Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Big_Bird]

10 years ago as an undergrad, I'd never heard of group assignments. But now they seem the trendy way to assess students. In my postgraduate classes I've had to suffer a few. I find them an absolute waste of my time, and I'm starting to feel very resentful about them.

If you are the only native speaker - you end up lumbered with the lion's share of the work - carrying everyone else. I'm getting really sick of being a linguistic crutch - I want to grapple with the content, not participate as an unpaid ESL teacher. They seem to take at least 3 or 4 times longer than individual assignments - and often more. There are usually one or two good team members who work really hard, and always at least one member who is either clueless, or as lazy as hell. Then, you sometimes have to accept ideas that you feel are dubious. The last group assignment I got back, all the good comments pertained to ideas I'd contributed, and all the negative comments (and lost marks) were regarding the input of an older Japanese student. She was in her forties and - due to having been brought up to respect my seniors - I found it much harder to challenge some of her dubious ideas (though I did challenge the worse ones). To be fair though, at least she had some good ideas too. Another student contributed next to nothing - and what she did do was absolute crap (and got scrapped).

I don't think it's equitable. Why should my grade suffer (actually we just scraped a high distinction) due to others? And why should other people ride on the good work of their more industrious team members?

Does anyone have anything good to say about these bloody things?

[AgentM]

I put "Sometimes they're ok". If you get a good group, then group assignments can go well. However, that is really a crapshoot, which is why I personally would rather avoid group work if possible. I prefer relying on myself, and only myself for my grades. Trying to coordinate with unmotivated people is more of a pain in the arse than it's worth!