Accommodations and group projects

[polly_mer]

Another reason to hate groupery.  All the presentations are going to be on the same day, and I'm just not gonna let one group do it later and thus get more time to prep it.  I'd probably well deserve any complaints made to my superiors if I were to do that.

What happens when people are sick?

What happens for that student who has a genuine conflict and your class will not be the normal choice by someone who can prioritize?

These are typical situations that happen very frequently so one is best served by having a policy in place before being put on the spot.  You can have a no-makeups-ever policy...if your administration will support that.  I can think of many chairs who would rather deal with the occasional complaint of "X got more time and that's not FAAAAAAIIR!" than the legitimate formal complaint from a good student that no flexibility was given to be able to attend both the really important field trip and the group presentation that will drop a letter grade.

If this presentation is worth practically no points, then that's a different problem in motivating students to take it seriously and do good work.

[dr_codex]

Another reason to hate groupery.  All the presentations are going to be on the same day, and I'm just not gonna let one group do it later and thus get more time to prep it.  I'd probably well deserve any complaints made to my superiors if I were to do that.

What happens when people are sick?

What happens for that student who has a genuine conflict and your class will not be the normal choice by someone who can prioritize?

These are typical situations that happen very frequently so one is best served by having a policy in place before being put on the spot.  You can have a no-makeups-ever policy...if your administration will support that.  I can think of many chairs who would rather deal with the occasional complaint of "X got more time and that's not FAAAAAAIIR!" than the legitimate formal complaint from a good student that no flexibility was given to be able to attend both the really important field trip and the group presentation that will drop a letter grade.

If this presentation is worth practically no points, then that's a different problem in motivating students to take it seriously and do good work.

A few thoughts, in no particular order...

1. One university's guide for instructors was to avoid "cliff policies": anything that triggers an automatic fail, no exceptions. You can die on that hill, but you'd better be willing to take a lot of flak. And you're not going to have fun when the pregnant mom and the veteran with PTSD register for your course. I'll admit that group work is the one circumstance in which I'm likely to trigger such policies (I say on the first day that the one thing students cannot do in my courses is bail on their group), but I would never write up an assignment that allowed for no emergencies. Stuff happens.

2. Making up policies on the fly is a recipe for complaints. Reasonable responses to circumstances are not, especially when you're picking up somebody else's course, but whenever I do this I request unanimous consent from the class -- this forces me to come up with something that does not disadvantage anybody, and the students have had to provide affirmative consent. They never complain, mostly because I present it as a set of choices.

3. The only times that I got significant pushback about my grading was when there was a disconnect between the grade and the tone of my comments. It didn't actually matter what the grade was; students with A's were puzzled by some brutal critique, and students with C's were puzzled by some encouraging feedback. Apologetic emails about assignments are going to generate the same kind of confusion. Blaming the syllabus is going to make students wonder who is in charge, and they will be much more convinced by your passionate conviction that the work really is crucial to their college success.

4. If your supervisor won't rehire you because of a student complaint, your supervisor sucks. As others have noted, some kinds of student complaint are timeless, and anybody who has ever taught will know this.

5. Part of what your course is designed to do is demonstrate the vital nature of some academic skills. Some students need to fail at something in order to change how they approach the task. Scaffolding is one way to both allow for some such failures, and to ensure that there is some mechanism for correction. There are other reasons to scaffold large assignments, especially in this level of course. Even if you cannot rewrite the syllabus this time, you can break down the work into manageable chunks.

6. Breathe. Take a step back. Look at the big picture and re-affirm what it is you want to do in this course. If you cannot meet students one-on-one, for logistical reasons, take a chunk of class time to present a "systems check" or "status report", explaining what will need to be tweaked for the class to continue, and getting student buy-in. Yes, there's a risk that a riot will start, but if you frame it in terms of student success, most of them will listen. Right now they probably want to know what is happening, and how they should approach the rest of the course.

dc

[kaysixteen]

I need to remind y'all that the syllabus in all its glory was dictated to me, and as an adjunct I ain't gonna become a rebel and start significantly altering it.  I was told I could do yhat for next semester and am looking forward to yhe chance to do so, but

That chance will only accrue to me if I don't get sacked because of student complaints, WHICH HAS, LIKE IT OR NOT, HAPPENED BEFORE.

I do not whine about the syllabus to the students.  I'm not an idiot.

I get the idea about emergency accommodations, and I don't have a no make up policy, as many fora posters over the years have bragged about having, but group work is different, and even solo class presentations are pretty different too.  If student x doesn't show, he strongly penalizes his groupmates, and if even a solo presentation is allowed to be rescheduled,it does give those who get it rescheduled extra time others don't have, virtually guaranteeing complaints... How are such complaints likely to be dealt with, something almost impossible for someone in his first semester working at a given school to figure out.

How many of y'all, btw, have experience teaching a college class where you are given a set syllabus and told to do it?

[craftyprof]

How many of y'all, btw, have experience teaching a college class where you are given a set syllabus and told to do it?

I'll be honest - not much.  The only thing similar was when I worked as a test prep tutor and the company had very strict expectations about our performance (to the point of dictating what we wrote on the whiteboard and what color highlighters to use to annotate our notebooks).  I was not a fan.

At my current university, we always allow for discretion on the part of the instructor.  At minimum, we have a set of learning objectives that need to be met for a given class and it is up to the instructor how to meet them.  More often, we will have specific texts or key assignments that we need to include for consistency across sections and assessment purposes.  We give sample syllabuses to adjuncts for guidance but not mandatory adherence.  Even when we had an adjunct walk away from a class mid-semester, the person picking up the pieces had some latitude to renegotiate the course requirements with the students - in that case there was probably an explicit expectation not to make any changes that would further penalize the students, but still not rote adherence to the original syllabus. 

If that has not been your experience, I'm sorry.

As far as group work goes, it is a necessary evil in many of my classes because it is a requirement for our discipline's accrediting body.  If I am likely to split presentations across multiple class periods, I have students turn their slides into the LMS before the start of class.  While groups that present the second week have more time to practice and prepare all of the other aspects of their talk, they don't seem to notice this advantage.  There's usually a sufficient mix of "I just want to get it over with" students and "please don't make me go first" students that they don't complain about the scheduling and any absences just blend into the fray. 

In other classes, I take a "the show must go on" approach and the group must be ready to present on the due date.  This comes with lots of advance warnings that they need to know each other's parts and be able to pinch hit in case of emergency.  In those cases, I also give them an opportunity for peer review to ensure that everyone does their fair share.  I still hear complaints about dud group members, but giving them an outlet for their dissatisfaction through the peer reviews (which do affect their grades) has kept the complaints from escalating to my boss.  When students have had a genuine emergency, the peer reviews are usually very supportive and they describe all the things their group member did to prepare the presentation even though they weren't there to say the words.

[polly_mer]

How are such complaints likely to be dealt with, something almost impossible for someone in his first semester working at a given school to figure out.

Go talk to your chair or coordinator.  They know what will be acceptable at your institution in terms of student complaints and how to handle the very common situations.

Being non-renewed early at a place where one doesn't fit is a gift, even if it's a pain in the wallet. 

[Caracal]

Another reason to hate groupery.  All the presentations are going to be on the same day, and I'm just not gonna let one group do it later and thus get more time to prep it.  I'd probably well deserve any complaints made to my superiors if I were to do that.

This doesn't really make that much sense to me. When I give an out of class assignment, I try to make sure that time isn't a factor. Everyone should have plenty of time to do the thing. Obviously, some students might spend more time, some less, but basically I want people to have the space and room to make those decisions without time pressure imposed by me. Within that context, I don't really think of it as "unfair" if I give an extension to a student because of some circumstance. Everyone had plenty of time to get the thing done, so if I decide that some circumstance warrants giving someone some extra time, they aren't really getting an advantage. It is more like they are getting some time back that was taken away from them by some circumstance out of control. That isn't unfair, unless you have unclear extension policies or apply them unevenly. I've also never had students complain about something like this.

[summers_off]

It boggles the mind that students are given group assignments all the time, but are not supported in these endeavors.  Somehow they are all just supposed to figure it out.  To me these kinds of assignments are just laziness on the part of instructors (10 team presentations is a lot less grading than 40 papers).

As an instructor, I rarely have problems with group projects.  Why?  Because we start out with a team agreement, where students lay the ground rules for how they will interact, deal with conflict, make decisions, etc.  They talk about who likes to get things done early and who is a procrastinator.  Then we spend time in class planning the project:  if you have to do a presentation on x date, what needs to be done and when?  Then I give some class time (about 10 minutes at the end of class) on a periodic basis for them to touch base regarding the agreement (do you need to change it?) and the plan (are you on track?  If not what adjustments have to be made?).   It is never perfect--they are still learning after all--but it is very rarely a disaster. 

If the group assignment is important enough to assign, then it is important enough to help them manage the process to fulfill the requirements.

[Caracal]

It boggles the mind that students are given group assignments all the time, but are not supported in these endeavors.  Somehow they are all just supposed to figure it out.  To me these kinds of assignments are just laziness on the part of instructors (10 team presentations is a lot less grading than 40 papers).

As an instructor, I rarely have problems with group projects.  Why?  Because we start out with a team agreement, where students lay the ground rules for how they will interact, deal with conflict, make decisions, etc.  They talk about who likes to get things done early and who is a procrastinator.  Then we spend time in class planning the project:  if you have to do a presentation on x date, what needs to be done and when?  Then I give some class time (about 10 minutes at the end of class) on a periodic basis for them to touch base regarding the agreement (do you need to change it?) and the plan (are you on track?  If not what adjustments have to be made?).   It is never perfect--they are still learning after all--but it is very rarely a disaster. 

If the group assignment is important enough to assign, then it is important enough to help them manage the process to fulfill the requirements.

I'm in a field where group projects aren't necessary, but this is basically why I don't assign them. You really have to devote a lot of time and thought to it to make it work well and, frankly, it doesn't really play to my strengths as an instructor. Sadly, those strengths are definitely not in organization or time management.

[Dismal]

"If student x doesn't show, he strongly penalizes his groupmates,"

This isn't always a big problem.  If the group presentation consists of a powerpoint presentation, others can just read off the missing student's slides.  Sure they might not know as much if questioned, but is each student here really doing something that the others won't understand?  Seems like they all did the same reading.

[kaysixteen]

I'm more concerned with basic fairness, making the other groupmates do more work because someone misses without an A-plus level excuse.  Irrespective of potential complaints, I think that this would be unacceptable.  This is also why I'm firmly opposed to allowing one of the groups to postpone its presentation.  I get that they've had a month and should already be ready to go, but reality being what it is, kids will put it off.  They all have to have the same amount of time.

Another question for ye: part of the assignment was to have each group pass in a single 2ish pp book report on the group article, written essentially by committee.  I emphasized that I wanted them to do exactly this, divvy up the article and each one write part of this report.  I did this because, again, all groupmates should do an equal share, and the syllabus requires one group paper, graded with one grade for all.  I confess I'd never seen such an assignment before... Anyone have any thoughts or experiences?

[dr_codex]

I'm more concerned with basic fairness, making the other groupmates do more work because someone misses without an A-plus level excuse.  Irrespective of potential complaints, I think that this would be unacceptable.  This is also why I'm firmly opposed to allowing one of the groups to postpone its presentation.  I get that they've had a month and should already be ready to go, but reality being what it is, kids will put it off.  They all have to have the same amount of time.

Another question for ye: part of the assignment was to have each group pass in a single 2ish pp book report on the group article, written essentially by committee.  I emphasized that I wanted them to do exactly this, divvy up the article and each one write part of this report.  I did this because, again, all groupmates should do an equal share, and the syllabus requires one group paper, graded with one grade for all.  I confess I'd never seen such an assignment before... Anyone have any thoughts or experiences?

It is hard to get students to really share the load. Heck, my department is writing a self-study, and while we are almost all responsible for a section, inevitably somebody has to do a lot more of the work to pull it all together.

One of the reasons that people actually work in groups is to leverage strengths. Somebody might be better at reading, somebody at extracting key ideas, somebody at distilling, somebody at proofreading, and more. Maybe doing different work isn't so bad.

In your case, since the goal of the assignment is probably at least as much process as product, you'll want to find a way to ensure that everybody does everything. You could as them, point blank (Which section did you write?), or, as others have suggested, use peer review. I don't know how much of this is baked into your canned syllabus, but see where there might be some flexibility.

When I assign performance projects, I make sure that one part of the written component could only be done by each performer (What did you do to prepare for your role? etc.). I'm less intrusive for senior capstone projects, in part because I'm really interested in the product at that stage; they should have been practicing team project skills in lower-division courses. Occasionally somebody flakes, somebody is hit by a bus, somebody drops out of the program. I work with the students to make sure that the group has a fair shot at completion, and we deal with it. Almost never is this "extra time" for the team; indeed, they always wind up doing more work as a result. Because I'm in charge of my grading scheme, I make sure that there's a significant component for individual performance. The jerk who cut off his own members to answer all questions got an earful from me later, and a significantly lower grade on that part of the project.

Just to add that I don't pretend to have all the answers here. I struggle with the Capstone group project, for all of the same reasons that you do, and will be rethinking its evaluation scheme in light of a few incidents last year. I use them in part because it means fewer assignments, not for my grading, but because individual presentations of any length eat up an enormous amount of class time, especially when they are supposed to generate discussion. And if they don't generate discussion, or cover material crucial to the course, then other students in attendance see them as irrelevant, and drift away. 'll be curious to read other ideas.

dc

[polly_mer]

One of the reasons that people actually work in groups is to leverage strengths. Somebody might be better at reading, somebody at extracting key ideas, somebody at distilling, somebody at proofreading, and more. Maybe doing different work isn't so bad.

This is often the problem with randomly assigning groups in a college classroom for projects that don't actually require multiple people with a variety of skill sets to get the work done.  As summers_off wrote, good teamwork is a skill that must be taught.  That's why my employer will fill out any survey of needed skills with teamwork high on the list.

What we need are the hard parts of teamwork:

a) establishing the problem or goal
b) figuring out what skills are needed
c) doing the recruiting of people with the necessary skills and adequate time/energy/resources to meet the deadline for the overall goal
d) doing all the coordination and communication among people who have different backgrounds, different personal priorities, and different times they need to be working on the project because not all the skills are needed at every step
e) ensuring the continuity of a project that extends for possibly years and having processes in place to ensure that all the currently necessary skill sets are still covered as well as bringing new team members in and up to speed quickly

The easy part of classroom group work is working from an assignment that could be done by one person who sighs heavily and just does it for the month or three that has been allocated.

[kaysixteen]

13 hours to go.  We'll see what happens.

Polly's points are well-taken, but this sort of advanced groupwork skills training/ development is almost certainly unnecessary and a waste of time in a remedial reading class.

I get that my strong biases against group assignments are shining through and may well be coloring my views towards not letting kids shirk out on their groupmates, but I don't much care about that.  I'm going to be asking questions of each group after their presentations, as well as opening the floor to their classmates to do the same, and I'm going to make sure that each kid says at least something.

[polly_mer]

Polly's points are well-taken, but this sort of advanced groupwork skills training/ development is almost certainly unnecessary and a waste of time in a remedial reading class.

What are your students supposed to be getting out of this course?  I ask because I just came from the thread where they didn't pick articles and apparently can't use the library.

From what's been described, this looks like your section is supposed to be supporting a freshman comp section by filling in some gaps and yet nothing is being done that could help the students do much of anything.

What are the learning goals for the class and why is everything seeming to be based on the students already having the skills instead of actual instruction in being a student or in reading?

[dr_codex]

I'm going to be asking questions of each group after their presentations, as well as opening the floor to their classmates to do the same, and I'm going to make sure that each kid says at least something.

This is good pedagogy, of course, and not just for group presentations. It almost instantly reveals who understands the project, and who did the lion's share of the work.

I usually describe the Q&A as an opportunity for students to speak about material that they did not have time to work into the presentation, intimating that they both made conscious choices about what to include, and were scrupulous about observing time limits. These may or may not be Jedi Mind Tricks, but they cut down on complaints about the process, which I know is one of your concerns. It's a conscious teaching style, and I'll admit that some students produce better work in the courses run using the old school pedagogy of my colleague the Catholic nun.

Good luck today -- hoping they knock it out of the park.

dc