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..

It was a feature when I was at university nearly 30 years ago, I found there was a skill in finding the most driven students and getting in a group with them. I remember being in a group of I think 6, one person did nothing but I was also with the two top scoring students in my year.

STEM could be up to 50% in the final year.

Yes @wonderstuff there is a reason to be ruthless and strategic as I was in the 1980s. Attending uni was a huge risk for me as a mature student with a first career behind me. I was not going to risk it for one or two lazy group members. I am working for a 1st for me and not for everyone else in my cohort.

I did take one young colleague under my wing in the final year as she was from a very sheltered background and I felt like her mum. She graduated with a good 2/1 and went on to train as a social worker.

I guess it’s no different from the world of work. The project I’m currently on has a few wastrels on the team and the rest of us are carrying them.

Totally disagree. You need both and universities need to teach both. When they are interviewing for jobs, they can tell a much better story about how they approached a group assignment than they can about their planning and execution of their second year essay on postmodernism.

I don't think giving someone a lower degree classification because they had a mentalist in their group is fair, ever. But I've seen it happen more than once.

Mine asked as it’s a media production degree and some stuff can only be done in groups . She was told they have a buddycheck system where groups can feed back on each others efforts and they are often around watching them work in the studios and observing them when presenting keeping an eye on whoever isn’t pulling their weight . That they understood some people can be tricky to work with ! Hope it’s like this when it comes to the crunch!

My son just got his results for his 1st year in a humanities degree and I was I'll be honest, concerned about group work because in a way it can be a diluting process of each individual's talents. But his group got a 72 and obviously really worked hard to have a coherent voice - they had to write a group essay!

Totally agree, I would say the majority of dds 4th and 5 th year of her Masters(we are in Scotland) have been group work.

It would be very bad luck and poor design for a group assignment to be weighted in a way that it affected one’s degree classification. In any case, your final degree classification should matter less than the skills you can demonstrate as a result. Firsts should only matter if you want to go into an academic career (imo).

Following thread with interest and I agree with your sentiment, but can you elaborate on the tennis metaphor? I'm just curious, just bugging me I don't understand. Thanks

This happened to DDs friend, she complained and had proof of her work and what the other, let’s say, slightly less focused and motivated students did. She got her mark upgraded.

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.

This sounds similar to my ds’s experience. He also had no choice of the group he was assigned. There were 4 of them and ds and one other were the only ones that did anything. Then one of them said he’d had enough and was leaving uni early, and the one who had helped a bit said he had a gambling problem so had to go into rehab.
This left ds and another student who just agreed with whatever ds suggested but actually contributed virtually nothing.
So ds did most of the work and they all got equal marks.

You can't bully people, or down grade them, for something like body odour.
Your attitude is very outdated.
A student may be struggling for some reason resulting in poor self care. Also health issues can cause it.

This is the right approach. Must keep records and raise lack of effort from others.

I was meaning that private schools can afford to do more individual sports as they don't have to just do crowd control

Dd had a group university project recently. In a group of 6 of them, one person never turned up for meetings, did none of the planning etc. The group e-mailed the tutor and expressed concern that the other student may be struggling in some way.

The tutor was excellent, spoke to the one student (no idea what the outcome for them was, obviously), and allowed the rest of the group to submit the project without her.

It taught the group valuable lessons in working together, planning, being empathetic and pro-active. Skills that they will need in their working lives.

As an academic roped into overseeing group work modules a few times I will only say that I find the whole subject too depressing for words.

However I too find it difficult to imagine poor group work dynamics actually making the difference in the degree classification. Something is going wrong, and it have something to do with the individual, if this is really true. I suspect more complexity.

Ah ok, get you, thanks.

DS's first year group was a bit hit and miss, which bugged him. Second year, don't know how they wangled it or just good fortune, but they loved their group and worked well together, made firm friends. Year in Industry this year. Will be interesting to see how 3rd year goes on return to Uni. Would be a disappointing if a module suffered at that late stage over something where not much control.

Your opinion is pretty backwards these days - a third of students get one

A third of students get 1st now because of grade inflation. A 1st is intended to show exceptional ability. Back in the mid 1980s when a 1st really meant something most would probably have got a 2/2. It is depressing how standards have slipped.

No need for personal insults @CurdinHenry. As @Friendlygingercat says, grade inflation is largely to blame. I could treat you to a long explanation for this but I don’t think you would read it. It is fuelled by our overall educational culture that teaches children they must get A stars / Nines etc. all the time.

Yes OP, you are right.

Universities do it because it is less work for the lecturers.

Another example of how public services are set up for the benefit of people working in them not the people paying for them!

The thing about working in a team in the world of work, is that it's made up of a range of roles. You'd have say a project manager, a business analyst, a developer etc. You wouldn't have a project team entirely made up of any one of those roles. University groups are more often than not, made up of too many similar people with no clearly defined roles. It's not similar to the world of work at all.

In my experience, that is not necessarily true. Particularly for final year stem group projects.