I Understand Why Professors Say Teamwork Is Important When Justifying Group Projects, Even Though I Know

I understand why professors say teamwork is important when justifying group projects, even though I know it’s really about grading less papers. I’m a reasonable person, I get it.

But if you’re an instructor on this app I raise you this: if the project is about teamwork, why isn’t my grade?

I’m being graded on the end result of the project, not the teamwork. Yet no amount of teamwork is going to make that end result strong if there are people in my group who simply don’t care. And no, that isn’t how it works in the real world.

When I worked on group projects professionally, there were things in place to set the team up for success and monitor our work:

- there was usually pre-designated project lead who had leadership skills or a strong background knowledge on the project

- our slack channels usually had a supervisor in them for questions and accountability

- in my non slack work places we had project check ins with a supervisor

-in some cases we had project feedback surveys at the end or halfway through

I’m 33, I have professional and leadership experience, I could do this project by myself in a week and get an A because I’ve done similar work professionally. I also have ocd so “taking over” is something I’ve worked hard to reduce and I’ve learned to balance with “step up step back”.

By not doing all the work for a group of 20 something’s who barely experienced high school, I actually am practicing teamwork and leadership. I’m giving them info and prompts to try to help, but some of them simply don’t care and are hoping someone else will do all the work. Ultimately they can get away with that because my professor is grading us on the quality of our work, not how we got there.

My attempts to get people to meet, the prompts I gave my team to help get conversations going, and the info I provided to them that they didn’t use will not be graded. My professor will never see our discord chat. Instead I’m being graded on the work ethic of others. How is this teaching teamwork? How is this grading team work? How is it actually preparing severely undersocialized students (my classmates missed most of high school due to Covid and it shows) for the workplace?

So if you’re a teacher, professor or instructor who genuinely cares about teaching teamwork and not just grading fewer papers, here are some suggestions:

-designate a project leader: let the team choose and give that person extra credit

-do project check ins, it can just be a quick survey monkey to give people a chance to “tattle” anonymously. You have to actually read them and follow up on issues though.

-mandate that the group chat stays in canvas or that you’re included in the discord chat, that chat itself should be part of the grade based on how much people participated in and lead conversations

-give individual grades. This means not just grading based on the end result but on each persons portion of it. If one person made the whole presentation that’s going to factor more into their grade. If one section of a project is better researched than another that should factor into individual grades.

-TEACH TEAMWORK FIRST: college isn’t about learning by trial and error, we’re typically given material to learn before being graded on an assignment that proves our knowledge of it. So many current students were not taught teamwork or other social skills typically gained in high school because of COVID learning, don’t assume they know how to do things you take for granted. If the project is team based because you feel teamwork is important, the least you can do is give some handouts on communication and planning strategies that are used in real workplaces. It’s unfair to be grading students on something you didn’t teach them / that isn’t a prerequisite for your course. If your course doesn’t have teamwork knowledge as a prerequisite why are you assuming your students know anything about it?