Here’s a rapid-fire question for you: What is the first word that comes to your mind when your professor declares your next assignment has to be completed in a group? Does your answer fall in the satisfactory category, with words like exciting and collaborative, or the daunting category, with words like nightmarish and stressful?
Group projects can fall into either of the two extreme categories or somewhere between the good and the bad. However, if group work for you has been a particularly horrific experience, you aren’t alone.
Group work can turn into a recipe for disaster even if one person makes a costly mistake. Members must be able to depend on each other, and this usually becomes unfair for students who actually try to fulfill their part of the project sincerely.
A recently admitted Coog talked to us about how one of the members in her group completed their part of the project using solely AI. “I didn’t realize it until five minutes before we presented,” she said.
To her dismay, it truly became a horror story when the group’s overall grade was negatively affected for the assignment. These are the kinds of group work experiences that result in apprehension about working with others.
Another reason students dislike working in groups is conflicting schedules. A marketing major described an experience like that in her business class.
“Honestly, the hardest thing about the group project wasn’t the project itself. It was finding a time when everyone was free at the same time,” she said.
She went on to explain that everyone in the group was juggling multiple responsibilities, making it difficult to reach a consensus. “We spent more time discussing when we should meet than actually discussing the contents of the project,” she said.
In contrast, working independently gives people the freedom to work on their own time. However, that’s a luxury missing when working in groups.
Group projects can also turn into a horror story if they come with free riders. A management information systems major had some insights to share on this one.
“In one of my MIS classes, we had a semester-long project. Four of us basically did all the work while one never showed up until the day of the presentation,” he said.
He explained it was unfair because in the end, all of them ended up getting the same grade. “It was frustrating because the effort wasn’t even close to equal,” he said.
If not contributing to the group project gets someone the same grade as someone who puts in a lot of effort, many people would choose not to do anything at all. That goes against the purpose of working as a team. This is also why students prefer to work alone.
Interestingly enough, despite all the unpleasant experiences students face, group work also has many underlying benefits.
One of the significant benefits of working in groups is how it prepares students for their future work environments. In the real world, people don’t get the liberty to choose their own coworkers, which means learning to coexist and adapt with different kinds of people becomes a necessary skill.
By working in groups, students expose themselves to fresh perspectives and opinions, allowing them to broaden their thinking about a topic or situation. If anything, it is a great way for people to become more tolerant and patient, because what’s a group project without some sort of disagreements?
Alternatively, group work is also resourceful because it becomes an opportunity for people with different skills and expertise to maximize the value they can add to the outcome of a project. It’s like the saying goes, “Teamwork makes the dreamwork.”
It also gives students a chance to effectively communicate and collaborate with others, a skill that can be applied to many professional settings as well.
If realistic expectations and proper consequences are kept in place, students may actually enjoy the prospect of working in groups more than before. That’s a promising thought for students to hold onto and for professors to take into consideration.
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