How I feel about group projects...

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Or Nevada LOL

or Florida?....Hey, there's only 50 states, sooner or later one of us will luck out!

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That's me, too. I've never really done a group project the right way. I take over, assign the parts, redo them all, and put the presentation together myself. Then I do the presentation, unless we're supposed to split it up. In that case, I give each person their bullet points and make them practice it in front of me until I can't make them do it any better.

I may be a control freak. Just a little.

It's ok though. The other people want us to take control. Really. 😜

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Specializes in Addictions Nursing, LTC.

I was really lucky. One of my instructors only did group projects. We usually got to pick our partners and my nursing school bestie was super OCD, while I tend toward ADD hyperfocus. We could really get things done. She was also really good about getting me back on track when I had my " Ooh, a squirrel!" moments.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Academics.

The size of the group makes a difference. Three people in a group should be the maximum. Think about it...in real life, if you have more than three people in a room to solve a problem, it can get chaotic very quickly. Three people, in my experience, are more likely to put in equal effort and come to consensus when disagreements arise.

Every time I've had to work with more than three people, it's been hell. Two or three people in a group is a breeze.

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Specializes in Behavioral Health.
OH, exactly, Me too.

So...what I learned from group projects is if I want it done well, I'll do it myself.

When someone says, "I'm pretty good at PowerPoint presentations, I can do that part," and then they email it to you the day it's due and you're like...

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Specializes in orthopedic/trauma, Informatics, diabetes.

I was lucky and only had one group that had one sucky member. The rest were great: we all had different strengths. The last group I had there was ONE girl who stated up front that she did not check Bb or email from school very often. She just wanted to be told what to do and that was that. I complained ad nauseum to instructor. At least she took into consideration that one person's non-participation. We all complained. I found that when groups were random, we had scheduling issues: I work weekends and needed to be done Friday. Most assignments were due Sun midnight. We also had people that worked nights. SO hard to coordinate. I had one girl suggest we meet up on the weekends. HELLO! online program!! I lived 2 hours from campus and we had one girl that had moved 1000 mi away. NOT a critical thinking suggestion. I did like the informal discussions we had on Bb. I got to hear of many other perspectives.

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Specializes in OB/women's Health, Pharm.

When I was in undergrad, I HATED them because others used it to get a free ride off my good work. I had much better experiences in grad school probably because everyone there was a serious student, contributed ideas, and did their share--so there is hope.

Fast forward to now--I am the faculty, and for a variety of reasons, sometimes need to put people in groups. I know full well that the problem of freeloaders still exists, along with the type A control freaks. I have an idea I may try out this fall: I plan to ask who hates group projects and why and then put them all in the same group!

My thoughts are that this would mean that I could create a group with no freeloaders, or one made up entirely of persons who like to get things done early (or made up of procrastinators). That way, the good students will not feel put upon, and the free loaders might not be able to get by on other's work.

Do you think this might work?

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When I was in undergrad, I HATED them because others used it to get a free ride off my good work. I had much better experiences in grad school probably because everyone there was a serious student, contributed ideas, and did their share--so there is hope.

Fast forward to now--I am the faculty, and for a variety of reasons, sometimes need to put people in groups. I know full well that the problem of freeloaders still exists, along with the type A control freaks. I have an idea I may try out this fall: I plan to ask who hates group projects and why and then put them all in the same group!

My thoughts are that this would mean that I could create a group with no freeloaders, or one made up entirely of persons who like to get things done early (or made up of procrastinators). That way, the good students will not feel put upon, and the free loaders might not be able to get by on other's work.

Do you think this might work?

I am definitely on board with the freeloaders in one group and the hard working people in the other. I wish my previous instructors would have tried this out.

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Specializes in Cardiology, Cardiothoracic Surgical.

:dead::no::madface::banghead:

To me, group projects in nursing school were a Special Kind of Hell. Between the random partner assignments, the people submitting things late or in sub-standard English, and just the sheer stupidity of the topic, I HATED them. I did research and wrote parts of scientific papers for a living while in school, so often was the editor of the writeups. I was up many a night late turning incoherent contributions into usable papers.

By our senior research project, I was in full "I don't have time for this!" mode. I designed and executed our experiment in my lab and had the results written up in a few hours. I also edited the whole document. I was not in the mood to waste time doing surveys or other social science projects when we had finals and graduation coming up.

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Specializes in Cardiac and OR.

I had one instructor who made us have "group essay" tests in one of our last 2 courses of nursing school. When we could choose our own group, that was fine, but random groups were assigned in 4 of the 6 tests. I, as well as few others were P***** on several occasions. I am an admitted control freak, and dammit, I wanted to be in control of my grade, not whomever was doing the writing. Wooosah, it's over now, think of my happy place, think of my happy place...

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Specializes in Pedi.

I hate group projects... have hated them since the 4th grade when I had to do a project on the state of Vermont. Still remember who my group was for that project too. It was then, at the age of 9, that I realized that if I wanted something done correctly I'd have to do it myself. Then there was that horrendous group project in 10th grade Health class... a class that all 10th grade students took, so the straight A students were in the same class with the kids who hardly ever came to class and were either going to drop out or get expelled sooner of later. We had a group of about 6. Another girl and I did the entire project. It was obvious even to the teacher, to the point where she took us aside after class and told us that our grade was a full letter grade higher than everyone else's for the project.

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I lost money, time, and effort, by having to take an incomplete and repeat the course due to the fiasco of one of my group projects. I told the instructor everything, everything. I had to drive an hour and a half to go to work on night shift the night before the presentation and one of the members didn't even show up for the group meeting. Two others had done absolutely nothing. The instructor let me off the hook, but he did not take any action against those who did nothing. That was probably the worst group project of my academic career. Funny, though, that I can not remember a single group project that was a worthwhile endeavor.

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