Community Part II: Group Projects

Wow, it's kind of a good thing I did not get to this topic until now. I just finished two simultaneous group projects and it was rough. It ought to be though, the group projects generally count for 20-25% of our final grade in a course.

Each course has at least one group project. The instructor assigns about five people to each group and the group works out how they are going to work together on their own. The resources available to them on the virtual campus are discussion boards and logged chat sessions. If not all students can attend a particular chat, the results are archived for future review by anyone in the group. The group discussion boards are also limited to the individual groups. Email and off-campus chat can also be used but it is important that instructors can gauge the level at which each of the group members participated as individual grades are assigned to each person for overall performance.

When I first found out about group projects I thought it would be great if the group succeeded or failed as a group. It was not long before I found out how bad of an idea that was. Individual participation in group projects can vary widely. Some instructors make an effort to identify students that participate in class more than others and group them together. This did not work so well in our last session because two group projects were scheduled side-by-side and most students are in the same two classes. Both instructors made special efforts to ensure that people were grouped according to their participation level but there really isn't any way to take into account their levels of involvement in the other class. As a result of spending more time working on and helping some students in one project the other suffered. I'll see just how much it suffered when I get the grade' hopefully I managed to pull it out in the end.

I have a couple other problems with group projects. For one, they certainly don't correspond to real-life group projects. In real life you have a job and even if you're working with a team spread all over the world, the employer generally provides communication methods that are tied to the workplace. You get phones, email, etc. and when you leave for the day you can leave your work with you. In the school environment you have to give out your home phone number if you want or need to speak with other students. I don't know about you but I am very uncomfortable with handing out my personal email address, much less my home phone number. Another thing that exists in real world group projects is a fairly common schedule. Sometimes you need to adjust the work schedule if you have international coworkers or something but when it comes to adjusting the school schedule at the expense of the work schedule, that just ain't gonna happen. When it comes down to it, coordination of group projects is usually a nightmare.

I do like the concept behind the group projects and it does help encourage the community spirit of higher education but I don't think the good outweighs the bad at this early juncture in my online university experience. Sure, it is important to learn how to work together as a group, share responsibility, and mentor others. This environment does not really teach these concepts though and just engenders frustration in the process.

I tried really hard to pull something positive out of the whole group project thing but I have not had an experience with it that I can call good yet, fair maybe but not good. I think that it could be a good, if not excellent, experience but that would require some amazing team coordination and that is very difficult to achieve. The Live Chat topic should be a lot more fun so see you then.