My Academic Multisource Paper
Merry McDaniel
Bud Kanyo
English 111
20 March 2013
Working in groups doesn’t always work.
In college students are sometimes forced to work in groups with people that they do not know. Having to socialize with strangers and share the end of the projects grade with someone who may not be as willing to do the work is unfair to those who do the work. People go to college to earn credits to graduate, people pay colleges to teach them the basic things that they desire and instead are given things to study that they do not even want or care about. Some people aren’t cut out to be public speakers and yet are forced to take the speech class at the college when they might want to be a quiet little librarian or something. To be graded with someone else’s incorporated work is unfair.
It is understandable to want to prepare students for working in teams for business type jobs but for an artist speech class is unhelpful. Sara Wright from education insider says “Why do teachers and professors seem to love assigning group projects so much? Do they really like seeing their students suffer? Of course, not all group assignments end up being nightmarish. But group projects can lead to volatility, and things often do go bad. Students can end up in a situation where their the lone hard worker in a group, or everyone's constantly butting heads over the most trivial of decisions.” With problems like these it makes it much more difficult for students to get ahead in life. It can be argued that the student might not have tried hard enough to connect with the group but it is also just as possible that the other members of the group have no intensions of cooperating or doing the work they should bringing down the grade of the one person that actually has some sense in what they want out of life.
To be graded with someone else’s incorporated work is unfair. There are some good things that students can learn from working in groups but it is a difficult process and not everyone is willing to share the work evenly. “Teamwork, patience and cooperation are a few skills that can be achieved through group work. It is likely that most of us will be working with other people in future professions, so these skills are not pointless by any means. However, we have to question to what extent should these groups impact our personal grades. Also, there is the question of time and whether or not it is realistic for professors to expect their students to have the availability to continuously meet each other outside of class.”(Michelle Yodzis) Michelle Yodzis writes that the students should be graded more individually in a group, like how the students propose ideas to each other and how the work is split amongst each other and grade the groups by the work that each student did.
America seems to be focusing on group activities in schools more than ever but Americans are self-involved and are more interested in the things that affect them than those who are around them, not saying that everyone in America is that way but the majority. “Using small groups in student cooperative learning enterprises has become a major trend in American higher education (Cheng and Warren 2000). However, several practical issues involving the assessment of an individual's performance in groups have sometimes created resistance to the method from both students and parents (Kagan 1995).” (Paul E. King and Ralph R. Behnke) Usually both the lazy people in a group and the hard workers have a hard time with group project and no one is happy at the end, the hard workers feeling used and the lazy students feeling guilty.
In the article “All Together Now? College Students’ Preferred Project Group Grading Procedures” by Jody R. Hoffman and Steven G. Rogelberg these two people made an experiment to see what types of students prefer group working in different types of grading. “Three hundred sixty undergraduate students were randomly assigned to evaluate 1 of 12 versions of a hypothetical college syllabus from a course in which student project groups were used. As hypothesized, students reported the highest course-enrollment intentions and most positive perceptions of the group grading procedure when both individual and group performance on the group project was evaluated. In addition, students with low grade point averages (GPAs) exhibited stronger course-enrollment intentions than the students with high GPAs when group work accounted for a high percentage (50%) of students’ course grades and when group performance was evaluated. Contrary to hypothesis, students did not prefer courses in which they had input into the grading of their group work. Implications for the use of group grading procedures are discussed, in addition to future research directions.” (Jody R. Hoffman and Steven G. Rogelberg) The students that most wanted to be graded together as a group were the students that had a lower GPA and the students that had a higher GPA wanted to be graded individually in the groups. This shows that the only reason that the students with the lower GPAs chose the class is so that they can just give all of their workload to someone else, because the lazy student knows that the hardworking student will want the highest grade they can get and will do the all of the work to get the grade. To be graded with someone else’s incorporated work is unfair, lazy people are taking advantage of hard workers each day and it should stop.
1. MLA Works Cited Citation:
Sara wright, education insider: Tips for Working on College Group Projects; education-portal.com, web
Michelle Yodzis, Group Projects: Unfair and Unrealistic; Apr 29 2012 - 6:20pm Her Campus Media / 100 State Street / Boston, MA 02109 / [email protected] Copyright © 2009-2013 Her Campus Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved, web
Paul E. King and Ralph R. Behnke College Teaching Vol. 53, No. 2 (Spring, 2005), pp. 57-61, web
Jody R. Hoffman and Steven G. Rogelberg, All Together Now? College Students’ Preferred Project Group Grading Procedures; Bowling Green State University, Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice; 2001, Vol. 5, No. 1. 33-40, web
Bud Kanyo
English 111
20 March 2013
Working in groups doesn’t always work.
In college students are sometimes forced to work in groups with people that they do not know. Having to socialize with strangers and share the end of the projects grade with someone who may not be as willing to do the work is unfair to those who do the work. People go to college to earn credits to graduate, people pay colleges to teach them the basic things that they desire and instead are given things to study that they do not even want or care about. Some people aren’t cut out to be public speakers and yet are forced to take the speech class at the college when they might want to be a quiet little librarian or something. To be graded with someone else’s incorporated work is unfair.
It is understandable to want to prepare students for working in teams for business type jobs but for an artist speech class is unhelpful. Sara Wright from education insider says “Why do teachers and professors seem to love assigning group projects so much? Do they really like seeing their students suffer? Of course, not all group assignments end up being nightmarish. But group projects can lead to volatility, and things often do go bad. Students can end up in a situation where their the lone hard worker in a group, or everyone's constantly butting heads over the most trivial of decisions.” With problems like these it makes it much more difficult for students to get ahead in life. It can be argued that the student might not have tried hard enough to connect with the group but it is also just as possible that the other members of the group have no intensions of cooperating or doing the work they should bringing down the grade of the one person that actually has some sense in what they want out of life.
To be graded with someone else’s incorporated work is unfair. There are some good things that students can learn from working in groups but it is a difficult process and not everyone is willing to share the work evenly. “Teamwork, patience and cooperation are a few skills that can be achieved through group work. It is likely that most of us will be working with other people in future professions, so these skills are not pointless by any means. However, we have to question to what extent should these groups impact our personal grades. Also, there is the question of time and whether or not it is realistic for professors to expect their students to have the availability to continuously meet each other outside of class.”(Michelle Yodzis) Michelle Yodzis writes that the students should be graded more individually in a group, like how the students propose ideas to each other and how the work is split amongst each other and grade the groups by the work that each student did.
America seems to be focusing on group activities in schools more than ever but Americans are self-involved and are more interested in the things that affect them than those who are around them, not saying that everyone in America is that way but the majority. “Using small groups in student cooperative learning enterprises has become a major trend in American higher education (Cheng and Warren 2000). However, several practical issues involving the assessment of an individual's performance in groups have sometimes created resistance to the method from both students and parents (Kagan 1995).” (Paul E. King and Ralph R. Behnke) Usually both the lazy people in a group and the hard workers have a hard time with group project and no one is happy at the end, the hard workers feeling used and the lazy students feeling guilty.
In the article “All Together Now? College Students’ Preferred Project Group Grading Procedures” by Jody R. Hoffman and Steven G. Rogelberg these two people made an experiment to see what types of students prefer group working in different types of grading. “Three hundred sixty undergraduate students were randomly assigned to evaluate 1 of 12 versions of a hypothetical college syllabus from a course in which student project groups were used. As hypothesized, students reported the highest course-enrollment intentions and most positive perceptions of the group grading procedure when both individual and group performance on the group project was evaluated. In addition, students with low grade point averages (GPAs) exhibited stronger course-enrollment intentions than the students with high GPAs when group work accounted for a high percentage (50%) of students’ course grades and when group performance was evaluated. Contrary to hypothesis, students did not prefer courses in which they had input into the grading of their group work. Implications for the use of group grading procedures are discussed, in addition to future research directions.” (Jody R. Hoffman and Steven G. Rogelberg) The students that most wanted to be graded together as a group were the students that had a lower GPA and the students that had a higher GPA wanted to be graded individually in the groups. This shows that the only reason that the students with the lower GPAs chose the class is so that they can just give all of their workload to someone else, because the lazy student knows that the hardworking student will want the highest grade they can get and will do the all of the work to get the grade. To be graded with someone else’s incorporated work is unfair, lazy people are taking advantage of hard workers each day and it should stop.
1. MLA Works Cited Citation:
Sara wright, education insider: Tips for Working on College Group Projects; education-portal.com, web
Michelle Yodzis, Group Projects: Unfair and Unrealistic; Apr 29 2012 - 6:20pm Her Campus Media / 100 State Street / Boston, MA 02109 / [email protected] Copyright © 2009-2013 Her Campus Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved, web
Paul E. King and Ralph R. Behnke College Teaching Vol. 53, No. 2 (Spring, 2005), pp. 57-61, web
Jody R. Hoffman and Steven G. Rogelberg, All Together Now? College Students’ Preferred Project Group Grading Procedures; Bowling Green State University, Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice; 2001, Vol. 5, No. 1. 33-40, web