Networking the West with Liz Ryan

Marisa’s Group Project

By Liz Ryan, 12-07-06

My friend Marisa is in her MBA program, and she just got hit with the deadly Group Project bomb. This is the one where you get into the class, you get the syllabus, and you realize that 50% of your grade is based on a huge group project - a combination of a paper and a presentation. Marisa figured, how bad could it be? I like working in groups. But it got really bad.

The first clue that things weren't going well in Marisa's group popped up in the first group meeting. The group members were lackluster and not terribly interested in expending any energy. Oh dear, though Marisa. Now I'm going to have to be the group-mom, in order to get anything done here.

But it was worse than that, because some of the very same group members who showed no interest in expending elbow grease still appointed themselves leaders of this or that. In particular, one person appointed herself the editor of the group's term paper. And she said, "Read the draft, and get your edits back to me by nine o'clock on Tuesday." Marisa began reading the draft, and as she did so her heart began to sink. The paper was atrocious, nowhere near the level that one would expect - or any rate, that Marisa would expect - from students in an MBA program. So she began editing. She came up with a long list of edits, and she knew that she wasn't done - it's just that one paper can only stand so many edits per draft. Marisa knew that she couldn't put her name on the paper, even if all of her edits were incorporated. She'd need at least one more crack at the paper before it was submitted. But she got those edits in there, well before the nine p.m. deadline.

Imagine Marisa's surprise, the next day, when the group got together on a phone call. "I know some of you sent me edits to the paper last night," said the paper's editor, "but I got tired and fell asleep. I did incorporate a bunch of your comments, but I'm not going to do any more."

What do you do - freak out? Call the police? The professor is not interested in intra-group squabbles. His view is that working in groups is part of a working person's life, and young people must figure out how to be successful working in teams.

Marisa's group did not get more functional or more talented as the project wore on. Working with them was a trial. Those that were smart and capable were bogged down by the others, and if one of them was unhappy with the group's progress, there was no recourse but to suck it up and deal. Marisa was looking at a "B" in her future - in the best case. Too bad if that "B" dragged down her GPA. "Aw, employers don't care about GPA," they told her.

I was thinking about this group project from my vantage point as a long-time corporate HR person, and a mother of students, and here's what I think. It's no good to tie fifty percent of a student's grade to a group project. The student is paying tuition, not the group. The professor may like the group project because it gives him fewer papers or presentations to grade, but at the cost of a student's ability to get the grade that she deserves.

It's true that as working professionals, we have to deal with groups all the time. But we have mechanisms that poor Marisa doesn't have - we can talk with our managers, we have more influence with our fellow group members (because we'll presumably be working with them in the future, and not just on this one project for this one class) and we have contact with folks day after day, not just once or twice a week at group meetings. It's a bad deal for Marisa, and all hard workers in her situation. School is hard enough, and grades are important enough, that professors should take the time to organize systems that work both for them and for the students, without the obstacle of having to drag less-willing fellow students along with them.

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