Group work issues at uni - AIBU to not be happy with the lecturer's response?

[groupworkblues]

We have to give a group presentation next week as a group of 6. Two of the members have not been turning up to meetings and ignoring WhatsApp messages and emails sent to their university email address. They will turn up to the occasional meeting, but miss most of them. Most of the time they won't message or give any reason for missing the meeting, or they will let us know during the meeting that they can't attend due to work, a society meeting (where they were doing craft activities, so nothing compulsory) or an appointment they would have know about in advance. They make no attempt to reschedule the meeting or flag to us in advance to ask us to change the date/time.

Their contributions to the presentation has been pretty rubbish. Both aren't really relevant to what was asked of them and they both have misunderstood what was needed (and we've not been able to clarify as they're not in the meetings).

We spoke to the lecturer as our attempts of speaking to them on WhatsApp, email and in person haven't helped. They responded that they were frustrated for us, but if we want a good grade we'll have to just get on with it and do their sections ourselves.

Hahah I had this exact issue 26 years ago. A couple of the team said they'd already done the module and were going to take the lead. They ended up doing nothing and put us all in a bind. Professor basically said tough shit - this is what happens in the real world and like you was told to just get on with it

My dd has had this issue. They ended up having to pick up the slack but had to give a review of how much each person had contributed and told the truth about the 2 people that did barely any work. Think those 2 got a lower mark for the assessment

Yes, this always happens with groupwork. Just do the best you can, and send an email to the lecturer explaining who prepared what.

Yeah my DD has to do a review at the end of any group work and they rate how much everyone contributed. There is a mark for the work and it's shared out depending how much work everyone did.

Oh I remember these issues even as a mature student on a professional postgraduate degree.

”sorry I can’t make any of the prep sessions, just tell me what you want me to do on the day and I will”

Total nightmare and you end up carrying them and feeling embarrassed by “their bit”… you could actively kick them out of the group but in my experience I was fortunate that the lecturers didn’t seem to mark us down.

I'm an academic. Group work is the bane of my life.

Is the work formative or summative? Does it 'count' towards your year/degree mark?
Will you all be awarded individual grades or a shared grade?

Yep, my son had this with group projects. The first one was in 2020 when he just started Uni and the Uni was virtually closed "due to covid". A couple in his group were Chinese and still living in China - so impossible for physical meet up. The ones actually at Uni tried their best to facilitate online teams meetings, suggesting early morning or late night meeting times but the couple of Chinese people agreed the virtual meetings but never turned up. In the end, their contributions was Zero, and son and the others just did it themselves. Likewise, when they asked for advice from the lecturer, he just said the same "it's life, you have to cope with it". I know they did give feedback to the lecturer that the two overseas students had done nothing, but don't know about marks.

Last year, similar happened, even though all/most students were on campus, on a group project, it was only him and one other who did anything at all - the others came to the odd meeting, attended the odd virtual meeting, agreed to do the work they were allocated, but ended up producing nothing. So, instead of a group of six, it was only two of them that did the project. Likewise, they made it clear to the lecturer who had done which aspects of the project and who had contributed nothing. Son and his friend basically spent all Easter holidays working on the project on their own, but also ensured that when it came to the presentation, it was only the two of them who presented it - the others tried to muscle in, but weren't "copied into" the end presentation until after it happened!

Sadly, the lecturers are right to a point, in real life, people make varying contributions to group projects, even in workplaces, and you can't go crying to your bosses when someone isn't pulling their weight. You've got to step up, make the project as much of a success as possible, but also, make it clear as to who's done what and who hasn't, and let the "boss" deal with it.

Pretty sure lecturers realise that there are group members who don't perform. But the remaining members have to pick up the slack, as their marks depend on it, and you just have to hope that the lecturers mark the real contributors more favourably and the lesser contributors less favourably, but if they don't, not much you can do. You've always just got to do your best, sometimes it's not fair, but life isn't fair.

I think this is a bit part of the point of group work in uni. The reality is that when using the knowledge in real life that you have gained in university you will have to work with other people and some of them will be shit. How you deal with that is a learned skill and best to pick up now.

There are several options, here are a few.

• they don't pick up the work, risk is that on the day the presentation will be a failure
• they pick up the work and say nothing, crap group members get away with it but presentation is good
• they pick up the work and provide constructive feedback to the lecturer about input and attendance at session, have to be careful that this is delivered professionally not as a whinge, possibility of grades being allocated based on contribution.

If the work counts towards your qualification, there should be a form to sign stating whether or not you believe to work to have been shared equally. That is usually an academic regulation. If it doesn't count toward your grading, think of it as preparation for how most jobs pan out.

@Hobbi I've never, ever heard of a regulation like that being used for group work assessments 🤔

I'm a mature student, I think that's why my patience has worn thin. When I did my first undegraduate degree (and my master's), I'd just get on with it and usually ended up doing the majority of all group projects by myself - and getting everyone get a first/distinction.

At work I would definitely have flagged to my manager is a colleague was not contributing, but I wouldn't have needed to due to weekly status meetings and timesheets where everyone has to explain what they've done.

Also an academic and group work is a nightmare. I just threaten individual marks for contribution and ask people to keep a log of all interactions but even if they do that you end up with lazy Dave saying he turned up to everything and perfect Peter saying he didn't so who do you believe?

I think the lecturer is right in the sense you just need to hustle to get the work done and ignore people who don't contribute. Focus on your own mark and don't get hung up on fairness of marks, you won't know what the others get anyway, when I have given individual marks we wouldn't share that info.

I taught at a uni for 11 years and it was standard for any assessed work done as a group - how else could overall grades be considered fair? It wasn't done for non-assessed work but was for level 4 (1st year) work although that usually doesn't count towards a degree grade. The external examiner and the assessment panels would have had something to say otherwise. The problem came usually when students didn't want to formally say others hadn't pulled their weight, but still moaned to the lecturer about it.

Yep both myself and my DH have had the same issues in our University group presentations. It is infuriating. I just did the bulk of the work in my group, no way was I going to allow their laziness to affect my grades, but it was extremely frustrating and my tutor just said it would prepare me for my future career 😡I am 50 and had been doing the role (unqualified) for 10 years at this point!

Me neither and I've spent 7 years of my life in 3 HEIs, including several instances where we were all utterly shat upon by group work going down exactly like OP describes.
I think Hobbi's HEI's way of doing things is a great idea and should be implemented for everyone, it's very fair and encourages reflection on your work and your role in a group which are good skills for many future careers.

I think different universities handle this very differently. I did an MBA a few years ago, and there were no individual marks for group assignments, no opportunities to feed back regarding non-contributing group members. Complaints about specific students who repeatedly failed to pull their weight were met with shrugs from the academics in charge of the modules. It was basically a case of getting on with the work and carrying the lazy students or just accepting a lower mark for everyone. I usually ended up doing extra work.

I am aware that some universities have much more robust processes in place to evaluate individual contributions and to award marks accordingly. That is obviously much fairer, though I would assume that it also involves more work to administer.

@WomenShouldStillWinWomensSports

I assumed all HEIs did it. I hated assessing group work, but occasionally assessed the presentation skills and analysis of the group process.

I sometimes wonder if universities may have a vested interest in allowing the weaker/lazier students to be carried by their peers?

We have a peer review system that looks at contribution but ultimately that is he said/she said and very difficult to prove so ultimately most group members get the same marks regardless.

It usually comes out in the wash in modules where there is an individual component later on (exam/individual essay) as our group work is usually low % wise.

Is there anyway to split the presentation into 6 segments, one for each team member each presenting your own work.

When it's slacker's turn, hand over to them and say "unfortunately Brian and Jane weren't able to attend the bulk of our presentation preparation sessions, but they've assured us that they're ready for the next segment on XYZ, so over to you Brian & Jane."

When they fumble, the other team members can pick it up for them, so you do complete the presentation, but it's obvious to all in the room that they have done naff all and you've had to write and present their segment too?

Afterwards you can feign naivety and say "but you said you'd prepared and we believed you".

But hopefully it will put them off from pulling that shit again.

I require all my students doing that for group work. They list, in detail, their own contributions and rate the percentage contributions of their peers. I find a lot of students are quite honest in rating teammates as having made a higher contribution to the project. First years are less included to grade others down that subsequent years.

I do tend to ignore the reports giving one person one or two percent more or less than everyone else. It's never going to be completely equal.

I would recommend anyone have group issues to firstly try to address the issue as a group. If you get no where, consult with the lecturer in plenty of time. Coming to me the week before a deadline is not helpful and there is nothing I can do at that stage. I do sometimes intervene on a high stakes project if students come to me in time.

and you can't go crying to your bosses when someone isn't pulling their weight.

You absolutely can go and speak to your boss about someone not turning up to agreed meetings, not doing work that they agreed to, or only turning in poor quality work.

My company would be on that immediately. Not saying the person would be fired immediately, but the boss would be asking what was going on, and seeing what was causing this issue. (E.g too much workload, some issue at home or with health). If there’s no issue and it’s just slacking there would be opportunity to improve with performance improvement plan before consequences such as demotion or being fired.

It’s not “crying”. It’s doing your job to report it. It’s the manager’s job to ensure everyone is working on the agreed project. Ploughing in alone without letting anyone know is the wrong thing to do.

Ugh I had this issue at the beginning of the year. We had 6 in the group and one girl didn’t contribute much at all until we had all submitted our parts and she criticised everyone’s portions and about how it all could have been done better. Once grading came out each section had also been graded individually (just how we split up the content evenly) and her grade for her portion was a high fail. She got 1.7% out of 15% 🫠 everyone else got a pass grade for their portion and I got a distinction without my grade we would have failed but just scraped through and we were all disappointed in the grade but her she wrote in the group chat “at least we passed” and all I wanted to say was “yeah no thanks to you” but kept my mouth shut. I’ve got a year left of my degree and as far as I can tell no more group assessments thank god!! But yeah it was a killer.

Don't do this, you will look mean and unprofessional.

We tend to do group work, but the assessment is individual. Each do their own write up or presentation. They also have to submit who contributed what.

Its usually very clear who doesn't have a clue!