World-Shaker

I hate group projects.

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Designing Group Projects →

My most recent pedagogical obsession is not, as you might think, social media fasts, but rather working out ways to effectively create group projects. Honestly I consider this one of my serious shortcomings as a professor. I really as of yet have not created a group project with which both the students and I were happy with the results. Something always goes wrong. This is not to say that there haven’t been good ones (and some total misfires) but I have yet to really figure out the best way to do it. Part of my problem comes from not having this modeled for me in graduate school (we in the humanities are more accustomed to working solo) coupled with my own few past experiences as a student, in which I greatly dislike working in groups. But beyond that I think it is a substantial problem with both the way institutions are designed and with student expectations. It is hard to evaluate students individually (what the institution requires) yet try to hold the whole group accountable. And I struggle with this, because I want to encourage and evaluate students for who they are, but on the other hand I see as part of my job to teach students how to work in groups. I think most of the kinds of work environments they are likely to end up in will require working in groups, and internet projects do to their complexity require groups.