Group Work

When you're studying and given a group assignment to complete, its usually a massive drainer. Firstly you need to spend time outside of normal class hours to complete it, and these timings have to be available for your other group members to attend as well. In addition, you run into the usual problems of dealing with people in general. That is, trying to find some equilibrium between group members in terms of goals and efforts put in.

The usual scenario is that most people generally have a good idea about what is going on and are willing to put in a reasonable amount of effort into the assigned task. Sometimes there is a slacker who is not in a mind to contribute, and that usually raises a few hairs in the group. Complaints are filed and tempers are raised. But how much effort is too much in terms of the amount of stink to raise on a non-conforming team mate?

Sometimes, the shame factor alone is enough to get the offending member to comply. All other things being equal, nobody really wants to be known as a laggard. However, people will weigh this up against the actual effort involved for group compliance. In university, its generally a small group of students doing any one course, and you're bound to run into the same people again at some point in the future, whether it be in another assignment or just along the street. Students probably don't think about it much, but if you're studying the same course then its a lot more likely that you're going to be in the same industry afterwards as well, and its an extra thing to think about.

Other factors to consider are whether the people running the assignment and/or course really care whether groups are fair or not. Maybe its a test against reality - workplaces generally aren't fair in terms of how much work and reward are correlated. Maybe its just easier to mark 20 papers instead of 100.

Usually its just better to ignore it. Just do the entire assignment yourself. Its generally easier as you don't have to spend time together coordinating things, and the assignment probably flows better as well.