Is it fair for university group work to affect individual marks?

[topcat2014]

DD has got her marks for year one. All good, apart from a "group" project where they all got a low mark.

Am I unjustified in feeling a bit pissed off that DD's mark is reduced by poor work by some other students wasters

Is group work likely to feature in later years as well?

I mean this is half tongue in cheek, but even so..

Yes, group work seems to feature in subsequent years if my dd was anything to go by. There's always at least 1 or 2 in the group that dont do anything to help. The groups dd was in had to then give a score to each member to show how much they input so marks could vary for each individual. In other years she formed groups with people she knew would work well with each other

It is very annoying, my dd works so hard for her university grades and unfortunately they sometimes have someone in their group that doesn’t pull their weight but still gets the high grade due to the other 3 people or vice versa.

Since my dd was in 2nd year (has just graduated a 5 year masters course) my DDs university does a peer assessment for every piece of group work they do and the lecturers read all peer assessments and make a judgement . On this peer assessment they write which parts of the group project they work on and if they think their peers pulled their weight.

it means most people do work that bit harder.

Most unis have a group work project somewhere.

it gets people used to (how annoying it is) working with other people.

Rarely would it be allowed to make much difference. Y1 marks often don’t count for the final grade, too. But yeah, it sucks for the hard workers.

Yes indeed... I don't want to put DD off the adult world yet!

I think it's totally unfair because "working with others" is a soft skill and university, especially at undergraduate, is about technical knowledge. But a long established tradition.

DC1 did a 4-year masters at Imperial College and did constant group work, although no individual coursework assignment counted for much apart from the final year project which was individual work. Even at Imperial (that takes only the cream) you get lazy students in group work. DC2 is at another good uni but less prestigious. They have had much the same experience, but have probably come across a few more lazy students.

I assume universities are aware of this issue. I guess part of the ‘test’ is coping with this kind of thing but yes, hard-working students have my full sympathies. The thing that will help put this into perspective is to work out what proportion of the grade for the year and the degree it is. It may well be less than 1% of the grade for the year, in which case it is not worth stressing over.

My degree in 2002 final year about half was groupwork! I dont agree with it in final year. Also you have zero leverage over other students, not like you can report to HR or their boss.
We had a groupmate who did very little of the work as they were focussing on their individual work to get a first..

My dd is autistic and cant stand groupwork she refuses..

But group work isn't confined to year 1, my son had it in year 2 and 3. He had no choice in the group he was assigned to, 2 of them worked, the others put in zero effort, one fully plagiarised a whole passage that Ds and the other working person had to sort it last second as that was his final submitted piece. Apart from Ds they were all international students, so one worked but the others were just here for the UK uni experience before returning back home to work in the family business. They told Ds that. As long as they passed, got a degree in the UK they were fine.

It tanked Ds's grade and even with constant feedback to higher ups who monitor the group work, complaining that they were not doing what they were assigned and peer reviewing and an upgrade in Ds's personal grade for it he still couldn't get a first overall even though all his own work throughout the year was always above 70. The university department basically said that no matter how much work you put in they would not move you into the next degree classification category for a group project. If you were in the 2:2 for the group project they would not move you personally into the 2:1 even with evidence. It was a car crash.

Having learned from this personal experience Ds and the other working person pretended not to know each other so they could work on a 2 person group project in year 3 because they knew they would both actually work on it. He did get a very high 2:1 but at the cost of not really enjoying uni at all.

They should stop group work. This doesn't compare to the real world where the other people can be reported and something might actually be done about it. He has been working for a few years now with amazing teams of people who care about their work so I am at least glad this didn't continue into his work, so far.

My husband refused on his group work due to Autism as well.

They made a reasonable adjustment where a tutor played the part of the student.

My DD, as she went up the years at uni, got very strategic about who she would do group work with. She was quite ruthless in targeting the better students to do projects with, and making sure she didn't work with the lazy ones - even though some of those were her closest friends. Obviously it depends if the course allows any choice in the matter.

Ime universities are obsessed with group work. It hits the whole 'work ready/'graduate attributes' agenda.

It is also usually to show that there is spread of assessment styles so students have access to a variety of assement styles which is considered inclusive (some students will never write a great essay but can do a stellar presentation and if there is a variety of assement types they'll get their chance to shine).

Its also usually less to mark, or at least, easier to mark.

When you go to open days (no good for your daughter now, but for anyone whose dc is considering uni and is on the open day trail) you can ask about the course assessment strategy and what types of assessments are used. And I recommend that you do.

Yes this happened to me in my 2nd year as an undergrad mature student. It was not that the others in the group were lazy. However we made group commitments about work delivery which they failed to honour. The result is that they benefited from my professional experience as a market researcher but left me high and dry with some support I was hoping for. The tutor arranged for an extra session in the computer lab for which most on the course voted with their feet. Only 4 of us showed up so we got 121 help from the tutor with any needs we had. Plus plenty of suggestions as to how we could improve and embellish what data we each had. The result was that I had an entire section in my final report with material the others in the group did not have access to. They had the raw data but not the qualitative experience which I did not share with them. I got a much higher mark for the final report which pulled up my grade for the entire course. The others in the group were miffed. But if they had stuck to the original agreement we would all have got the same high grade. I had a great laugh at their expense.

If this had been a corporate/professional setting the other group members would not have been allowed to back pedal on something they were tasked to deliver without some kind of outcome. Having come from a work setting I knew this. The thing about group experiences is that they can be manipulated to your advantage. And they rarely count towards the final degree result.

Typical group work experience. 4 of us. Deadweight, Slacker but claims credit, Tell Me What to Do, and Me. I learned to team up with Tell Me and we got it done.

Disliked it but there you go.

ds2 did computer science and had lots of groupwork in the second year so chose modules in his third year which didn't! Having said that it was a really important skill for him to learn and because there were several he could try different approaches from letting others lead, to doing it all himself to actually the preferable option of everyone contributing. His group work was always peer reviewed with justifications so the absolute non-contributors do not score highly if someone else does the work. So yes he might have got higher marks on some assignments if they were assessed differently but I still think he gained from the experience, howver, tortuous he found it.

My daughter had a lot of group work , she would end up re doing a lot of it before submission. I will say that the main issue was because her Uni was popular with overseas students pre Covid and although they had great spoken language, their written work was not at the same level . She definitely ended up doing far more percentage wise on any group work than was fair , but wasn’t prepared to let the work go in substandard .

That is really tough! If I was the student I would be livid - for years.
And, god forbid, the uni sends me begging letters for money later on!

I feel for the student (mentioned upthread) who was working for a 1st but did not get it duw to group work problems. Fortunately my group "experience" was all in my 2nd year and none of it contributed to my final grade. Everything i did in the final year was down to my individual reports/dissertations. I was pretty ruthless about this as I had decided to become an academic and you needed a 1st to have a chance of funding in humanities.

Group work sucks. I am not a team player.

If the degree is accredited, then group work is often mandated by the accrediting body.

All the group work I have been involved with (lots) has had an element of peer marking attached to it which influences the distribution of marks amogst the group members based on their contribution. Total slackers can, and do, get zero.

The peer marking is moderated to ensure that it is appropriately applied. No low marks because somebody has a learning difference, or just BO, for example.

I also hate anything to do with teams. Don't give a shit about any sports etc. Why should other people affect me?

There's a reason why private schools have tennis courts for 2 or 4 to play, and state schools don't.

I don't share well either.. chips with DW

DD is probably far less hassled by this thinking than me.

This may have rubbed off on my thinking...

I agree with the learning difference. Having no BO is a life skill that should be learned..

It has always been like this. My undergrad degree and my PGCE several years later both featured group work. When I complained to the tutor at being marked down because of my lazy group he said it was a life lesson in choosing a better group. The thing that was worse to me was being graded on seminar contributions during third year of undergrad when I was stuck in a class with a girl who literally wouldn’t let anyone get a word in edgeways. She got great marks and no one else did. I am still mad at that very experienced lecturer for letting that happen and grading like that. Wanker.

Totally agree, I can remember in 2 nd year dd had one group of her and 3 overseas students who’s written work wasn’t that strong which was extremely stressful and much more hard work for dd.

my dd along with some of her class mates spoke to the head of department and asked if they could organise their own groups which 90% of the lecturers agreed to which meant they could pick people they knew worked to do their group tasks.

My experience that group work in second year was a lot more productive, as the many of the 'weak links' had been weeded out by then.

I graduated with an arts degree (geography/politics), where there was a bit of group work but thankfully most of that was limited to about 10% of the total syllabus assignments.

I now (privately) tutor international postgrad students. They work hard, are ambitious and have the ideas but some need a lot of support at writing academic standard English, planning the basic structure and standing up to a viva. I am currently helping one student prepare for her Ph.D viva and proof reading final drafts of another student's Masters. The students dont seem to be getting much support from their respective unis so are paying $$$ for private tuition. I do have some experience of undergraduate tutoring with international students. Some did not have the basic skills of referencing, using the library, compiling a bibliography and writing academic English. This would be a significant handicap to others with whom they did group work.