My group projects in college always went one of three ways:
1. I take the leadership role and the project turns out fine,
2. The other person who takes the leadership role and enthusiastically takes the brunt of the work ends up half assing it to the point where everything he writes is barely legible and when I point this out he says he's going to "fix it up later" and he never does
3. Someone else takes a leadership role and is only nice to me and one other guy and is a complete dick to everyone else, to the point of refusing to even give them work and going way out of the decided scope, resulting in a mutiny and the leader dropping out of the class from stress
Group projects are something I dread most of the time. I lucked out during our last three month long project where everyone miraculously got along and had no major conflicts among the six group members. However in a year or so we will have a six month long project with fifteen people (Oh god) and I can't imagine it going very well but we'll see.
As a software engineering student the worst kind of group member is a code nazi. Somebody who refuses to accept other member's contributions and then rewrites all of the code on their own. Don't be a code nazi, nobody likes a code nazi.
Every group project I've done has ended up with me being voted group leader instantly and no-one giving me anything to work with at all.
Every single group project I've done has been 100% my own work and it sucks.
Every group project in school I've been in was a disaster, too many conflicting ideas and vying for leadership...
Build a bridge in shop class, one guy doesn't know shit about support, always argues with someone who does, bridge is incomplete or goes Tacoma narrows, everyone fails!
It really helps to be able to know who you're going to work with prior and then be able to select who you'd like to work with.
Beyond just making sure personalities mesh, its also good to cut out the middleman of "whose good at what".
[QUOTE=CommanderPT;52318890]Group projects are something I dread most of the time. I lucked out during our last three month long project where everyone miraculously got along and had no major conflicts among the six group members. However in a year or so we will have a six month long project with fifteen people (Oh god) and I can't imagine it going very well but we'll see.
As a software engineering student the worst kind of group member is a code nazi. Somebody who refuses to accept other member's contributions and then rewrites all of the code on their own. Don't be a code nazi, nobody likes a code nazi.[/QUOTE]
Literally all the programmers I know that work in any professional setting are code Nazis
That's what happens when they can only afford a few and are the most important people in a company
Girlfriend just finished her next-to-last class for her degree, and the group she had for her capstone course was even worse than this.
She was in a group of four, later a group of 7 after merging with another group because they had learned that the project manager, like a dofus, made the second group's product literally reliant on the completion of her group's product. Only made sense to merge so they had something to do.
Of her original group, one (we'll call him greg) showed up only 3 times across the entire semester. He became a running joke in city hall as his excuse every time was he had a doctor's appointment. Obviously he did the least work. Another, Fred, proclaimed himself team leader and then did [I]nothing,[/I] and the third one, Aaron, was always hanging out with the "leader" and talking about their repeated trips to "the club" where they "chat up girls" all night. He also did next to nothing. The second group consisted of the leader, Alex, who was actually a good person, and two people with the same name. They became known as "good bob" and "useless bob" for obvious reasons.
GF and Alex did 90% of the work. Fred and Aaron did the literal bare minimum because they figured they were safe since the professor was eyeing the shit outta Greg for being a useless shit. The Bobs were at least more reliable than Aaron and Fred.
Best part is the only one of that group who failed the class and thus didn't graduate was Greg, despite everyone else except Alex and GF being just as useless.
Group work is bullshit. It does nothing to prepare one for career work and all it proves is that you can do nothing and still pass if you really feel like it.
Group work does not belong in college.
I am convinced it is only thought up by lazy teachers and profs as a way to occasionally reduce their grading workload by imposing a single homework piece that takes days worth of classes to do and divides down the number of pieces to grade.
human collaboration is a mistake tbh
[QUOTE=Mr Kotov;52318904]Every group project I've done has ended up with me being voted group leader instantly and no-one giving me anything to work with at all.
Every single group project I've done has been 100% my own work and it sucks.[/QUOTE]
so you want to group for a project?
:weeb:
My final college assignment was a nightmare. Had to work with one other guy who hardly did anything. We failed the assignment like four times until I decided to redo everything myself. Including the few things he had made because we kept failing due to his text being poorly written. I graduated 2 years late because of that shit. I did tell the teacher about this but I guess he forgot about it because the guy didn't have to do any additional work after. He even sent us an email complementing us both for a job well done.
But hey, at least I got a "thanks" on facebook...
[QUOTE=exhale77;52319170]human collaboration is a mistake[/QUOTE]
- Hayao Myiazaki
Group projects are the bane of my existence. They need a complete rethink into how they're given to students. If it's a 4-person project, let us at least pick our group members. I'm tired of being shoehorned into a group with lazy cunts, or people who can't even write properly (these are the worst types of people), they'll submit their part of the work and it's got bucketloads of mistakes, it's annoying to deal with.
I just recently finished a class where I went through 4 group projects with the same team, where one of my teammates did literally nothing (not that I would have wanted him to touch the code anyway, he would have broken something). The other one would only start helping me the day that the project was due when I had already finished 90% of it. The most recent one I did completely on my own cause it wasn't as involved as the others.
Group work generally means me (and one other if I'm lucky) has to do everything to keep my perfect grades.
Maybe I'm a perfectionist but I like my 4.0 GPA, eh.
[editline]6th June 2017[/editline]
[QUOTE=General J;52319106]Group work does not belong in college.
I am convinced it is only thought up by lazy teachers and profs as a way to occasionally reduce their grading workload by imposing a single homework piece that takes days worth of classes to do and divides down the number of pieces to grade.[/QUOTE]
They usually try to spin it by saying "the workplace is all about group work" but honestly its a much different experience imo.
I had a government course full of group projects which had some interesting differences.
- A group can fail a lazy student if they talked it over with the professor with a small catch: the group had to publicly out the student in front of the class. So no one bothered using it.
- First few groups that volunteer to present first get better grades, but get grilled on every mistake in front of everyone. by the time you're the last few groups to present, any little mistake ruins your grade.
Glad I didn't get any lazy fucks in that class
[QUOTE=General J;52319106]Group work does not belong in college.
I am convinced it is only thought up by lazy teachers and profs as a way to occasionally reduce their grading workload by imposing a single homework piece that takes days worth of classes to do and divides down the number of pieces to grade.[/QUOTE]
There's no denying that it reduces the grading workload, but that's not all.
I don't think there are many careers out there were you just get assigned various tasks and complete them solo. Just about everywhere you'll be working with coworkers you didn't choose on projects you didn't choose.
Group work is probably the only thing that prepares you for that. Pray that the hiring process and managers in your future company are able to weed out some of the group work stereotypes.
[QUOTE=The Genie;52319333]I had a group presentation where I was paired with 2 people that couldn't speak English very well and another person that only turned up for the last meeting before the presentation. Needless to say it was a train wreck, and the lecturer spent a good 10 minutes telling us why it was the worst presentation he's ever seen in 20 years.[/QUOTE]
I got one of those too. My group only decided to start working on the project the week before it was due, it was me and 2 other people. I was the only one who did any actual work on the thing, and it was like pulling teeth trying to get anything done. What's worse is I would have been able to salvage it if I didn't have another project I was working on for that week. So for our presentation I was the only one who knew what the fuck they were talking about. We ended up with a 20/100. Our prfoessor raised the grade to 40/100, but that still tanked my grade. I would have ended the class with an A otherwise. I ended with a C because of that project.
[QUOTE=MendozaMan;52319029]Literally all the programmers I know that work in any professional setting are code Nazis
That's what happens when they can only afford a few and are the most important people in a company[/QUOTE]
Do they all rewrite all of the code the night before a deadline like the people I've worked with?
I just completed my degree and for my capstone project I did mostly everything.
We did a project that has a mobile app and a web app, plus the usual API + DB.
I had to fix the DB over and over (no referential integrity, no default values set up, et cetera), I had to write the entire API because the guy who said he was good with Node.js did fuck all the entire first semester, I wrote the entire web app, and in the second semester I fixed like a dozen issues with the mobile app. I did most of the imagery, e.g. logos and presentation materials as well.
On top of that, I had to pay for and completely manage the server myself. Which means I was in charge of deployments, setting up Nginx with HTTPS, and everything else you have to do with your server as well.
At the end of the project, we had amassed 96 total Git commits; I had 49 of them, my other teammate who knew what he was doing had 32, and the last two members on my team had combined 15 commits. Over a year.
One of them did not know, and clearly did not know at the end of the semester, what AJAX is and how it works, because 90% of hit Git commits were purely aesthetic or otherwise nonfunctional (i.e. maintaining a feature that the rest of the team agreed should be cut).
Fuck group projects... especially ones where you have no choice who you're working with.
Sure being assigned a group is "real world experience" but these people would be fucking fired in 5 minutes if they got a web development job and didn't understand AJAX.
I'm currently finishing a software design class where 35% of our grade is an app we build in teams of six. Our second (and last) milestone is due Friday, and we are clearly behind on it since I've yet to see most of the necessary features implemented yet. The only completely reliable person in the group is a friend I'm taking the class with. I can say from this and past experience that group projects tend to fall apart pretty quickly, and it's very rare that you end up on team of completely capable people.
Most group projects I've had in college courses allowed groups to kick members out of the group if they weren't contributing or meeting group expectations, forcing them to find another group that will take them in (which probably wasn't going to happen) or do the project by themselves.
the literal best group project i had was designing a net zero energy house. we met up maybe once not in class and that meeting was pretty pointless, maybe exchanged 80 or so words between the two of us about the project. i sent him the floorplan, sketchup model, and energy calculations, he fixed up the model, checked over my calculations, and did the writeup, all without much communication.
the worst part about group projects are the meetings imo
[QUOTE=ColonelCorn;52320521]Most group projects I've had in college courses allowed groups to kick members out of the group if they weren't contributing or meeting group expectations, forcing them to find another group that will take them in (which probably wasn't going to happen) or do the project by themselves.[/QUOTE]
I'd honestly have preferred working by myself so I can take all the credit for doing all the work rather than it getting split 5 ways and me still doing 100% of the work tbh.
I'm pretty sure the lecturers knew what was going on but didn't care enough to do anything about it.
[QUOTE=General J;52319106]Group work does not belong in college.
I am convinced it is only thought up by lazy teachers and profs as a way to occasionally reduce their grading workload by imposing a single homework piece that takes days worth of classes to do and divides down the number of pieces to grade.[/QUOTE]
You just have to love when they give you this work that can't be split up evenly because 90% of it is laying down ground work.
[QUOTE=General J;52319106]Group work does not belong in college.
I am convinced it is only thought up by lazy teachers and profs as a way to occasionally reduce their grading workload by imposing a single homework piece that takes days worth of classes to do and divides down the number of pieces to grade.[/QUOTE]
Really depends what you're studying. Learning to work as a team can be valuable.
[QUOTE=CommanderPT;52318890]Group projects are something I dread most of the time. I lucked out during our last three month long project where everyone miraculously got along and had no major conflicts among the six group members. However in a year or so we will have a six month long project with fifteen people (Oh god) and I can't imagine it going very well but we'll see.
As a software engineering student the worst kind of group member is a code nazi. Somebody who refuses to accept other member's contributions and then rewrites all of the code on their own. Don't be a code nazi, nobody likes a code nazi.[/QUOTE]
Sounds like you write shitty code.
I guess I'm an odd-one-out because group work usually turns out okay for me. I dunno pretty much since middle school I haven't had those problems of being made to do all the work or having a shitty project because half the team didn't do shit. Might just be a communication problem a lot of you guys are having.
Also college group-work I don't think is bad too and it can be analogous to real world experience. But intro level classes probably shouldn't have it. Like for programming if you're in a CS 101 class you can expect at least half the class to not give a damn and to be only there for a couple credits. But when you get to higher level classes you can expect a better degree of competence.
[QUOTE=Not64;52322655]Sounds like you write shitty code.[/QUOTE]
Yeah sure. Let's call it that. It is more that some people refuse to accept other people's solutions because they think their way is objectively better and in the end they fuck things up. Last group project one guy rewrote his own code several times because he kept fucking it up. But hey, I'm the one writing bad code. :v:
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