<p>frasi - yes Econ - don’t know which one. My son ended up with a B+ after carrying a strong A for the full semester. Not horrible - but not really fair either.
BTW, the Project Mgr was a girl. I hear that she didn’t set advance deadlines or involve others in the group when one of the submissions was late. And she also didn’t share the final product with anyone.
One thing - I KNOW my son learned something from this. He says he will never fully trust that others will do what they say. Tough learning - it’s a cold world out there. I say - choose your group members carefully!</p>
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<p>Note: This quote was repeated, with an objection raised to it, by jack at #65, above.</p>
<p>I think this is excellent advice – at least for those projects where you can select your group and the members aren’t assigned to you. The idea, however, shouldn’t be to assume that that organized girl will do the lion’s share of the work – as jack rightly protests. But if you understand your strengths and weaknesses, and pay attention to your classmates, you are well-advised to put together a group with skill sets that are complementary.</p>
<p>I also suspect this happens more than we might suspect and it is why so many people are of the opinion that they (or their children) are the ones who pull the load. While our children are doing the things they do best – we might see how the other group members aren’t doing that. </p>
<p>Instead, as would be the case with my son, while he’s putting the substance of the project together, there’d be some well-organized girl who seems to be do nothing more than shuffling papers, a skill we may not value as much because it’s not what our child does best. And we might overlook the fact that her organizing of materials and deadlines is keeping our child’s head above water and freeing him up to do his thing. </p>
<p>And then, perhaps, there’s someone else who’s doing all the artsy-fartsy stuff. We call it artsy-fartsy because, here again, we discount the value of those aspects since that’s not what our child shines at. But, again, if our child was spending time getting that stuff right it would sap too much time and result in something that’s merely mediocre.</p>
<p>I’m sure that there are kids who just coast along and get carried by others on group projects. I’m just saying that it’s possible we’re devaluing other contributions that are different from the ones our own children do best. And maybe we should come to appreciate those other things because, in combination, they’re what can make the project really stand out.</p>
<p>If you’re a well-organized girl, find the people who will complement your skill sets: you don’t want another well-organized girl on your team. Heed the words of 4Giggles at #100, above, whose daughter says, “find guy that follows directions.” But if you’re not organized, that’s definitely who you want to look for first!</p>
<p>I think this is a great lesson for kids who are choosing groupmates for these kinds of projects. And it took two posters with apparently opposing views for me to appreciate the value of the lesson.</p>
<p>Toneranger, why didn’t he take honors econ? He is schreyer, right?</p>
<p>In toneranger’s case, her son couldn’t choose the members as the students in a 300+ lecture hall are randomly assigned into groups in the first weeks of class.</p>
<p>I will be taking the same class next semester and my goal will be trying to convince the members to divide the tasks and complete them individually, then having someone assemble the individual parts together into one coherent piece(i.e. into an essay). It is already proven that people put less effort into group tasks than they would in individual work. Also, there is also a few careless students who barely contribute and rely on the one diligent member to take the whole burden and give them a free grade. From experience, meetings with a group to start a project are very unproductive as socialization/discussions more than double the time it would take to do something alone.</p>
<p>–And toneranger, do you know what classes your son will be taking next semester? How is his gpa so far?</p>