What the hell is the point of group projects in school?

Nothing except a huge ego trip for alpha a-hole who wants to lead. Get used to it though. That is life.

learning to cooperate with dumb or rude people. although that's only part of why the teacher assigns it. the other reason is that they are easier to grade

Ummmmm….because when (if) you graduate from school, you'll most likely work for a COMPANY. Even if you are a sole proprietor you'll still have to work with people. Get used to it.

The purpose of group projects is to learn how to make the other group members do all the work while you get all the credit.

To take up class time, reduce instructional time, limit the amount of grading done by the teacher and overall minimize the teacher's investment of time/effort.

The point is to get grouped with 1. hot chicks, and or 2. bros or platonic females you can parlay into getting hot chicks. Didn't get any hot chicks in your group? Well you lost the lottery but see point 2. Don't be an ingrate. If you got friends you need to leverage your leads til you get rich. #getmoney

They promote academic discussion, I sat sat through a two hour teacher workshop on the crap last week.

Group projects are a great way to learn teamwork.

If your team gets a bad mark, it's the whole teams fault, not just the stupid people. You have a responsibility to make sure that your team members are doing work to an acceptable standard.

That being said, in school there is generally no penalty for not doing work besides your classmates opinion of you. In the real world, not performing leads to being sacked for the lazy person and the manager.

Some teachers are lazy and decide to turn lots of assignments into group work so they can get away with marking fewer papers.

Never understood the purpose either. Completely useless. The smart kids get smarter by doing all the work. The dumb ones get dumber because no one in the group trusts their work so others do it.

And no, that's not how it works in the so-called real world. The dumb ones don't get the jobs where they'll be collaborating with the smart ones. Or if the dumb ones con their way into such a job, they'll get exposed and won't last long.

The point? You want to know the point?

It's to teach you how to sniff out and compartmentalize the Jamins of the world...

....you failed.

life lesson wrote:

The purpose of group projects is to learn how to make the other group members do all the work while you get all the credit.

truly this is the american dream

I'm a math teacher so we do a lot less group work than English/history/science classes, but I try to write at least one day of group work into my lessons a week. Here are some benefits.

1) Differentiation. This works two ways. First, you can build your groups to put students struggling in the same area together and target each individual group with the challenges that will benefit them most. The other way is to put students of varying success levels together. This is where people argue that the "slower" kids are holding back the "smarter" kids from succeeding. In my experience, that's false. By allowing these groups, you present the successful students an opportunity to view the material as teachers. It leads to a different level of analysis and understanding. The other side of the coin is that sometimes students are better at teaching each other. A student might be able to relate the topic to a classmate better than I related it in our lesson. I've seen a lot of growth from my students using both these strategies.

2) Classroom culture. Yeah, yeah, another one of those liberal ideas. Classroom culture's a real thing. If you have a happy class, you have a class that's going to succeed. A great way to build the culture in your class is to create relationships between your students, and group work helps with that. Students working towards a common goal.

3) Stress relief. The funnest part about implementing group work is creating fun challenges for the students. Letting them learn while they're simultaneously having fun is really something special. It also alleviates tension for the students. When we do individual work, there will inevitably be students who become stressed because they are struggling and are not good at dealing with the teacher one on one. When they're doing group work, they don't feel singled out and you still have the opportunity to give them that invaluable one on one time.

Obviously the teacher needs to take an active role in creating, planning, and implementing the group work. When done well, it works. I don't give a lot of home work, but on group work days I have my students take a survey for home work and design questions to give me the most revealing feedback. Adjusting based on that feedback is crucial. I think feedback is essential to creating effective group work, so if the teacher isn't taking feedback, something is wrong. To students who don't like group work, be honest but constructive with your feedback.

WHR wrote:

Group projects are a great way to learn teamwork.

If your team gets a bad mark, it's the whole teams fault, not just the stupid people. You have a responsibility to make sure that your team members are doing work to an acceptable standard.

That being said, in school there is generally no penalty for not doing work besides your classmates opinion of you. In the real world, not performing leads to being sacked for the lazy person and the manager.

Some teachers are lazy and decide to turn lots of assignments into group work so they can get away with marking fewer papers.

..

It's the asinine invention of Big Education. Learning is no longer about reading, writing and computation, that's so old school. What we really need to learn is how to cooperate with idiots. No better way to learn that cooperating with idiots is a failed ideology than to learn about it in school. That way the idiots will be culled from the pack early and sequestered into education -- both k-12 and universities everywhere, where their incompetence will blend in with the crowd.

math teacher/weed smoker wrote:

3) Stress relief. The funnest part about implementing group work is creating fun challenges for the students.

You really are a math teacher and a weed smoker.

I am in 100% agreement with the OP on this one. Group projects are for the birds. What happens nearly all the time is that the smartest person does the bulk of the work, giving the most mundane tasks (because they HAVE to do something) to the lazy and stupid ones in the group. This greatly brings up the grades of the dumb ones in the group and slightly lowers the grade of the smart one. Totally unfair and contrary to what the learning process should be.

I did a lot of group projects in grad school & I hated them. Most of my partners or group members were either extreme type A individuals who wanted to dive in the next day & go well beyond an A effort, or they were the type who wanted to start 2 days before & do the bare minimum requirement. I didn't find too many middle ground folks.

I hated group work growing up so I incorporate very little. Kids work in groups if they want to anyways, unless you make them work silently. But the reason a lot of teachers assign group projects is because some kids will do nothing. The part of their brains that understand the consequences of their action has yet to fully develop, so threats of F's, detentions, getting kicked off sports teams, etc will not motivate them to do anything. Its easier to just throw 5 misbehavers and 3 lazy do nothing kids into groups than exhaust your energy attempting to get these kids to do enough of their assignment to warrant a D.

K-12 crazies wrote:

It's the asinine invention of Big Education. Learning is no longer about reading, writing and computation, that's so old school. What we really need to learn is how to cooperate with idiots. No better way to learn that cooperating with idiots is a failed ideology than to learn about it in school. That way the idiots will be culled from the pack early and sequestered into education -- both k-12 and universities everywhere, where their incompetence will blend in with the crowd.

That's so cynical, but I think I like it. Everyone has certain people they don't want in their group because they won't do any work, are so dumb they'll slow everyone else down, or have some negative trait (ie don't seem to know how to shower).

School has several phases

1. Teaching you the value of giving a f*** . That's the whole point of grades. A's or at least B's are usually easy as cake up through hs.

2. Teaching you to be inquisitive

3. Teaching you how to learn

4. Teaching you to learn

Some people never make it past phase 1 and don't benefit from school.

To determine who the leaders and the followers are.