Group projects

So, I’m taking this financial analysis course online through City U and if you’ve been watching this blog, you already know it’s not a fave.  So I guess you have to temper what I’m about the share with my admission that I went into this course viewing it as a chore to check off the list, rather than a learning opportunity.

I’m not slamming people who like dealing in matters financial, so Mary and Sherree and others, please don’t think this is a swipe at you or your work. But my passion, and what my whole career has been formed around, is the operational side of things. I teach small team leadership, process definition and improvement, value stream mapping and accommodations for persons living with disabilities, among other things.  I am more into making things work than making a profit, although we could get into a whole discussion…Oh, never mind.

I guess this has been a misleading preamble because what I want to talk about is the structure of this course, not so much the content.

This prof, a guy in Colorado who(m?) I know only from pixels representing his written word, seems to be a pleasant person and certainly has a mastery of the material. But as soon as I read the syllabus, I knew I was in for it. It seems Ole Bill really likes to assign group projects.

I don’t know how college profs came to be so enamored of group work in recent years. I can see assigning it if the course is in project management, where the ability to organize the work of others is sort of the whole point. But financial analysis? Really? The sole advantage I see to group work where it’s not called for by the content is that it reduces the grading load on the instructor. Hm-m, maybe I DO know why…

The first week of class, I whipped off a polite and friendly e-mail to Ole Bill, asking that I be allowed to compete the project solo, seeing as how it accounts for 15% of my course grade and I’m somewhat stuck up about my GPA.

No-o-o-o, says Bill, this is a big part of the “learning experience.” To which I replied that I’ve never seen a group project in a non-PM course turn out well. To which he replies (with a smile and a virtual pat on the head),”Too bad, so sad, I know what’s best.”

So, after a flurry of e-mail back and forth with my project “teammates,” multiple promises on their part to do their fair share and then ultimately silence from one and a message of surrender from the other (he claimed not to be able to find ‘Sarbanes Oxley and Nonprofits’ on the Internet – go ahead, Google it your own self – I get 80,000-plus hits, but maybe I’m just hallucinating), yesterday I went ahead and wrote the paper, then sent it off to the two chowderheads with whom I’m supposedly working for their comments / suggestions before I submit it to Mr. Bill.

So the real dilemmas are ahead of me:

·         If I don’t hear from Chowderheads One and Two by Monday, do I just go ahead and submit? Or do I ask Bill to intervene?

·         If one of them has the temerity at this point to suggest major restructuring of the paper, whatever shall I do then?

·         At the final exam, when we are each required to rate the contributions of team members, what do I say? What would you say? See, since Ole Bill already knows I went into this with a jaundiced eye, he may well assume I made it a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I don’t want my grade to suffer at the hands of a couple of idiots who did none of the work but want their “share” of the credit.

Please, any of you who teach, don’t assign group projects unless the group aspect is truly part of the learning objective. And here’s another thought:

When I teach team leadership, I talk a lot about the balance between authority and responsibility. If the two are not in balance, you’ve a recipe for failure. In this case, I was assigned responsibility for working with two lazy bums but I was given no authority – nor did the instructor exercise his – to ensure that the workload was leveled or that team members were made accountable for their actions or lack thereof.

Moral: If you’re going to wait until you’re pushing 60 to complete the last few courses toward your degree, expect to be saddled with people – both profs and students – that you would fire if they worked for you.