Group Projects Never End Well

April 15, 2009

This is a public appeal to every professor at every college in the country: Stop giving your students group projects.

Colleges should ban them. Forever. Because they are the worst. Ever.

To start with, there's never a hard-working group dynamic. Never have four people met to do a group project where everyone contributes a fair share of the work.

In general, there are four types of group members:

·        One Sentence Wonder - This is the person who does nothing. No matter how much anyone explains it to him, it is always apparent that he started working on the project 30 minutes before class. He even makes eye contact as he slowly slides his single sentence into the pile with everyone else's work. Everyone mentally unleashes a hellfire of profanity in his direction and lets loose in the group evaluation sheet.

·        The Invisible Woman - She doesn't respond to e-mails. She doesn't respond to phone calls. She doesn't respond to text messages, instant messages, face-to-face messages or smoke signals. Everyone wonders if she actually speaks English. She doesn't come out to help and it's always shocking when she hands something in or smugly expects her name to appear on the assignment.

·        The Little Engine That Couldn't - The saddest of all group members. He shows up to every meeting and makes earnest contributions. He tries so hard because he really needs a good grade. No matter how much work he does or how quickly he responds to e-mails, he's just an idiot. His work doesn't fit in and at the end of the day, someone has to fix everything.

·        Grade Saver - It's three in the morning the day before the project is due. Almost everyone did their part and one person needs to put it all in one document. But in the process, it becomes clear that the whole thing needs to be re-done. She's re-done everyone's work, did the work of the people who don't contribute and completed her own portion. She reeks of Red Bull, her eyes have heavy bags underneath and every time one of her group members asks how it went, her eye starts to twitch. But the project gets done and everyone's butt is saved.

For some ungodly reason, however, professors seem to think group projects are a valuable aspect of the college experience that builds character and teaches teamwork. But actually, it just increases drinking among college students - now that's a feat.

In one of my classes, we only do group projects. Every two weeks we have to give a presentation with our group on a new topic. There are nine groups of four people and five presentations. Think of the potential for alcohol consumption.

Imagine one group throughout the course of the semester. After successfully meeting in class for the first presentation, the group members begin to conform to the stereotypes.

Grade Saver sends out an e-mail asking how everyone wants to work. The project is due on Monday; the e-mail went out on a Thursday. The Little Engine That Couldn't responds within a few hours. He's established contact and is ready to go when someone else makes a plan and then puts it into action. No one else responds.

The topic of the project is intolerance toward Chinese immigrants in the 1800s. The Little Engine wrote his section about muggle treatment in Harry Potter.

Grade Saver did the whole presentation, answered all the questions, typed up the document, and practiced what she was going to say.

When Grade Saver strolled into Monday, twitching, The Invisible Woman came in chatting with One-Sentence Wonder. She did the whole project, too...kind of. Grade Saver's twitch increased three-fold.

"Oh, sorry. I got the e-mail Sunday afternoon." Because getting an e-mail Sunday afternoon means that you cannot respond before the class started Monday afternoon. But hey, at least she knows English.

Invisible Woman sits down and once the presentation starts, she starts talking away. Poor Grade Saver - tired, crabby, and overwhelmed - can't fit a word in edgewise. Invisible Woman rambles about her love of fried rice and General Tso's Chicken. The Little Engine spews anecdotes about Slytherin's and the Dark Mark. And while Grade Saver sat slack jawed, internally crying, One-Sentence Wonder happens across her work and announces it to the class as his own wisdom.

Somehow Invisible Woman and Little Engine got a B+ for enthusiasm and for leading the presentation, while One Sentence Wonder received an A for insightful comments and his work on the group project.

That night Grade Saver sat at the bar, drowning her C+ for, as the Professor put it, "riding-the-group-coattails" in Jäger Bombs. She just cannot get enough of that Red Bull.