how do you feel about group projects? - Page 2

I haven't experienced the group dynamic in nursing school yet. I start nursing school this summer. But based on my experience with pre-reqs at the local CC group projects were the bane of my existence! Lucky for me I did not have many classes that assigned group projects. The one class that had a weekly group project assignment was pure hell. We had a little bit of everything -- the one who did not communicate with the group members until the last minute (this was an online class); the one who was a control freak and thought everyone was going to mess up the assignment (like we were all incompetent except her), the one whose feelings got hurt if we did not enthusiastically adopt each and every suggestion she made, the one who thought she was being disrespected by the younger members of the group, the one who did the bare minimum of work. And get this, we were told we would be down-graded if the group got dysfunctional, so despite all this we tried to hide the dysfunction from the instructor (didn't work, but he did not down-grade us after all). In fact, our group ended up with extra points for the quality of the projects we submitted. But all that drama was definitely not necessary. I was never so glad to complete a course!

That said, I am hoping that my fellow nursing students might be a little more similar in maturity and study habits, and perhaps group projects will not be so unpleasant. But I would still avoid them if I could.

I am not a fan of study groups either, but I could see myself working with a single study buddy if we had similar study habits. I like to get down to business and study. Skip the gossiping, complaining, and discussion of your social life. So far I have managed on my own quite well. I'm one of the quiet ones -- give me a book and a quiet room and I can happily study all day. It's not that I am anti-social, just very focused on the task at hand and I don't like to be distracted from my main goal. I don't learn well when people are yapping at me on off-topic stuff.

I hated group projects because I felt like I always had at least one or two in my group who wouldn't carry their weight. And if someone does a mediocre job on their part, it affects the entire grade. I know the whole point of group work is to prepare you for the work world because nursing is a team effort, but so far my experience in the work world has been great. Nothing like those awful group projects in school

I loathe group projects. This past semesters group project was such a NIGHTMARE. Two of the girls appointented themselves bosses of the project, picked our topic (which was wrong) and refused to listen to anyones input. When I told them they picked the wrong topic...they laughed at me and kept talking about the same topic until the teacher got involved. The project was so extremely ugly and I was utterly embarrased. My biggest issue was they didn't care if they did it right or not and had a scary inability to not READ. It drove me nuts and my grade I worked so hard for plummeted because we failed the project. The day we got together, the two of them set at the table and bossed everyone around. Luckily that is all over...at the expense of my grade and 9 others.

I hate them. I don't mind doing per say and I don't mind doing more than my fair share. But please don't a) do nothing b) complain when I do your work and c) say I wouldn't let you help to cover your ass. If you didn't do b) I would have given you full credit but since you did b) + c) then I'm going to point out a)

So yeah know your ABC's at least.

I never had a group project where there was an even division of the work accomplished and equal amounts of common courtesy expressed by group members.

Hate them..no scratch that, I loathe them! For all the reasons listed by other posters.

I like them when everyone works together. Sometimes I just want to tell people not to worry I'll do it all. Because it would probably take me the same ammount of time all by myself as it would to coach them through it.

But in saying that, theres nothing quite as great when you have a group that works well together and produces some amazing results.

As observed by so many others, group projects kinda suck. Not just for the inevitable person who doesn't want to do anything - we should anticipate that and just pick up their slack. Also, a contribution-oriented citations list goes a long way toward cluing in your prof as to who did the work and who just went to Wikipedia.

No, the reason I don't like group projects is that they mean more work for me. I am not a Type A personality per se, but I am an idealist. I know how to write and how to spell, and I am mortified when the local paper/online news source makes a grammatical mistake for the world to see. This means my standards are usually the highest in the group when it comes to quality, and that therefore I have to put myself in a position where I can influence the final output. Usually, that means that I have to take lead - and that's cool, but more work. Mostly because I am very sarcastic, which doesn't read well in such circumstances, so I have to work to be really, really tactful.

So I'm very much looking forward to nursing school. Hoping, though still will be at a local community college, that I will be surrounded by if not all like-minded people, then at least a higher percentage than usual.

I despise group work. I have had group projects 3 times since nursing school. The first time it was very easy to separate the work so everyone could just do it whenever but yet nobody did any work besides 2 of us. The third time it was super easy and took like 3 hours to finish so we just all worked together in the library. This last time was horrible. Our project had no way to split up the work. Well, technically we could split up the work BUT our project had many steps so we did not want to split up work like that because what would happen if person doing step 3 decided to wait till the last minute then everyone else had to rush. Since this project was worth 2 test grades it was not a chance we were willing to take. So about 60% of our group did the project and the others are just going to reap the benefits. We tried getting the other members grades lowered but they said they deserved the same grade because it wasn't their fault classes, work, and clinical's got in the way - like the rest of us didn't have the same stuff going on.

I get stuff done faster on my own. I don't like working in groups, unless I know the people in the groups are not slackers.