally talk to. I don't normally talk to those people for a reason!
Even when I do group work with my friends, we end up doing no work.

Reply 28

lizlaz350

Original post by Lelkins2010

I'm having flashbacks to all the group work we had to do in RS now :smile:

Hahaha, I know exactly what you mean there.

I think I managed to be in the half not doing much in those lessons. Our poor group.

Reply 29

Spexzzz

In college i didnt mind since i was comforatable and knew everybody in the class, but its when your paired with people you dont know then it gets a bit complicated, like you get the lazy tossers that expect you to do the work, usually they rely on you because they know if they fail you fail.

I have a group assignment next semester in uni, im dreading it since we cant choose the groups ourselves, and i know allot of the 1st year students are lazy as **** and you get the dumb ones who barely make it through, i hope a get a group of nerds :3.

I dont mind group work but you should get marked on individual work primarily then group work, so spilt the assignment in 4 (if theirs 4 people) then each person is responsible for each part, and that way you wont loose marks for someone else not doing work.

They really should let you choose, out of the people in your seminars / classes

Reply 30

Raz_Webster_MUFC

It has its Pro's and Con's i suppose... On one hand, it leaves less workload for yourself, on the other, as you say, you always get one person in the group who doesn't lift a finger, and takes equal credit...

I personally prefer to work on my own, that way if your work is good, you feel an enormous sense of achievement, and if you do badly, you learn to buck up and improve... But then again, I'm not the most sociable of people, so maybe that's why? lol...

Reply 31

siani-chan

Absolutely hate group assignments. I don't mind bouncing ideas off of each other but that's for preparation, not for the submission of the assignment. Why do lecturers rave about group work so much?! :lolwut:

Reply 32

Emor

I always ask if I can work on my own tbh. I hate group work. Except for Science practical since I feel awkward asking to have a set of equipment which is limited.
The teachers seem okay with this.
I'm either a total megalomanic bitch or just give up after 10 minutes and let them do it. I'd honestly rather they just let me do it all and talked while I did it, rather than basically that, but occasionally get ridiculously involved over minute details every 10 minutes or so, like the colour of the title in a presentation. I don't even care about credit anymore, when you're a socially inept nerd pretty early on in your educational career you learn that claiming full academic credit in a social activity is honestly a pathetic excuse for a priority in comparison to all the other crap.
To be fair, I've not actually done any group work with people idk very well for over two years, and I've matured socially a lot since then(except from a stupid powerpoint<several lines of ranting>) and probably would find it more tolerable.
EMZ=]

Reply 33

scorpion95

group work can be good as long as the other group members pull their weight, if not then when the peer assessment is filled out by everyone in the group then a lower % can be given for them

Reply 34

Mewtwo

Original post by Fusion

You'll always get at least one dosser/freeloader but that's something you just gotta put up with and work around. Generally, I quite like them.

I was spoke to as if I was one of them but the truth was I was just shy and found it hard to get my voice

Reply 35

markrush

Annoying at best. However, you can still do well and stop people riding on your coat tails. There was one assignment that I scored an 80 something in and other people got 20-50.

You just have to know what your part is. Demonstrate you tried to work in a cooperative way. Play the politic.

Reply 36

OrangeSocks

I hate group work. There's always one person who doesn't do the the work/leaves everything to the last minute. Then there's the person who thinks they know best so decides to take charge, but actually ends up completely messing the work up. Not to mention the fact that it's so hard to arrange for everyone to be able to meet therefore no one knows what anyone else is doing and so the work takes a long time to get done.

Reply 37

Joinedup

It's a farce - lecturers are always keen because it ticks a 'groupwork' tick box and divides the amount of marking by the number of people per team but it's not really representative of real word team work.

Probably they should drop it after year one - it's not quite so bad if everyone's in halls and can get together quite easily. The idea that group marks should feed into individuals final degree class seems wrong to me too.

Reply 38

NathanW18

Absolutely hate it. The work always gets done at the last minute, because people can't be arsed to show up to group meetings/do any work. You always get someone that won't do anything and expects to turn up on the day of the presentation and get a good grade. I hate having to rely on other people.

Reply 39

rajandkwameali

The tool of the Devil himself.

There always are some people who don't give a ****, don't equally contribute, and skive off the more competent group members. If the person who invented academic group work were alive today, he should get shot lol....