Semester group projects. Is there anyone out there who actually prefers to have had the professor select the groups? As a student I hated being assigned groups. You always get at least one slacker who barely contributes and really just makes it more difficult for you. So here I am on the other side about to assign groups instead of letting them select their own.
Why?
1. Because if I don't the groups will end up along the lines of ethnicity, gender, GPA, or some combination of these. The GPA is the one that worries me. I don't want one or two groups of slackers. They won't have a clue. Every group needs at least one person who knows a little or the whole thing falls apart.
2. In 99% of the jobs these students will take, they will have to work in teams where they don't like others and they don't get along, or even more annoying, they will carry the weight of the slackers on their team. The other 1% won't ever get a job.
Academics have come up with all kinds of crazy schemes for forming student groups. Some will give personality tests and try to get a spread of personalities in any one group, or mess with them and for experiments sake put all of one personality together. Seems over the top to me.
Any opinions from the regular people out there.
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4 comments:
Put their name sin a hat and draw them out randomly. It has no redeeming value except that it shoudl break up the clicks but you don't have to put a lot of thought into it. I understand your comment about a group of slacker but it's their life and if they can't get it done that is not your fault. My thought is that slackers always get cradled. Even in a group of slackers one will be less lsack than the others.
What about basing it on what color shirt they have on? Blue shirts in this group, black shirts in this group, everyone else in group 3. Just an idea :)
I recently participated in a simulation were the groups were purposefully made so that the folks who are used to having everything and being in control (in this group it was bankers/lawyers) had nothing to start with. It was very interesting to watch things develop. It met the goal of the simulation - that's won't always be the case.
i had a professor that divided us up for senior design strictly based on GPA -- all groups had the same average (he also considered the gap between the lowest and highest GPA within a group)... i guess it worked out okay - our group had a 4.0 girl, we didn't have too many slacker issues..
Thanks for all the suggestions and thoughts. It's very tempting to experiment with them! I have to always remind myself that I can't mess with them too much becuase they have to learn, get grades, yada, yada.
I ended up organizing them alphabetically and picking a random starting point.
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