It may be worth acknowledging that Professor A is very interested in information technology (to the point that he went to the World Summit on the Information Society last week) and is vegan. He bought vegan cookies for all of us the night of our presentations so he’s not all bad. He just has different priorities than I do. Therefore it makes sense to me that he will read the papers on his computer. (As opposed to what my fellow student suggested: That he would have his TA (Teaching Assistant) print out all of our papers.
Hey, I can appreciate that sometimes in the real world, you need to be a team player. I can appreciate the need to understand how to work in groups.
…but in the real world, do they really fire ALL of you if the group doesn’t work because you got saddled with one asshead?
No. Every place I’ve ever worked made a point of isolating and firing incompetents and idiots. Either that, or promoting them.
…and when there is work I can do faster, better, and more efficiently by myself than in a group, every single boss I’ve ever had has LET ME DO IT ALONE, rather than have to drag a friggin’ team with me. This is because in the real world, your boss is concerned with RESULTS, as opposed to keeping the class busy in such a way that lets them not have to stand up there and teach, y’know?
Professors and teachers love Small Group Projects. Apparently, this is supposed to enhance learning, somehow. The way some profs do it, you’d think it wasn’t possible to learn anything EXCEPT in small groups.
Having studied the process, I am here to tell you that it works. Kind of. IF you moderate it, and pay close attention to your group dynamic, and carefully make sure everyone participates, and that no one in a given group steamrollers everyone else, or logjams the process because he’s an asshole, or sits on his ass and does nothing.
In short… monitoring and moderating Small Groups is work.
But apparently, college professors don’t want to hear this. The standard College Professor technique for managing small groups is simply “Everyone get in small groups and pull brilliance out of your ass,” as if this was a common result of getting into small groups.
And then they sit up there and grade papers while the Small Groups fumble around trying to figure out what to do.
I hate small groups. I have yet to ever be in a small group that enhanced my learning experience. In fact, nearly everything I’ve ever done in a classroom in a Small Group was something I could have done better, quicker, and more efficiently by myself. All too often, I just say, “Everyone take a break. I will do everything,” just to make sure it gets done, and done RIGHT. After all, if I were working alone, I’d have to do everything anyway, right?
It works about half the time. The other half of the time, we have an idiot. “I don’t think we should do a project about teaching math,” the idiot will say. “I think we should do a project about the Super Bowl.”
Everyone else in the Small Group looks at the idiot. “What does the Super Bowl have to do with math?” we ask. “This is a math class, Math Methods. It’s about teaching math.”
“Well, I like the Super Bowl,” says the Idiot stubbornly. At that point, he has become the Small Group’s enemy, and at any point, if given any kind of say, he will obstruct and argue, because he didn’t get to do it HIS way. Basically, at this point, your small group has just become smaller. And that’s assuming that everyone else has good sense and simply ignores this asshole.
I recall one Small Group project I did last year. It was a fun one. I had a whole GROUP of idiots. “Let’s do our project on dyslexia!” they cheered.
“Wait a minute,” I said. "Our assigned topic is “cognitive disorders.” "
“Dyslexia is a cognitive disorder,” they chorused.
“Yes,” I said, “but don’t you think the professor wants to hear about more than just dyslexia? I don’t wanna get my grade shot to hell because we didn’t cover any other cognitive disorders.”
“Dyslexia is a cognitive disorder,” they chorused.
“Yes, yes, I heard that part,” I said, “but it’s only ONE of MANY disorders under the heading, and our instructions were to provide a presentation giving an OVERVIEW, not to zero in on one given area.”
“Dyslexia is a cognitive disorder,” they chorused.
Finally, I got up and asked the professor what the fuck we were supposed to do. She said, “I want to see a group presentation that provides an overview of a variety of cognitive disorders.”
I sat down with my group. They all looked at me venomously. “Tattletale,” someone said.
Well, not really, but I sure felt like it. On the other hand, my grade did not go swirling down the toilet just because my professor chained me to a group of pigheaded idiots…
Oh, and while I’m thinkin’ about it, I learned how to make a bong out of household items (including trash), too. On my first go-round, way back in the early eighties.
However, I’m fairly sure that as a high school teacher, I’m not going to be using that knowledge too often, these days…
Tell it, man. Fucking group projects, I hate them.
Here’s a little story about what I learned in college:
Back in 1991, which was my senior year in Journalism school, I had this really great PR professor, who will be known here as Dr. Mel. Dr. Mel taught us a lot about the fine art of public relations (read: schmoozing). He also loaded us up with homework and assigned the dreaded Group Project (to which I heartily echo Wang Ka’s sentiments. Our final project (individual) was a 40 page PR proposal for the organization of our choice. It was due on the day our final was scheduled, in lieu of actually taking a final exam. I scheduled and paced myself, as I carried a particularly heavy load of courses that quarter and working part-time. So I was on track as the quarter came to a close.
During the last week of class, Dr. Mel tosses, offhand, at the end of the class, “I will be going to Maui for Spring Break and will not be here to grade your final papers. Therefore, I am moving up the deadline by one week. The papers will now be due on the last day of class instead of the day of the Final Exam.”
I looked at my schedule and other syllabi. Then I freaked. I had two other papers to write, a 40-page magazine layout to turn in, and a final exam to study for and take. EVERYTHING was due within 24 hours of the last day of class. I now did not have enough hours in the days ahead to complete everything, even if I gave up eating and sleeping, and called in sick at work, for the next five days.
So I go to Dr. Mel’s office. I show him the various syllabi, and take him through my schedule. I ask for permission to turn the paper into the Journalism office on the day of the final. I offer to take an incomplete as my grade until he can return the following quarter, grade my paper and turn in an amended grade. He refused to budge, with the logic that, if he did that for me, he’d have to do it for everyone else. While I understood his position, his answer was still unacceptable to me.
I also understood the lesson he was trying to teach us: In the Real World, your client often will move their deadlines around and you will have to scramble to meet them. And he was right. It’s happened to me a number of times over the years in my career as a professional journalist/editor.
Finally I went to the Director of the J-School and told him my tale of woe. He went to Dr. Mel, who called me at work about an hour later and told me, “Dogzilla, you’re going to get what you want.” I got a C on the paper and a B- in the class. To this day, I am still convinced I would have gotten a better grade had I followed along with all the other sheep and turned in my paper when he expected it. He was punishing me for “going over his head” – yet another valuable lesson which has served me well in the professional world.
Now years later, I would like to explain to Dr. Mel why his logic is faulty and why the lesson – now that I look back on it – is bullshit.
In the Real World, you do have multiple projects and multiple deadlines. However, when one gets bumped up, you often have the ability to move your other obligations around. You can often go to your clients and say, “Yeah, I understand you want Work Item A a week earlier, but that’s going to take my time away from Work Item B. Can I get an extension on the B deadline?” Most clients will go for this, with the understanding that they have backed you against the wall with their unreasonable demand.
In college, I couldn’t very well go to my other professors and say, “Look what this jerk did. Can I take your final exam some other time when I’m less busy?” You do not have the luxury of being about to juggle and rearrange your deadlines and obligations in order to accommodate The Big Project.
In the Real World, even if your other clients won’t or can’t grant you amnesty or an extension on some deadline, at the very least, you can assemble a team of people, delegate out bits and parts of the task and use additional manpower to get your project done. In college, I couldn’t very well walk around the dorms and say, “Who’s got some time on their hands so you can help me with this big project?” In college, that’s called “cheating”. In the Real World, it’s called, “teamwork.” In college, you can’t pull your friends off writing their papers and studying for your exams. In the Real World, you can ask your assistant or your co-workers to drop what they’re doing and help out.
Dr. Mel, I still understand the lesson you were trying to teach us. But I believe you were far too far away from retirement from the Business World to remember what it’s like. You have forgotten that one has the luxury of more control over one’s own workload and schedule than a college student. Who, by the way, is paying BIG BUCKS to allow you to abuse them. You taught me some valuable lessons. One of them is that you are really just a crochety, bitter old man who may have been a successful Advertising Executive at one time, but is now just full of beans. Your Old School ways are just not how business is done any more.
Amen, Dogzilla.
In Life, Sometimes You Just Get Fucked By Circumstance. This is a truism, certainly.
Nevertheless, I don’t think I’d like to find myself taking a class where the professor verbally abuses me, changes the rules constantly, and all students are automatically failed at the end of the semester, just because “shit happens” and “life isn’t fair.”
There are some areas and actions a professor shouldn’t be able to justify simply by saying, “This is how things work in the real world,” even if it’s true.
Thing is, it’s rarely true.
Either the professor has no real world business experience at all or it’s been so long since they did work in the business world, they’ve completely blocked all memory of it. Or else business in general has changed so significantly that what the professor knew to be true 40 years ago certainly isn’t now.
A good example of that was my decrepit and aged Magazine Production & Design prof. As I mentioned before, the final project was a 40-page magazine layout. He gave us huge pages of Greeked text (gibberish, just to show where text goes), paste up boards and big sheets of paper. We were to cut and paste a mockup together. Literally – with glue sticks and sheets of greeked text. We were s’posed to hand draw in the headlines and cut out magazine pictures to show where our photos went. “This is how magazines in the real world are put together.”
And that’s the last time I used that skill. I was graduated in the early 90’s. That means that the desktop publishing software (and the Macs) were already dominating publishing by the time I hit the job market, which was only a few months after that class. Had Mr. Should Have Retired 10 Years Ago done any research at all on the current and developing technology, he might not have completely wasted my tuition money and ten weeks of my life in that class.
…the early nineties?
Dog, that stuff was on its way out in the mid-eighties. When I studied journalism then, they were already doing away with layout boards and replacing them with computers…
I know. Case in point, eh?
I did that project by hand, as was expected, but I had classmates who had Macs in their sorority houses and did the project with PageMaker. Guess who got the As?
I have a business on the side, a design business. I consult on everything from elderly housing projects to kids spaces…I am constently talking to all my classes about real world scenerios. Too many college students leave with a BA or BS and have no idea how to practically sell themselves to the concrete jungle lords and nobles. I tell my seniors that I know are not going on to grad school, "raise your hand if you know what you will be doing next autumn? "
Very few have jobs lined up, and they think that the summer of after college is their last hurrah! When she should be thinking the summer between junior and senior year is their last hurrah…because I’ll tell ya one thing Jack, if you are not aggressive now about finding something to pay your bills (which are on their way full force) you got another thing coming to you…i.e. a nice bartending position at an upscale pub! *
*I’m not bashing bartending. It got me through all of my schooling. But I knew it was all an investment into my future. I was lucky to land a position as an adjunct at my alma mater…Lucky I was the incumbant for a retiring prof.
Professors will embrace and implement technology in the classroom without ever testing.
I just had a delightful quarter that was spent with 30 other hapless students compiling an online project to email in at the end of the quarter. My project weighed in at a hefty 12 Mb file size.
Due date of the project, 30 students emailed their final projects to the professor. Later that evening, 30 students receive “Message failed - Mailbox is full” from the professor’s Hotmail account.
This worked for me…
The key to going a group project is to have one of the members of your group be a starter on the football team. And, oh yeah, attend a Big 10 university.
My group in a freshman communications class was supposed to research a topic, get all the info pulled together, and then write a large paper. In every group meeting save the last, football player sort of sat there, gazing off into space. No doubt thinking of plays and post patterns. During the last group meeting he finally speaks up and volunteers to type the paper. At that point we hadn’t even really decided what we were going to say.
“No problem,” he says, “I’ll pull it together.”
He brings back the most beautifully typed, well written, well researched, and -dare I say- professional paper I’ve ever seen.