Thursday, June 26, 2008

Group Frustration

Whenever I have to do a group project I get frustrated because although I enjoy the discuss that happens because of all of the input that makes the ideas better I for some reason end up taking on the bulk of the work. Through my masters program I have some amazing groups that have really worked well together but the majority of my group projects have been really frustrating. My masters is completely done online so when we meet in groups we are using online means of communication. Since this is summer school and everything is crammed into 5 weeks you don't always get a chance to really get to know your teammates like you do during a full length class. Classes end on July 1 (5days from now) All of our work is due on or before then and all of a sudden my groups are crapping out on me. I don't know what to do.
Class 1 group:
Tasks to complete: Write a group research paper. Each of us writes 1/3 of the paper and the other 2 edit our section. My piece and Partner D have written great work. Partner H literally copies 90% of the information direct from our textbook and she didn't source the quotes from quotes in the book. I write the resource page up for her and ask D to add it to the final paper. After not feeling good about H's work all weekend I e-mail her and ask her to rewrite her portion using a lot less quotes because I got dinged on my individual research paper for using too many quotes and I only used one per paragraph. I have not heard from either of them since Sunday. It is now Thursday and our paper is due on Sunday. I am freaking out that I will now have to rewrite her paper for her. On top of this I am supposed to review a project that D should have done by Sunday. He hasn't done it yet and my review is due tomorrow. He is not responding to my e-mails.
Class 2 group:
Task to complete: Design a webquest. After we met and came up with a great concept I literally designed the whole entire webquest. Every word is from me. I asked my group members to send my the links to 2 blogs and 3 other websites, and a case study that they wrote. So far Partner B has given me nothing and Partner J gave me 1 blog and a case study. I think my Google works just as well as your Google does. I am not asking for actual work just links people. On top of that once this is put together we have more work to do and they chose to do the rest of the work since I did all the hard work of actually creating the webquest. I am seriously lacking their ability to actually get this done when they can't get me 5 links and a 3 sentence case study in over a week. (3 deadlines we set have past and nothing.) So now I sit here wondering should I just do it all?
I have a 4.0 right now and would really like to keep that going. I want a good grade on these projects. So I sit here writing this because although I should be completing my homework for the semester right now so I can spend the weekend relaxing with Adam and Eve I can't because my groups suck ass!

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