Post grad study - very tricky situation with a group project. Would appreciate insight / advice from someone who understands the process.

[WhereMyRosemaryGoes]

It's a post grad diploma. Expectations are high and the workload is intense (/overwhelming at times!)

We have a 4-week group project. It's all distance, so we connect via Zoom and work asynchronously.

One group member is submitting work that is of such low standard that I can't hand it in under my name. She doesn't really understand the project; the work makes no sense in context and is badly written (incorrect spelling, unfinished sentences). Some parts are clearly copied and pasted from a website (she goes from very poor English to masterful erudition and then back again). Particularly worryingly, absolutely nothing is referenced. I would expect my 11-year-old to do a better job. It's just this weird, long document of unconnected numbers and photos taken from websites.

We've had other problems with the group member not doing any work at all and are already in contact with the lecturer, who suggests we allocate a percentage of the grade according to input. Currently, the lecturer thinks the problem is that she hasn't done anything. Now she's actually doing something, it's worse!

Oh - I’m disappointed to see they’ve been no expert responses here, so far @WhereMyRosemaryGoes. And time is ticking for your group project, obviously.

I suppose my first question is, what proportion of your final grade does this project constitute? (As that might determine how much time and energy you put into fixing things.)

I haven’t been in exactly this position but group work was the most important part of my postgrad degree. For me it was wholly rewarding but I know another group had problems - and they went repeatedly to the tutor and course director until the matter was resolved.

On the other hand, the child of a friend of mine faced a similar problem as an undergraduate. In that case the rest of the group took responsibility for ‘revising’ the sub-standard contribution before submission. I don’t know if there would be ethical issues in doing that at postgrad level, where the research should presumably carry more weight.

‘there’ve been …’

I suppose ask the lecturer -can you all be clearly responsible for different slides/ topics within the presentation?

And one person pull them into a standard format (and spell check)

We did that -told the Lecturer who worked on each slide (and who did no work -luckily it was not graded)

Or will you all be marked on the whole lot? I'd insist at least on including references-surely everything is based on others work -it's not usually your own original ideas even at post grad.

I did a work related post-grad and understand the potential issues with group assignments but luckily we never had the problem your group is experiencing.

I would break down the issues and address each one, as a group in a zoom call so that everyone is clear as to their expected contribution. I'm afraid OP, but you will have to be brutal if there will be an overall group mark. Does the person have a mentor who could go through the project in detail with her?

The marking - a general group mark or based on individual input? (Find out from lecturer)

Open discussion on what the assignment means and what will be required to get a good mark. (Yes, it's going back to the start)

The plan on how the group will be tackling the project eg what angle, what kind of evidence to support, provision of relevant stats, where to look for recent research etc

Assigning individual tasks. Emphasise need for original thought and thorough analyses; work spell-checked in advance before submitting to the group; supplying references in the correct format (my Mac's inbuilt reference tool started to become incompatible with other software after a while and I carelessly lost a point for mistakes in referencing for one assignment. Hard lesson learnt)

If the person does not understand the project she has to go back to the lecturer for support, explain her approach and she will be told if she is misinterpreting what the project requires. Several students on my course did this and got extra help. Remember that universities don't want students to fail.

Personally, knowing that I sometimes spent 12 hours on the trot working on an assignment, in addition to holding down a full-time job, there is no way I would put up with a sub-standard contribution by a group member. My hard work resulted in a distinction, but who knows if a single poor grade for a group project would have put me below the threshold for that award?

Good luck OP!

I feel your pain with a post-grad remotely, trying to communicate with Zoom. I would be very very open with the tutor/lecturer. And ask the other decent members of your group to do likewise. Email them some of the dross the person has handed in, lay out the situation simply in bullet points or a timeline, and ask for advice.

It is unfair that the lecturer is expecting you to get into conflict with this person by agreeing within the group what percentage of the mark is assigned to each contributor. That works fine when you have everyone pulling their weight and the group agrees that everyone score 65 or 68, except Jenny who did extra work on X so gets 70. Or whatever. But when someone is doing bugger all and the rest are running around and working hard they cannot expect to get the marks.

It would seem likely however that if this student is SO poor and so disengaged she will already be on the tutor's radar. Referencing is super-basic, they are clearly not cut out for post-grad study. Why are they even on the course?

Good luck, a Dip is hard enough work as it is without rubbish group dynamics. What general subject is it in?

Thank you for the replies!! I have been so wrapped up in deadlines I had forgotten I posted.

The situation got very much uglier. It was deeply unpleasant for all. It is all in the hands of the lecturer now, and we have been very clear about exactly what the person contributed. I do not want my name associated with the work she produced.

I do feel bad. It's sad for her. She has 100 reasons why she's struggling, but seemingly no awareness that it's bloody hard for all of us, and made harder by her actions over the past 6 weeks. I lost hours trying to support her. I think I have acted fairly and with kindness throughout. I am pretty sure that she will contest the grade allocation % so we will all have to have an interview with the convener about it. More time lost to this blimmin woman!

Kick up a massive stink and say the stress is really harming your mental health.(that's what she is going to do and unfortunately the university will go with whatever minimises their risk on that front). I know because I used to be a course convenor and group work was rancid. They really ought to can it.

I tell you what's a bit puzzling though. I had to jump through hoops to get onto this course. Attested grade point average in my degree, character references, interview, math and writing exam. The application process with all the forms and 100s of attachments was demanding! And IELTS level 7 required for ESL speakers.

While I know it's none of my business, I can't help wondering how she got on the course. Her English level is below IELTS 7 (I taught academic IELTS for years and am a reasonable judge of this). She is unable to understand how to share work or use Google docs and shared folders (despite 2 long shared screen sessions trying to teach her). She just didn't really understand the assignment, and we couldn't find a way of explaining it that she understood. And she had never heard of APA referencing???

Hmm. Yes, you're right. I keep feeling sorry for her, but I need to protect myself.

I can't help wondering how she got on the course.

Overseas student paying ££££££ in fees? There's your answer.

The last time I had supervision with my tutor they were complaining how snowed under they were and how a lot of it was that students needed so much more "hand-holding" and how the calibre of students wasn't what it was a few years ago. This is a uni in Scotland where the government pays £2k fees a year for Scottish compared with English universities getting 4 times more so they are totally cash-strapped and being pushed into accepting students, and looking at non-standard routes into higher education which are just not equivalent. Anecdotally, and not at my uni, I have heard of overseas students talking themselves onto a Masters without having done any undergrad level study at all, just with a few years of work experience. So when it comes to academic writing or research, not a clue.

Yeah, the top unis in Scotland are printing qualifications terrified that any attempt to enforce standards will result in some sort of legal action or headline about self harm. Scottish school standards are appalling and it's common in some popular international student source countries to fake your quals entirely. It's a real scandal.

I'm a university lecturer and group presentations are supposed to encourage softer skills such as group working, managing difficult people and to replicate situations in a future workplace.

In reality they cause all sorts of drama and the stress involved is over and above any gains. It's a quick assessment method for us though so I guess that drives its popularity. For what it's worth it's easy to spot the weak students

I always found it took longer than kust marking a damn essay.

Also, my old place now allows special arrangements for students who say they feel too anxious to contribute. They still stay in the group (and coast on the group's grade). But it would be failing in the old duty of care to tell them to shape up or ship out.

The next gen of professionals are going to be a disaster.

The most annoying thing about our group assignment was that all communication was supposed to go through the very clunky and not user-friendly forums that the university set up. They wanted to see how we interacted as a group, allocated work, did the peer review and so on. And their forums were the only way of doing that.

But in the real world when you're working with a group you use whatsapp, or email or any one of hundreds of online platforms set up specifically for this sort of thing. So what ended up happening was that all the discussion took place on Whatsapp, and then someone had the job of posting a summary on the forum to pretend the discussion was all happening on there. Very artificial!

Trouble is in real world. If one person refused to contribute, you have various sanctions to get them to do it (or speak to your boss /their boss /project t owner. They risk being sacked.

You don't have that in a uni group situation. I hated it (as a mature student doing second degree)

I have avoided (do far) all modules with group assignments on my MSc. It seems some what patronising as a mature student , and really I want a degree that measures how good I am at the subject not soft skills. Then ofcourse the risk of being held back by the (many) less engaged students.

@Maebh9 interesting what you say about top Scottish universities. I am at one (online), and I do worry whether pragmatically its worth my time and money.

Well, it's a really objectionable ethical situation imo. You need qualifications to do things, which cost a lot of money. So those who can't afford it are excluded from all sorts of lines of work but the value of what you learn is highly dubious.

I think there is a middle ground, being offered in theory by online part-time degrees where once you have a foot in the door of a career, you can study as you earn. But it's not easily affordable to most, so you are likely taking a financial gamble on the degree being of value both in terms of what you learn and of how it is perceived. Insisting on upfront qualifications before offering entry to career paths is in my opinion more exclusionary, and unfortunately the current trend.

If the universities are knowingly churning out degrees of little value, this is concerning, many students are stretching themselves to obtain them (both home and overseas students). Then again I guess the universities are just trying to survive while the government have underfunded them, and it is employers who set the, in some cases, arbitrary bars to entry/progression.

This is detracting somewhat from initial question of group work!