PiggyLalala:

So I am worried if his friends idea's fail in the end, they may not have the time to redo the project. Any advice from anyone?TIA

schweppes:

//Editor's note: Topic selected for http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/content/managing-free-riders-group-projects.


Group work has its pros and cons.

Some students and parents may find group work a chore and a waste of time, especially if they have to contend with team members who are lazy, irresponsible, aggressive in their ideas (everyone must listen to his ideas) and those who practise NATO (no action, talk [a lot] only).

In the end, it is usually the responsible team member(s) who spend more time fire fighting and coordinating the work than producing quality work itself.

However, that is not to say that group work is not without its benefits and learning values. Here are some of my thoughts of group work.

Objectives of group work:

1. Teaches the students about teamwork and team spirit.

2. Teaches the students to express their ideas clearly and at the same time learn to listen to the ideas of their members too.

3. Learns to respect the opinions of others. A group work is a team effort, and it is not about the ideas of one person.

4. Learns to come to a compromise, especially if there are conflicting ideas and points. It is ok to disagree in opinions but do it in a nice and non aggressive manner. In other words, agree to disagree amicably.

5. Prepares the students for the real, working world – where they have to learn to get along well others, and manage fellow colleagues who are free riders in the adult world too.

6. Encourages peer learning – this is important as members learn from each other.

7. Helps students to understand the application of theories and concepts to the project work or theme. It is a very enriching and rewarding experience when a group is able to successfully work well together.

Winning formula of a good project team:

1. Appoint a team leader/ coordinator
- This person makes sure that the group members adhere to the schedule/ project timeline.
- Is usually the contact person that coordinates the meetings and groups activities.
- Is usually the most organised person in the group.

2. Prepare a project schedule
This will help to remind everyone to keep the project tasks on track.

3. Team members who can work well together
The work is fairly distributed or divided and everyone does his or her part of the work.

4. Appoint an Editor
- This is someone who is competent in English.
- He will be the one who compiles and edits the works of all members.
- Deadline to submit work to editor must be strictly enforced. The editor needs the time to review and edit the draft work of members.
- Submit final draft to all members for their review.
- Once members are agreeable, the final draft becomes final report and it goes to print and binding.

5. Agree on the formatting
It is hard work for the editor to compile and edit everyone’s work. One way is to agree on the format of the report. For example, agree on the font size, font type, page margins. This helps ease the workload of the editor who has the unenviable task to format and edit everyone’s work to be ready for final submission.

How to handle free riders, et al?
If the students are given free reign to choose their own team members, then the hardworking students will tend to group together, leaving the free riders to fend for themselves.

If the teacher/ lecturer pre-assigns the groups, then students have no choice but to work with members who have poor work attitude and study habits. So what can be done?

1. Inform the teacher/ lecturer early
Let the teacher/ lecturer know that so-and-so is not pulling his weight mid-way through the project. DON’T wait till the last minute. It is too late for the lecturer to counsel the recalcitrant student.

Keep a log of meetings. This will provide \"evidence\" to show proof that some team members are not doing their part. Otherwise, it will be your word against theirs.

2. Request for peer evaluation
Inform the lecturer that you would like to do a peer evaluation, assessing the other team members for their contribution, or lack of.

3. Be fair and objective
Be objective when giving feedback to the lecturer or in the peer evaluation form. You don’t want to come across as whining and overly complaining. It may backfire and the lecturer thinks that you are the problematic one who lacks team spirit.

4. Need to handle free riders firmly
Don’t threaten them (again, it may backfire and they may complain about you to the lecturer or see you as bossy). But need to firmly tell them the consequence if they do not put in effort.

5. Don't let the free rider do all the important work
If there is a \"known\" free rider in the group, avoid distributing major/ important work to this this person. It may help to strategise. For example, give them the easy bits, like get them to work on introduction or background information; or do the easy questions. The rationale being that since these free riders are doing \"less important\" work, the damage control is minimised if they don't do their part at all.

However, if this is a new group and one is unable to determine if there are any free riders in the beginning, then the responsible group members have to be firm with the free rider when the issues emerge.

At the end of the day, it is important to remember that this is a GROUP project, which means that the all the ideas/ answers in the report must flow in a logical manner. Too often, students treat group work as a collection of individual answers being compiled as a single group report. Hence, the role of the editor is important as he ties everyone's points together.

Hope the above pointers help, and good luck!

schweppes:

autumnbronze:

Eh ... your article got published noh .....

Thanks for putting in a good word. I'm so excited... :rahrah:

I'm happy to give you an early Christmas present for being so encouraging. Check your teddy bank.

autumnbronze:

Shall I give you kudos for it as well

heheheh... sure, why not?!? :politebleah:

heutistmeintag:

I asked my DD to reflect and learn.
1. She was the team leader and must be the 1st person to take the blame for poor leadership in not organizing the team and encouraging riders to surface.
2. As a person, she was too quick to make a judgement on teammates without giving the riders a chance to contribute
3. Do not blame the world for riders (coz it happens in real life), she should have managed the riders by talking to them and escalating to her teacher if necessary. She chose wrongly to accept the riders and hence, suffered the consequence of a crippled team.

autumnbronze:

Eh ... your article got published noh .....

autumnbronze:

Shall I give you kudos for it as well

ChiefKiasu:

Thanks schweppes for a great article!

heutistmeintag:

schweppes:

1. Teaches the students about teamwork and team spirit.

2. Teaches the students to express their ideas clearly and at the same time learn to listen to the ideas of their members too.

3. Learns to respect the opinions of others. A group work is a team effort, and it is not about the ideas of one person.

4. Learns to come to a compromise, especially if there are conflicting ideas and points. It is ok to disagree in opinions but do it in a nice and non aggressive manner. In other words, agree to disagree amicably.

To digress for a while, I want to share a real life example from my DD. One day, she came home complaining that she had alot of project work to complete and her teammates werent helping. 2 \"troublemaking\" boys were not contributing because they were not deemed to be serious and the girls decided to leave them out. At some point, they started struggling due to lack of time when they were stucked between completing the research and moving on to the presentation slides. Since they had not much choice, they contacted the boys to help. Fortunately the riders, who happened to surf the Internet alot, knew where to get complementary pictures very quickly for the slides. Eventually, they only obtained a B grade because of the incoherent submission.

I asked my DD to reflect and learn.
1. She was the team leader and must be the 1st person to take the blame for poor leadership in not organizing the team and encouraging riders to surface.
2. As a person, she was too quick to make a judgement on teammates without giving the riders a chance to contribute
3. Do not blame the world for riders (coz it happens in real life), she should have managed the riders by talking to them and escalating to her teacher if necessary. She chose wrongly to accept the riders and hence, suffered the consequence of a crippled team.

She told me there is another lesson, \"Aiya, next time kenna this kind of team, be prepared that it will be a B grade lor! Dont need to work so hard and be disappointed\" :faint:

schweppes:

Thanks, Autumnbronze, for your kind words. Glad that you found the suggestions useful. :lol:


Anyway, my suggestions can also be applied to students who are in higher education too, like in \"A\" levels, poly and uni. These days, in addition to exams, part of the assessment criteria also include a lot of group projects. They form a major component, sometimes as high as 40% at the poly and uni level. Sometimes, the group project score can improve on the student's overall grades, especially if they don't do so well for the exam component.

Still, knowing how to manage and work in a group is one thing. The other important thing is luck - to get good group members
!!

ChiefKiasu:

autumnbronze:

Hi Schweppes/ChiefKS,


I just thought your piece is good and timely, what with parents seeking guidance in preparing their kids for pri and sec sch nxt yr

P.S Opps you quoted my unedited piece!!! I had edited my request. Thought my first request sounded too presumptuous ......

Thanks for your recommendation, autumnbronze! In fact, if members of the community request for articles to be put up in the Portal for posterity, we'll take those requests even more seriously.

Thanks schweppes for a great article!

autumnbronze:

Hi Schweppes/ChiefKS,


I just thought your piece is good and timely, what with parents seeking guidance in preparing their kids for pri and sec sch nxt yr

P.S Opps you quoted my unedited piece!!! I had edited my request. Thought my first request sounded too presumptuous ......

schweppes:

1. Teaches the students about teamwork and team spirit.

2. Teaches the students to express their ideas clearly and at the same time learn to listen to the ideas of their members too.

3. Learns to respect the opinions of others. A group work is a team effort, and it is not about the ideas of one person.

4. Learns to come to a compromise, especially if there are conflicting ideas and points. It is ok to disagree in opinions but do it in a nice and non aggressive manner. In other words, agree to disagree amicably.

schweppes:

autumnbronze:

ChiefKS,
Don't know if ordinary members have a say , but I'd like to nominate Schweppes' response/pointers for portal publication.

aiyoh... I feel so paiseh. Thanks :oops:

autumnbronze:

Schweppes, if this gets published, you owe me one

If it does happen. Sure!! It's my pressure. Oops, I mean, pleasure... :lol:

autumnbronze:

ChiefKS,
Don't know if ordinary members have a say , but I'd like to nominate Schweppes' response/pointers for portal publication.

autumnbronze:

Schweppes, if this gets published, you owe me one

schweppes:

Group work has its pros and cons.


Some students and parents may find group work a chore and a waste of time, especially if they have to contend with team members who are lazy, irresponsible, aggressive in their ideas (everyone must listen to his ideas) and those who practise NATO (no action, talk [a lot] only).

In the end, it is usually the responsible team member(s) who spend more time fire fighting and coordinating the work than producing quality work itself.

However, that is not to say that group work is not without its benefits and learning values. Here are some of my thoughts of group work.

Objectives of group work:

1. Teaches the students about teamwork and team spirit.

2. Teaches the students to express their ideas clearly and at the same time learn to listen to the ideas of their members too.

3. Learns to respect the opinions of others. A group work is a team effort, and it is not about the ideas of one person.

4. Learns to come to a compromise, especially if there are conflicting ideas and points. It is ok to disagree in opinions but do it in a nice and non aggressive manner. In other words, agree to disagree amicably.

5. Prepares the students for the real, working world – where they have to learn to get along well others, and manage fellow colleagues who are free riders in the adult world too.

6. Encourages peer learning – this is important as members learn from each other.

7. Helps students to understand the application of theories and concepts to the project work or theme. It is a very enriching and rewarding experience when a group is able to successfully work well together.

Winning formula of a good project team:

1. Appoint a team leader/ coordinator
- This person makes sure that the group members adhere to the schedule/ project timeline.
- Is usually the contact person that coordinates the meetings and groups activities.
- Is usually the most organised person in the group.

2. Prepare a project schedule
This will help to remind everyone to keep the project tasks on track.

3. Team members who can work well together
The work is fairly distributed or divided and everyone does his or her part of the work.

4. Appoint an Editor
- This is someone who is competent in English.
- He will be the one who compiles and edits the works of all members.
- Deadline to submit work to editor must be strictly enforced. The editor needs the time to review and edit the draft work of members.
- Submit final draft to all members for their review.
- Once members are agreeable, the final draft becomes final report and it goes to print and binding.

5. Agree on the formatting
It is hard work for the editor to compile and edit everyone’s work. One way is to agree on the format of the report. For example, agree on the font size, font type, page margins. This helps ease the workload of the editor who has the unenviable task to format and edit everyone’s work to be ready for final submission.

How to handle free riders, et al?
If the students are given free reign to choose their own team members, then the hardworking students will tend to group together, leaving the free riders to fend for themselves.

If the teacher/ lecturer pre-assigns the groups, then students have no choice but to work with members who have poor work attitude and study habits. So what can be done?

1. Inform the teacher/ lecturer early
Let the teacher/ lecturer know that so-and-so is not pulling his weight mid-way through the project. DON’T wait till the last minute. It is too late for the lecturer to counsel the recalcitrant student.

Keep a log of meetings. This will provide \"evidence\" to show proof that some team members are not doing their part. Otherwise, it will be your word against theirs.

2. Request for peer evaluation
Inform the lecturer that you would like to do a peer evaluation, assessing the other team members for their contribution, or lack of.

3. Be fair and objective
Be objective when giving feedback to the lecturer or in the peer evaluation form. You don’t want to come across as whining and overly complaining. It may backfire and the lecturer thinks that you are the problematic one who lacks team spirit.

4. Need to handle free riders firmly
Don’t threaten them (again, it may backfire and they may complain about you to the lecturer or see you as bossy). But need to firmly tell them the consequence if they do not put in effort.

5. Don't let the free rider do all the important work
If there is a \"known\" free rider in the group, avoid distributing major/ important work to this this person. It may help to strategise. For example, give them the easy bits, like get them to work on introduction or background information; or do the easy questions. The rationale being that since these free riders are doing \"less important\" work, the damage control is minimised if they don't do their part at all.

However, if this is a new group and one is unable to determine if there are any free riders in the beginning, then the responsible group members have to be firm with the free rider when the issues emerge.

At the end of the day, it is important to remember that this is a GROUP project, which means that the all the ideas/ answers in the report must flow in a logical manner. Too often, students treat group work as a collection of individual answers being compiled as a single group report. Hence, the role of the editor is important as he ties everyone's points together.

Hope the above pointers help, and good luck!

ChiefKiasu:

jedamum:

[quote=\"Blobbi\"]

There are quite a few lecturers on this forum, including Chief Kiasu? Maybe they can add their experience?

Chief is lecturer???

kiasimom:

Ds said this,\" The more I do, the better I am, as for my friends, if they choose not to do, then too bad for them.\"

insider:

Groupwork grading (or rather the world) is never fair in my opinion – this is what my kids have to know and adjust themselves to fit the world accordingly with school lives as the main grounds to gain experience. If unfairness cannot be corrected, then just have to tell self and accept that that is plain bad luck to be with certain undesirable people that one should not have been and move on, even she has to suffer a dent in her GPA...


PS: She came back yesterday with a moody face after the presentation and I am yet to chat with her how the presentation was. She has to learn how to accept ‘bad luck’ with grace instead of suffering a double/triple loss by feeling unnecessarily anxious / moody / frustrated / etc. Think she will mature more in this area when she meets more riders in her future projects(and realizes this is part and parcel of life…)

ks2me:

So you are one of those perfectionists. :D


I just thought at the end of the day, everybody will reap the benefit of good grades. 'Perfectionists' may not be an appropriate word becos no work is perfect, but there are works 'better' than others.

Actually it would be good to let the lecturer know the progress of the group in milestone approach so should anything goes really wrong, it would be good to make an alternative proposal to the lecturer on the presentation which the lecturer has alot of pre-information given along the way to consider this new alternative proposal. Anyway all these are in hindsight, just work differently in next team project.

Sometimes it's difficult to let the lecturer know the progress in truth. What do you want to tell the lecturer? That the rest of them are pigs and they don't do a single thing? You'll look like a witch to your groupmates and the lecturer might even ask you to sort things out yourself.

I once had a tutor who got us to write down our contributions for a project. I remember there was this guy who totally didn't do a thing but he still faked something out of nothing anyway. Then what? You go and tell the tutor he didn't do a thing? I think most of us who take everything upon ourselves are not so bold as to stand up for ourselves, and that's why we ended up taking everything upon ourselves, instead of confronting the groupmates and ask them to do something or scram.

Groupwork is inevitable in real working world and at that point, it is hard to avoid. So it is good to learn in school(non-threatening environment) and devise ways to address certain issues by dealing with it and float then to drown in the real working world later where there will be more to lose in terms of performance. JMHO

rains:

I was guilty of being someone like that for quite a few years. In fact, in one of the pairwork, I actually threw away my partner's work and did the project on my own and submitted it using both our names. On reflection, I was too conceited and didn't spare a thought for my partner's feelings. I tried meeeting her up a few times but was unsuccessful so I concluded that she was one of those people who just wanted to ride on me. Eventually, she gave me her share and I didn't think it was good enough. Yeah, I know I was horrible.

So you are one of those perfectionists. :D

But subsequently, I met other riders along the way and I had to do most of the job myself. In any case, I wanted good grades, so I didn't really mind the work so much. In one instance, I got really angry becos I had just sat through 9 hours of work for it and a friend in the group told me she needed to go for an interview at a drama centre for some volunteer work (out of interest) and so got no time for the project work.

Wah! this rider really got her priorities wrong in the name of volunteer work.

Another interesting encounter I had was the time when a guy in our group didn't do any work for a project and he promised to do the next project on his own and credit it to the whole group, but it turned out that he didn't do a single thing the night before the submission date! So the 3 of us, minus that rider, msn from 11pm to 6am to do that project from scratch. At one point, one of the group members dozed off.

Moral behind the story, do not accept \"words credit\", have it in \"action cash\"!! :lol:

Insider,
I'm sorry your daughter has to go through what she does. Her groupmates are terrible. They actually had the cheek to disagree with the content when they blatantly didn't do their parts and the due date for presentation was the next day.

It's harder when the lecturer wants everybody to present. I really don't know what I can suggest to help make your daughter feel better.

Actually it would be good to let the lecturer know the progress of the group in milestone approach so should anything goes really wrong, it would be good to make an alternative proposal to the lecturer on the presentation which the lecturer has alot of pre-information given along the way to consider this new alternative proposal. Anyway all these are in hindsight, just work differently in next team project.

Groupwork really sucks! What's the point of having groupwork anyway? To let those whose English is not even grammatical or those who don't know how to do the project to tap on those who are more able? To introduce 'reality' to students? It's a stupid way to do it in my opinion.

Groupwork is inevitable in real working world and at that point, it is hard to avoid. So it is good to learn in school(non-threatening environment) and devise ways to address certain issues by dealing with it and float then to drown in the real working world later where there will be more to lose in terms of performance. JMHO

ChiefKiasu:

What jedamum? Look me no up issit?