Timeline for How do project supervisors address the "freeloading" problem in group projects?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
12 events
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| Sep 23, 2015 at 23:53 | comment | added | Hannover Fist | What a crappy "answer". You don't answer anything except to say "figure it out yourself". "Students need to learn to self-organize...most of my students...truly suck at" - It sounds like they have crappy teachers. | |
| Nov 20, 2014 at 23:17 | comment | added | superluminary | The point of the group exercise is to learn to work in a team. If the instructor simply wanted to to test your coding ability, a solo exercise would achieve this far more effectively. This is a hard skill to master. | |
| Nov 19, 2014 at 18:14 | comment | added | Davidmh | @WillieWong the students can always send a private email to the supervisor or drop by the office, if they consider the situation is bad enough. The lesson there is that you have to actually think about doing it. | |
| Nov 19, 2014 at 18:11 | comment | added | Ilmari Karonen | Do you also teach your students how to handle group dynamics? I agree that these are important skills to learn, but it seems to me that just taking a hands-off approach and expecting the students to figure it out on their own is a bit like tossing them into the deep end of the pool and seeing if they'll learn to swim before they drown. Especially so if they've previously learned counterproductive or situational "rules" (like, say "formal escalation just gets you labeled as a snitch") that they need to un-learn (or learn to only apply on a case-by-case basis) before they can progress. | |
| Nov 19, 2014 at 17:10 | vote | accept | Fraïssé | ||
| Nov 19, 2014 at 13:22 | comment | added | kleineg | In a group project based Masters level class I took the final consisted of 1. A group project that brought together all of the work we did for homework and 2. A survey where each person described what each person contributed to the team and how their specific knowledge improved the group's work. | |
| Nov 19, 2014 at 11:29 | comment | added | Willie Wong | Again, I actually agree with you. It is a delicate issue how to provide the fail-guard without letting the students rely on it too much. I can see, for example, that having 1-on-1 meetings maybe counterproductive since you would be introducing an external motivator to the equation (though to be fair, same thing happens in the work place). Another thing one can do, of course, is to make teamwork one of the learning objectives; simply reminding the students that they are being trained to work in teams can help the students themselves be more assertive about the issues. | |
| Nov 19, 2014 at 11:13 | comment | added | xLeitix | @WillieWong I agree. However, having a permanent, easy "fail-guard" sort of defies the original purpose of requiring self-organization. I guess the difference is that grades really aren't considered important around here, so if somebody's grade drops but he learns a valuable lesson in the process, that is acceptable to most teachers. Cultural differences, I guess. | |
| Nov 19, 2014 at 11:09 | comment | added | Willie Wong | On the other hand, it does not hurt to have established channels to which the students can voice their concerns. Instructors are in a position of power and it is more effective to open up the line of communications from your side than to rely entirely on students to come to you if there are problems. It could be as simple as having the progress reports be given in 1-on-1 meetings rather than meetings involving the whole team. In other words, yes, I agree 100% that students should be trained in team-work. But when their grades depend on it some failsafe should be built-in to the process. | |
| Nov 19, 2014 at 10:36 | comment | added | xLeitix | @WillieWong Yes, as an instructor, I avoid doing that like the plague. Students need to learn to self-organise in teams. Something that most of my students, or maybe most people in general, truly suck at. | |
| Nov 19, 2014 at 10:17 | comment | added | Willie Wong | +1 since as a suggestion to the student this is reasonable enough. But for instructors that practice peer instruction and utilize group projects like this there are ways that they could be more proactive about it. But, like you said, it could very well be a conscious decision not to, for example, include in biweekly meetings requests for confidential progress reports that allow students to express concerns and things like that. | |
| Nov 19, 2014 at 7:26 | history | answered | xLeitix | CC BY-SA 3.0 |