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.

Group work is the worst! I am doing a masters at the moment and am having the opposite problem. One group member is a professional in this area so has a lot more knowledge and experience than the rest of us. We are all trying to contribute but he has totally taken over, made the project so complicated that only he with his 10 years of experience understands it, and has just announced that he wants to present the whole thing. We all get the same grade so it is tempting to just let him crack on, but I'm the geeky sort that actually wants to contribute and use the assignment as a way to learn. Feels like this just defeats the purpose!

Me too waaaay back in 1984. Twas ever thus .

I've just endured the same nightmare OP, also mature aged student in post graduate studies. Additionally, one of the two who didn't contribute was also such hard work! Any time she did grace us with her presence, she was so highly strung and easily offended, it would have actually been funny if it wasn't so frustrating! My lecturer was also suitably useless. You have my commiserations!

This isn't true as a lecturer will have expected you all to have divided sections up and have a PowerPoint ready with your talk....when it cokes to the people who haven't done the work it will show through as their piece won't be right or their power point won't be right. That's fine...you will each get marked based on what they see. My husband is a lecturer.

In what way poorly? If the [hard-workers] have delivered to a certain grade, then surely the grade is the grade.

I'm hoping to start a Masters next year - I may not be the oldest on the course, but certainly a (very) mature student. This thread is very shocking.

I wont be carrying anybody.

@socialdilemmawhattodo I absolutely believe this needs to be raised with the uni and this shit pisses me off too. I've also fallen foul of group work issues so I do get it. It's not fair and I hope the OP gets a decent resolution.

The way to address it is not a public dressing down or humiliation during the presentation because the shit team member will come out of that having people feeling sorry for them and with the instigators being accused of bullying.

They need to confront it maturely and constructively and then get the task done.

This is the best type of group lol - such rich experiences to draw on later in your reflective essay using theories by Schön and Tuckman. We used to allocate the slides out and present our own work letting the slackers stand out for their pitiful contribution.

I'm glad my university had a pretty robust system for group work. It felt like a faff when you were doing it but it meant that everyone knew what the process was and nobody could shirk their responsibility but take the credit.

Groups would be assigned and you were given paper form template that was essentially an attendance register/progress report - everyone got their own copy and you'd arrange meetings to work on the project together in person and the lecturers usually gave a minimum number of meetings they'd expect you to have for the project period. When you arrived you'd note down on your form who else was in attendance and if anyone wasn't there then you'd note down whether it was expected or not (Eg Sue Smith - not present due to clash with personal tutorial session; Jack Jones - not present)

You'd then outline what you did in the session (EG Session 1: general discussion to decide on presentation topic, everyone agreed on X topic and are all going to do background reading so that in session 2 the project can be broken down into 6 equal sections for each member to work on; Session 2: sections assigned - Sue is doing X, Jack is doing Y, Mary is doing Z etc) as well as the plan for what needed to happen before the next meeting (eg Session 1: Everyone agrees to read ABC texts before next meeting; Session 2: Everyone will prepare first draft of their section to be shared at session 3 etc) and every member would then sign the bottom of every attendees form. You would have one of these forms for every in person meeting and every member had to be accounted for on every form.

Any PowerPoints had to be annotated with the authors name in the slide notes, so Jane might put the presentation together but each individual group member whose work was in the slideshow had to be individually noted. Same for any project notes - authors names would be in headers/footers.

On the day of the presentation you had to hand a hard copy of your PowerPoint including slide notes showing who did what to the lecturer before you started your presentation and then within 48hrs of the presentation each student had to submit their own "Project pack" to the faculty office which comprised the university submission form that you had to attach to every project/essay that was handed in; your attendance forms for every session you attended; a hard copy of the presentation and a reflection form which had sections where you had to assess your presentation performance, reflect on what you learnt and give feedback on the rest of your group.

The lecturers would then mark everyone individually based on their contribution to the group and taking into account the meeting notes/attendance forms. Any groups where people were slacking were immediately obvious from that info, but the tutors also said that if there were any major issues within a group then someone needed to email the tutor ahead of the project to outline the issue because anything reported after the presentation would not be used as mitigation for performance.

@melj1213 which uni was that?

This is the nature of group assignments - I was a mature student until September and experienced the same. My son at uni, is experiencing the same.

I have just used the experience for a civil service interview and got the job. Every cloud…😆

I've done occasional group work when studying. It's a nightmare.

However last time a few years ago I wasn't willing to give up my good grade because of others so offered to be editor and proofreader. Then rewrote the rubbish parts and submitted.

We got 90% so no one complained. I didn't mind, the rubbish ones would never get that kind of mark again.

Academic here - do their bits but take their names off. You are all adults so we can't exactly order them to do the work the way a teacher could but the lack of a mark may shock them into not pulling this stunt with someone again.

@AbondonedThemePark

However last time a few years ago I wasn't willing to give up my good grade because of others so offered to be editor and proofreader. Then rewrote the rubbish parts and submitted.

Yes, my son took upon that role in all the group projects he had to do at Uni. I don't know where he got the idea from, maybe he'd googled about Uni team work, but right from the first task he "volunteered" to be the editor/proof-reader, and ended up doing a lot of extra work in filling the gaps where people hadn't done their assigned tasks, or "improving" the areas that had been done poorly. It annoyed him massively that the slackers got marks for doing little or nothing, but he was very driven with an "eye on the prize" of him getting a First so he did what he had to do!

What exactly do you think the lecturer is going to do? Go to the errant students' homes and force them to attend meeting? Give them detentions? Ultimately you're responsible for your own work. Prepare the presentation, don't worry about the others who are not attending, don't expect your lecturer to intervene in class dynamics.

I expect lecturers not to give marks at all to those who make zilch contribution. It's a crazy way of marking to give 40% to someone who's not done anything. Just what have they done to deserve that?? What is the benefit to the Uni, other students or the country as a whole to give marks to someone who has done nothing to earn them?

If you have a challenging project and only 3 of the 6 contribute, whilst all students are managing multiple assignments and projects at the same time, of course the quality of the project can be impacted.

My son, on advice, spelt that out to the lecturer in person and via email, pre and post submission.

He made it abundantly clear he would pursue the matter further with the Dept in the university, should his grade be negatively impacted.

He received a more than fair grade, but I suspect the lecturer involved believed the 3 students who made submissions, and wasn't interested in any drama post the summer exams!

Creating a paper trail in all things, is the best way to ensure that corrective action will be taken IMO.

They must be marked according to the criteria. Some criteria will be content based, some will be presentation based - e.g. pace, style, clarity, engagement with audience, answers to questions.

If they turn up and present slides well, they have met that criteria even if they didn't make the slides and will be awarded as such - because they did earn the marks attributed to the presentation part of the assessment.

I just graduated this year. Unfortunately this was a common theme throughout my time at uni and my uni friends had similar experiences. No advice just wanted to say you aren't alone with this burden/issue!

I had a similar experience. It ended with two of us doing the whole presentation ourselves and we got 95%. The others were a little sad that they’d been so unreliable then.

What were you hoping they would say? Obviously, you can chose to do it yourselves for a good grade or leave it rubbish and get a bad grade - I don’t see other options.

this is so frustrating. I had the issue too at uni but lecturer agreed to grade me and fellow student on the work we did. lazy fellow student for a fail and rightly so. I hope the two don't get a grade based on your work. I would be ok with that but not if everyone gets the same mark regardless of contribution.

We have this as an option in one of our modules, students are allowed to kick members of the group who don't contribute and they have to do the whole group process themselves. We also have evidence of engagement as a prerequisite to marking, no evidence = no mark. It is moderated by us lecturers to ensure it isn't due to a fall out in a friend group etc. but ultimately it is up to the group to decide if a non-contributing member is allowed to stay in the group or not.