Teaming for (un)Performance
By: Michelle Adams
Group Projects. I don’t know anyone who truly relishes the thought of a group project for one of their classes. You open up that syllabus on the first day of class and see in bold characters “Group Project – 25%.” My first thought is usually a sinking feeling of dread. Twenty-five percent of my grade rests on the responsibility of my other team members and how they decide to perform. My second thought is that I hope we are able to choose our own teams. Even if you don’t know anyone else in the entire class, you can usually judge who the students are that you want to work with. They are the ones sitting in the front row, always on time, and ready with their homework completely done. These self-selected groups tend to be more productive, as the team members have similar expectations for the end result and generally put equal amounts of time into the project. On the other hand, there are professor-assigned group projects and this is where the real trouble begins.
The problem with assigned group projects is that not everyone puts the same amount of effort into the project. Randomly selecting groups allows for the lowest common denominator performance. Invariably, one or two people end up doing the bulk of the work, carrying the rest of their team members. The students that want to receive a good grade will do whatever it takes for that “A,” even if it means doing the majority of the work meant for four people. The students that are “carried,” so to speak, by a single group member know that they can put little effort into the project and still come out no worse off. When these students can piggyback on someone else and know that that someone else is willing to do the work, why should they care? It is a simple matter of efficiency – except for the person who does all the work and gets burned for it. To a certain extent, professors do seem to realize that teams generally function this way, but at the same time they want to ensure that everyone performs at about the same level and has the same opportunity to succeed. This principle is not consistent with the real work world. For instance, actors could be randomly assigned to movies to produce commonly bad drivel; athletes could be randomly assigned to the Olympics to ensure that the United States loses all the medals; and high school students could be randomly accepted to Lehigh so that we are guaranteed not to outperform the local community college.
There are benefits to group projects, of course. Countless professors will tell you that you need to learn how to collaborate and cooperate in a group setting, no matter what field of work you go into. I wholeheartedly agree with this way of thinking. In the professional world, hardly anyone will complete a task alone. However, in the work world the best companies will have the best teams and will achieve the best performance. There are better ways to go about group projects, such as allowing students to choose their groups. This method will put students with similar standards for group work together. Students who previously would simply ride on the work of their other group members would be forced to contribute. This technique of self-selecting groups provides the most overall benefit to a class.
I had one class this semester in which the professor announced we could form our own groups and choose our own topics. Naturally I was pleased about this and went around to find other students who shared similar expectations for group work. It seemed like a cruel joke when, two weeks later, this very same professor had a complete change of mind and started assigning groups. Apparently, this professor’s department colleagues were somewhat aghast that students were allowed to select their own teams for a project. So this semester my class has acquired the dubious honor of becoming an experiment for the department. The professor can compare the quality of our group projects to that of previous semesters. I know what my prediction for the outcome will be; in a semester, we will know for certain. Somehow I don’t think that sinking feeling is really going to go away.
