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Why the long-standing practice of assigning students’ work with their peers fails to measure student success.
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By Olivia Gehm
As the academic year nears its end, college students across the country are beginning to work on culminating, end-of-semester projects, many of which are done in groups. While for some, a group project is music to the ears, other students dread this type of work, wishing they could be assessed individually.
Group projects are nothing new; they’re assigned at all times of the year, and have been for decades. Students have complained about them for just as long.
Individuals who express their distaste for group work are often dismissed as being too introverted or difficult to work with. Furthermore, group projects are seen by some as a necessary part of learning to collaborate, preparing for the workplace.
This defense of collegiate group work would be strong if it worked similarly to how professionals collaborate in the workplace, and on paper, it might seem to. However, there are a few key differences in college environments that mean group projects generally do more harm than good.
Talk to anyone who works in a collaborative setting in America. They might not be head over heels for their job, but they do it for one of two reasons: either they mostly enjoy what they do, or they don’t have a choice but to be employed in their current position. Either way, it’s in professionals’ best interest to be a committed member of their team and strive to perform their best.
In theory, higher education should be the same way. After all, college can cost families and students hundreds of thousands of dollars, so it seems outrageous that a student would be anything other than 100% committed.
However, this simply isn’t the case. Walk into any college classroom, and you’ll find plenty of students using AI to get by, putting in the minimum amount of effort needed to get a passing grade.
This is likely due to the fact that, according to Inside Higher Ed, 82% of students report feeling pressure to attend college directly out of high school, even if they are unsure of their career aspirations or have little desire to learn.
While there are plenty of driven, ambitious students who are fully invested in their college education, there are just as many who aren’t, which quickly becomes a problem regarding group work.
When a driven student who wishes to apply to graduate school gets stuck with two classmates who don’t care about performance as long as they graduate, the discrepancy immediately begins to overload the higher-achieving student. They feel more pressure to pick up the slack and bring their classmates’ work up to their standards.
This dynamic doesn’t usually make its way into the workplace, though. Sure, some employees work harder than others, but the difference isn’t as glaring because the stakes are too high for any one employee not to pull their weight.
Another major issue with group projects in college is the lack of a defined hierarchy. Students are expected to assign tasks to one another, but rarely is one student put in charge of doing so. This can leave groups in a kind of limbo, where everyone is sitting around, waiting for someone else to take charge.
As deadlines loom near, someone usually steps up and inadvertently takes on the job of delegating, organizing, and leading, all without receiving any added credit or recognition. This once again creates an unwanted imbalance between group members.
Furthermore, college social dynamics often aren’t all that different from high school, especially for underclassmen. Interpersonal social pressures still exist in a college environment, and are exacerbated by conflict that can arise during group work. A student may desperately want to point out that their group members aren’t following the rubric, but doesn’t want to be pinned as a goody-two-shoes.
Both of these issues disappear when discussing a well-organized work environment. Hierarchy is clear; someone is responsible for delegating, and someone else for checking up on progress. While there are certainly ways that employees are expected to share their opinions, pointing out that something isn’t up to a certain standard will likely not be met with an eye roll.
Finally, when large, culminating assessments remain individualized, professors can ensure that every student who passes an assignment did so because they’ve reached a certain level of competence, not because they were able to hide behind their classmates.
Some professors try to solve this problem by allowing their students to evaluate their group members. This is a step in the right direction, and something that every teacher should do if they are going to include group projects in their classroom.
However, this method isn’t free from the problems discussed earlier. While these surveys are usually anonymous, if a student receives a worse grade than their groupmates, the reason why is easy to trace to another student’s evaluation of them.
For this reason, even students who feel that their groupmates failed to pull their weight may feel uncomfortable with evaluating them honestly, especially if they have a relationship with them outside the classroom.
Ultimately, group projects are loved by some, dreaded by many, and should be used sparingly in higher education. While they can be good opportunities for students to interact with their classmates in low-stakes contexts, social pressures and college students’ varying levels of commitment mean they’re not as useful in assessing student success as they appear.