# Why I Hate Group Projects **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 10, 2015, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663 "2015-03-10T02:18:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663/41 "2015-03-12T05:18:06Z")
> [@get\_lives](#): > > Really? If I were teaching, I’d rather have a few hours of in-person interview with the last 4 or 5 National Teacher of the Year award recipients in my subject area ( or grade if K-5). > > Those who can teach, teach. Those who can’t, teach teachers how. LOL but seriously, if you taught high school math, wouldn’t you rather hang out with Jaime Escalante than some PhD who teaches classes to future math teachers? if you had to pick just one. Be careful: The people who are most competent at something are rarely the best picks to teach that field. Multiple reasons come to mind. One, they can’t imagine what it’s like to not know something, or to not have certain habits of mind. I don’t know what it’s like to not be able to write cogent sentences; I can see some people who plainly can’t, and I can’t emulate their minds using my own, which means I can’t see how their processes are going wrong. That makes me a fairly good writer and a truly terrible English teacher, which is one reason I’ve never been an English teacher. That dovetails into the next reason: Teaching is a learned skill, and someone who has learned some other skills to expert level may or may not have spent time on learning how to teach. This is, apparently, completely unimportant at the university level, but at high school and below, teachers who know how to teach are valued and, if you’re trying to learn how to teach, it would be nice to learn from someone who has at least a passing knowledge of the theory of pedagogy. ---
**Author:** ![Master\_Wang-Ka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/master_wang-ka/32/3325_2.png) [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663/42 "2015-03-12T16:52:02Z")
> [@get\_lives](#): > > Really? If I were teaching, I’d rather have a few hours of in-person interview with the last 4 or 5 National Teacher of the Year award recipients in my subject area ( or grade if K-5). > > Those who can teach, teach. Those who can’t, teach teachers how. LOL but seriously, if you taught high school math, wouldn’t you rather hang out with Jaime Escalante than some PhD who teaches classes to future math teachers? if you had to pick just one. Wul, durr. I’d also like to travel abroad and see how they do it in other countries, and while we’re at it, I could use letters of recommendation from the last five presidents. Lacking that, I figured I’d just study under an awardwinning professor of education and author of several books on the subject. And I did. Bleh. When all those awardwinning teachers gather in one place, let me know. I’d like to hear what they have to say. ---
**Author:** ![Master\_Wang-Ka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/master_wang-ka/32/3325_2.png) [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663/43 "2015-03-12T16:55:34Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > Be careful: The people who are most competent at something are rarely the best picks to teach that field. > > Multiple reasons come to mind. One, they can’t imagine what it’s like to not know something, or to not have certain habits of mind. I don’t know what it’s like to not be able to write cogent sentences; I can see some people who plainly can’t, and I can’t emulate their minds using my own, which means I can’t see how their processes are going wrong. That makes me a fairly good writer and a truly terrible English teacher, which is one reason I’ve never been an English teacher. > > That dovetails into the next reason: Teaching is a learned skill, and someone who has learned some other skills to expert level may or may not have spent time on learning how to teach. This is, apparently, completely unimportant at the university level, but at high school and below, teachers who know how to teach are valued and, if you’re trying to learn how to teach, it would be nice to learn from someone who has at least a passing knowledge of the theory of pedagogy. Truth. I would add a detail or two: I’ve known some brilliant special ed teachers who bombed horribly when they tried to teach teachers. Had one in college, in fact. Utterly brilliant woman when dealing with autism and schizophrenia who was totally lost dealing with growed up college students with no cognitive disorders. Still less frustrating than the prof who couldn’t be bothered. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663/44 "2015-03-12T19:42:12Z")
> [@Master\_Wang-Ka](#): > > Seriously? > > 1. Group projects that have hundreds of people in a public school setting? Or even a university setting? Love to see what the administration or the parents would say about THAT. > > Or did you mean “in a corporate environment?” Perhaps you were. I certainly couldn’t design and build a Chevrolet, all by myself. Plainly, it is a cooperative effort involving hundreds of people. But, then, in a corporate environment, it is my understanding that if you have an idiot who won’t or can’t do his job, you don’t necessarily punish the people in his group who are working their butts off trying to keep the project moving forward. Am I wrong? Does Corporate America just sack entire mobs of people? Or do they attempt to isolate the problem, and deal with… the problem? Big teams are made up of lots of small teams. Many of which contain idiots. And despite what you have read, it is hard to fire idiots for being idiots. Don’t give them a raise, but they know they are idiots and will stay on, grateful for being employed. And when the project gets screwed up, corporate America does fire great gobs of people. It is easier then firing people one at a time. Anyhow my point was that learning to work in teams during school is really, really useful. > [@](#): > > It is also my understanding from my work in the private sector that you have a thing called a “project lead” or a “project manager.” He’s the guy you go to when something goes banana shaped, or when you have a jerkoff who hasn’t shown up for work in a week. The “project manager,” when it exists at all in an academic setting, is usually a member of the group given responsibility and no authority, and simply told to “make it magically happen” when he complains to the prof that it isn’t coming together. With modern flat organizations the project manager is within the team, with no real management authority but plenty of responsibility. The actual manager has 15 or 20 reports, and if he knows what is going on in the project you are lucky. And most managers don’t want to hear about conflicts in the team. Someone not showing up is a different story. So the real world and the class world are pretty similar. In the corporate world sometimes the project manager has a good track record and is respected by the other members, which probably happens less often in a class. > [@](#): > > …hence the reason I’d just do the damn thing myself. I would rather permit other people to leech off my efforts, as opposed to allowing them to drag me down into failing territory. I do resent the kind of asshead instructor who enforces this nonsense, and I therefore do not follow that example myself. This I understand. The danger in the real world is that despite the fact you can do everything twice as fast as the other people on the team, when you take on 3 times the work you start to fall behind. The number one mistake new managers make is doing not managing, since they do better than most of their team. > [@](#): > > 1. My experience with grad school is limited; do they have to design and build a Chevrolet from scratch, or something? And what are these reasons of which you speak? It would be nice to know them, as opposed to simply thinking that the instructor cannot be bothered. The class I’m thinking of was a seminar with about 25 people where we designed a computer language. It was an object oriented language when this was still new, long before C++. We broke into teams to work on different aspects of the thing. Pretty much everyone who contributed got an A, grad seminars are nice that way, but most people were pretty into the class. So, this was not sit in a room getting lectured at kind of class. > [@](#): > > 1. It’s nice to know your employers sponsored classes in conflict resolution. In my case, this was never offered; you learned to deal with conflict when some idiot caused it, and you clawed your way through it. Or in my case, just did the damn thing myself. I do not find this effective, personally, although it worked for me. Plainly, I am responsible for unleashing hordes of idiots and stubborn types upon the world without having learned THEIR lesson. I blame my teachers. The conflicts covered were not caused by idiots, they were caused by two smart and strong willed people disagreeing, which happens all the time when you do something that has never been done before. In Silicon Valley idiots might slow things down but they don’t cause conflicts because no one listens to them. > [@](#): > > And to answer your final question, I MANAGE THE GODDAMN PROJECTS, and I see to it that each student is responsible for a portion of the finished project… and when the kid doing Part C is being an ass, I don’t punish A, B, and D. > > But I guess they do things differently at Intel. You’ll have to let me know. Oh, if only it was so easy in the real world. You don’t get to give out grades except once a year, and as I said even Ds are adored by losers. Chunks of projects are often not so very neat and clean. And the boss, who is getting overworked by her boss, is not going to want to spend a lot of precious time solving playground squabbles. BTW good performers know this and don’t go asking for someone else to solve the problems. And you also have the problem of someone not performing because they are sick, not because they are lazy. You see, a teacher can swoop in and make it better through grading, but that doesn’t teach the team skills people need to have. I think the slacker being shamed by other team members might be better than getting a bad grade. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663/45 "2015-03-12T19:48:35Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > I maintain that the group dynamics of any group I have been in for a school project look like this. > > You tend, in a group of four, to get one competent person, one well intentioned person who will contribute, one well intentioned person whose contributions will need to be reworked and cause the competent person more hindrance than help - whom the competent person will also end up teaching, and the forth guy who rides along for the group grade. Guess what - most work projects wind up with the same composition of people. More or less. You assign the guy on the bottom the crap work that is necessary but which anyone can do and the guy on the top comes up with new ideas and leads. The trickiest situation is when there are two very smart people on the team who disagree. That can kill things much faster than a slacker. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663/46 "2015-03-12T19:54:15Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Beyond that, in school, assholes and other toxic sorts get more or less free reign to be that way, while in the workplace, the aforementioned status updates and discipline tend to make everyone toe the cooperative line. > > I mean, I had a grad school group research paper with a 6 person group- each person wrote a set of paragraphs about a topic. As coordinator/editor (I wrote the intro and conclusion, and generally formatted and edited), I specified that we were to use the MLA standards for citations (in-text citations and end-notes). I wish. Getting people to follow standards at work can be really hard. The problem is that your important standard is for them one more unnecessary time waster when five more important things are competing for their attention. I finally gave up on getting ten people to follow my file naming convention and just wrote some code to figure out what the name should be and rename the file accordingly. And another guy closer to them spend weeks to get them to put the files in the same place every night. And none of these people are idiots, just busy and over worked. ---
**Author:** ![get\_lives](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecb155/32.png) [@get\_lives](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/get_lives)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663/47 "2015-03-12T20:57:44Z")
> [@Master\_Wang-Ka](#): > > When all those awardwinning teachers gather in one place, let me know. I’d like to hear what they have to say. That sounds like a project that someone should put together. But I’m talking specifically about the top performers in your general grade level or subject. Theory is great, but it lags behind the best performers, IME. They’re going to have a lot of practical advice and techniques that, although possibly needing a little prodding to get it out of them, would be worth the effort in most cases, no doubt. ---
**Author:** ![Master\_Wang-Ka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/master_wang-ka/32/3325_2.png) [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663/48 "2015-03-12T23:08:56Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Anyhow my point was that learning to work in teams during school is really, really useful. And MY point is that neither the public schools nor the two universities I have attended HAVE TAUGHT A DAMN THING ABOUT WORKING IN TEAMS. Perhaps things are different where you are, but here it’s just “get in groups and make it work somehow.” THERE IS NO TEACHING PEOPLE TO WORK IN TEAMS. Perhaps they do this at Intel. I dunno. I’ve never worked there. It would be useful if the public schools did this. But they don’t. Teamwork and group work isn’t on any standardized test I’ve ever seen, and is therefore wildly undervalued. See above. > [@Voyager](#): > > Oh, if only it was so easy in the real world. You don’t get to give out grades except once a year, and as I said even Ds are adored by losers. …this would seem to support my current idea that you are posting from some other planet, or perhaps a parallel dimension. Either that, or you assume that you know what you’re talking about. Neither of these are truisms. At least, not anywhere I’ve ever worked. > [@Voyager](#): > > Chunks of projects are often not so very neat and clean. And the boss, who is getting overworked by her boss, is not going to want to spend a lot of precious time solving playground squabbles. BTW good performers know this and don’t go asking for someone else to solve the problems. …which, again, seems to support my earlier point of “Hellwichu people, I’m going to do this thing, and you can all lead, follow, or get the hell out of my way.” ---
**Author:** ![Master\_Wang-Ka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/master_wang-ka/32/3325_2.png) [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663/49 "2015-03-12T23:10:34Z")
> [@get\_lives](#): > > That sounds like a project that someone should put together. But I’m talking specifically about the top performers in your general grade level or subject. Theory is great, but it lags behind the best performers, IME. They’re going to have a lot of practical advice and techniques that, although possibly needing a little prodding to get it out of them, would be worth the effort in most cases, no doubt. I agree. And the minute someone gives me the time off and pays for the plane tickets, I’d sure like to do that. Gee, is there money in the budget for that…:smack: ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663/50 "2015-03-13T00:13:01Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > Does anyone really read these long OP posts? If **Wang-Ka** writes it, I’d read a laundry list. ---
**Author:** ![get\_lives](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecb155/32.png) [@get\_lives](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/get_lives)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663/51 "2015-03-13T00:43:17Z")
> [@Master\_Wang-Ka](#): > > I agree. And the minute someone gives me the time off and pays for the plane tickets, I’d sure like to do that. > > Gee, is there money in the budget for that…:smack: Uh, you’re a writer. Get a book advance. I’m just an neckbeard with a tablet, typing with my index fingers. ---
**Author:** ![sinjin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ebca7d/32.png) [@sinjin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sinjin)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663/52 "2015-03-13T00:48:19Z")
I loathed group projects as a faculty member but was required to include them in all of my classes. I tried all iterations: form groups myself, let students form groups, form groups at random, none worked well. Whoever came up with the group idea was an idiot. Especially for engineers who are mostly solitary by nature, it’s why we choose engineering in the first place. I eventually let students form groups of one. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663/53 "2015-03-13T11:58:48Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Guess what - most work projects wind up with the same composition of people. More or less. You assign the guy on the bottom the crap work that is necessary but which anyone can do and the guy on the top comes up with new ideas and leads. The trickiest situation is when there are two very smart people on the team who disagree. That can kill things much faster than a slacker. Guess what. I’m a professional project manager and manage teams professionally. And, you don’t. Never have and I’ve been project managing teams for fifteen years in three different organization. The composition of teams in a workplace has different challenges, but you don’t get the total incompetence of school teams, you don’t get free riders, and anyone who doesn’t complete their tasks to the satisfaction of the team as a whole is held accountable by the team, then to their functional manager. ---
**Author:** ![JcWoman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jcwoman/32/2889_2.png) [@JcWoman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JcWoman)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663/54 "2015-03-13T15:36:56Z")
> [@Master\_Wang-Ka](#): > > And MY point is that neither the public schools nor the two universities I have attended HAVE TAUGHT A DAMN THING ABOUT WORKING IN TEAMS. Perhaps things are different where you are, but here it’s just “get in groups and make it work somehow.” THERE IS NO TEACHING PEOPLE TO WORK IN TEAMS. My experience from school also. It was more of a case study of The Lord of the Flies Approach to Group Work. If you want to teach kids how to work in teams, that’s fine, but you need to teach it. It’s a skill. They really don’t learn it by running wild like “onlies” with no “grups” around. ---
**Author:** ![Soylent\_Juicy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@Soylent\_Juicy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Soylent_Juicy)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663/55 "2015-03-13T16:28:33Z")
The worst group project experience I had was in college. I was a “mature student” (26 years old, likely 27 at this point) and one class assigned a group project. I didn’t know anybody in the class so I approached a couple of guys who looked about my age to work with them. We met a couple of times in the library to work out our basic idea and then it all fell apart. Problem was, we weren’t given in-class time to work on the project. I was working and going to school, didn’t drive and lived across town - therefore I had to adhere to the city bus schedule which meant tacking on an extra hour to going anywhere. I simply was not able to meet with these guys in person outside of class hours. I offered to do what I could without actually meeting with them, but they got frustrated with me and the one guy sent me a scathing e-mail essentially calling me a lazy slacker. I felt awful. I approached the teacher and explained my dilemna and apparently the other guys had already approached him about kicking me out of their group. I was fine with taking a zero on that assignment as long as I still passed the course. I always felt bad about letting those guys down though. ---
**Author:** ![Master\_Wang-Ka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/master_wang-ka/32/3325_2.png) [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663/56 "2015-03-13T16:33:33Z")
> [@JcWoman](#): > > My experience from school also. It was more of a case study of The Lord of the Flies Approach to Group Work. If you want to teach kids how to work in teams, that’s fine, but you need to teach it. It’s a skill. They really don’t learn it by running wild like “onlies” with no “grups” around. The “Lord Of The Flies” school of group projects. I am SO stealin’ that. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663/57 "2015-03-13T17:10:02Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > Guess what. I’m a professional project manager and manage teams professionally. And, you don’t. Never have and I’ve been project managing teams for fifteen years in three different organization. The composition of teams in a workplace has different challenges, but you don’t get the total incompetence of school teams, you don’t get free riders, and anyone who doesn’t complete their tasks to the satisfaction of the team as a whole is held accountable by the team, then to their functional manager. You are lucky. I’ve been managing for 30 years, and have seen a bit of this, even at top companies. Yeah, it is not as bad as a school group, true, but what you learn in school dealing with non-workers is helpful. In a famous study Barry Boehm found a 10 X difference in programmer productivity. The person at the bottom of that comparison might be working as hard as he can, but sometimes that person not doing anything would be a plus. Like I said, getting rid of people is not so easy. I don’t know if your project manager job involves performance review, but I have and it is tough. Especially when you get a poor performer who is not blatantly violating company policy. At least school projects end. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663/58 "2015-03-13T17:14:49Z")
> [@JcWoman](#): > > My experience from school also. It was more of a case study of The Lord of the Flies Approach to Group Work. If you want to teach kids how to work in teams, that’s fine, but you need to teach it. It’s a skill. They really don’t learn it by running wild like “onlies” with no “grups” around. That’s a great point. Letting the team run wild is not teaching anything, but neither is stepping in and resolving the smallest of conflicts. Or waiting until the team is about to melt down. How about this - require short progress reports or internal grading, confidential, every two weeks or so which reports on what each person has done and what they say the other people have done. If four people on a five person project say the first is doing nothing, then what that person is actually doing might be worth examining. There is a danger of ganging up, but unanimous bad marks would be expected for the horror stories described here. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663/59 "2015-03-13T17:23:36Z")
I agree that in school, group projects are a royal pain. But they can provide opportunities to refine leadership and conflict management skills. Too bad schools don’t directly teach these skills, though. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2015, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663/60 "2015-03-13T18:14:59Z")
You should have settled for “human resource assets.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-i-hate-group-projects/714663.md?page=4)