Picture this: you return to school from a break, mentally unready for the resumption of classes and coursework. You are sitting in a classroom with mostly strangers when your professor delivers a doomful announcement: a final group project worth 60% of your grade.
All hell breaks loose. You turn sideways and scan the classroom, hoping someone will catch your eye and invite you to be in their group. Your gaze meets with three others, and in that silent moment, it is decided: “We are in this together.”
Everything sounds perfect and well planned; all the teammates are very excited about the project and sound really smart, too. Everyone decides to meet later to discuss logistics. Soon, the disappointing reality sets in: everyone is 30 minutes late to the meeting, one teammate completely bails and the other says, “It’s not too hard to get a low C in this course.”
This is often how a typical group project experience goes: random people are grouped with varying levels of motivation and academic performance. Group projects are not only unfair but also do not reflect the “real world” as they are marketed.
In the real world, one’s salary depends on how much they work and whether they deliver sufficient results, but in a group project setting, the salary (grade) depends on how much effort your co-workers put in. One can be smart, organized and timely, but it won’t get them a good grade unless all teammates share these traits.
Compare that to a simple final exam, where you study for a week, sit in the classroom for two hours and then it’s all done. You do not have to spend a semester stressing about your teammates’ work, something that is out of your control. In a final exam, there is usually a syllabus, a study guide, supplemental instruction classes and tutoring to help, alongside well-defined limits as to what you might be tested on.
On the other hand, in a project, the world is one’s oyster, but even that oyster can turn into a pain in the neck if they are exploring it all by themselves. In most group project scenarios, the work is divided into chunks, so a student usually focuses on just one area of the course rather than developing a comprehensive understanding, which is often acquired while studying for a final exam.
Research backs this: a study published in Psychological Science on the psychology of test-based learning finds that exams promote active recall, which is not only a good way to test course information but also a good means of retaining it. On the other hand, another study in Educational Psychology Review notes that group work isn’t always synonymous with individual learning, as outcomes are often proportional to the uneven levels of motivation and participation within the group.
While group projects are meant to teach students how to work well with a team, the skills students actually learn include how to complete a 5-person task by themselves, how to snitch to the teacher and how little some college students care about their grades.
To read Samata Luintel’s half of the face-off, click here.
