I have bad experiences group project at Georgetown University's classes. Most of the classes are heavily on final grade based on group project. I have no idea why most of members in my group never stay with the requirements on research and presentation. Always want to go beyond that unnecessary. And always wait until the last minute to submit their portions and alter the entire project. I can't way to get the heck out of the program. I have two more classes to complete the program. Does anybody have this experience on B&M or Distance Learning? Actually, I have great experience group project at Southern Methodist University via distance learning.
I've never had a good experience with a group project, never once. They have always been a waste of time in every school I have attended, online or B&M. I just finished one recently and was graded down because another member did not do their part properly. It's a bummer because you are always drawn down to the quality of the weakest person in you group.
I hate DL group projects... My experience has been to be at the last minute pulling an all-nighter with someone else from the group trying to complete the work from someone that never submitted their portion of the work. After a few emails I can tell who’s going to be a problem: usually the person that never replies to messages. JFO
I'm enrolling in another program as we speak and am already dreading the group aspects of it. You can't help but to believe that it will be even more heavily weighted in an MBA program than it was in an MS - MIS program. On the flip side to the slacker approach, my capstone project at UIS involved 4 people, all supposedly working full-time, yet there were 2 people who would literally discuss it through out the day, every day, and in the end this would leave you with anywhere from 15-40 posts to read and reply to, in around 10 different threads, at the end of each day. Eventually it just got to be too much, and left me with the same frustrations many of you talk about.
I just completed a class at Jacksonville State with a group project that was a nightmare. I ended up re-writing a major section for one of the members literally hours before it was due because she basically turned in five pages of material directly quoted from text towards the 25 page project. I usually take the role of editor because of my familiarity with APA. The hardest part of a group paper in my view is taking separate contributions and making them a coherent single submission.
What is your feeling about this kind of group work? You may work in a group of any size you like. The assignment is scaled so that, if (for example) you work in a group of 3, you're whole group will have 3 times more work to do than some student who chose to work alone. Each student in your group is responsible for taking some part of the assignment and identifying it as their contribution and are graded individually for their own work. You will not have lost marks any marks if you completed your part of the work, but others failed to complete their part. Part of your score will be in the form of a "group grade", but this is only based on core components of the assignment that are impossible to separate as something belonging to one individual. Do you see any problems with this system? How would you feel about being in this course?
That was another thing that rubbed me the wrong way with my experience. We had one person that we had designated as the editor... his whole job was basically to edit as necessary to make the work coherent. At times he edited sections of my research and either removed citations and then wanted me to re-add them, or would manipulate the wording to where it meant something different and then would demand that I find a citation for it. Talk about a PITA.
As a student, I've only had to do 2 group projects, and they actually worked out very well. The first was undergrad where all 4 of us were really motivated, and the other was last year where I did a project with a very close friend of mine that consisted of a lit review and a survey. I'm good at writing while she's good at crunching numbers (where I'm hopeless), so I did the lit review and she did the stats on the survey. As a teacher, the number one complaint I get is about group projects, which makes me realize how lucky I've been as a student.
You learn to deal with groups, it can be a very good preparation to a workplace that involves group project. If you take leadership over your group you will have good and bad experiences as I did but they all prepared me to deal with lazy contributors, weak once that needed motivation and help, trying to beat deadlines etc, its all challenging and I once almost gave up on the group. Later when I was leading a team at High-tech company it all paid off.
My first exposure to distance learning was getting my BS from University of Phoenix. All of the classes relied heavily on learning teams & group projects. I consider this to be the main reason why I view my experiences at UOP so negatively. I also believe this is part of the reason why UOP is considered to be below average in terms of educational quality. We even had to submit "learning team" projects in statistics courses and the LT projects were always the most heavily weighted part of the grade. I feel the reason why UOP was so stuck on learning teams was due to their 100% student acceptance policy. In any given course, at least half of the people on my learning team did not have writing skills that would even be considered acceptable in high school. This meant that one or two people (usually one) on the team would have to do all the work & try to "translate" other team members' submissions. In many classes, team members simply never submitted their work because they knew the "ropes" and already saw that one person would complete everything in order to save the grade. The fact that one or two team members would carry the dead weight of the rest of the team ensured that everyone would get the same grade and the non-performing members would make it through the course (and ultimately, the program). To me, UOP was just an expensive lesson in carrying dead weight. This is why I'm currently getting another bachelors degree and omitting the UOP degree from all future resumes.
atrox79, I really appreciate your honesty, that must have been tough to stick with and shows a really strong work ethic on your part. Hopefully you've let someone at your new program know that you already have 1 bachelors degree because for example in Maryland public higher-ed schools (and many similar places around the country) the gen-ed requirements from your first degree may be accepted as fulfilling the gen-ed requirements of your 2nd degree. This can often shorten your degree requirements from 120 to 90 credits (meaning you only have to do the core course-work, no more psych 101 all over again). This isn't universal, but it is worth a shot. In Maryland this comes from a law that your gen-ed requirements from a Maryland public community college's AA/AS must be accepted in a public 4 year degree program in this way. This has been expanded quite a bit, for example even the most prestigious univ. of maryland campus will accept UOP credits (counting them as core-fulfilling requirements, so you can get on with classes for your major). It is kind of sad to see that the UOP upper-level economics credits get counted as freshman econ 101 and 102 at Maryland (those are some of the only UOP credits that transfer as an actual class, and not just general credits), good luck with your next endeavor.
funInSun, Thankfully, the program I enrolled in did actually accept most of the UOP classes as satisfying general ed requirements. Also, the school ended up waiving some other courses because I applied for "second bachelors", so it worked out. I am grateful at least that UOP maintained its regional accreditation because that ensured the transfer of most courses. Still, I did take good things from UOP since that is actually where I met my fiance. For the second half of the program we were always placed on the same team due to our location & we were forced to work together very closely since we both had interest in submitting quality assignments. Maybe that was the whole purpose of me going through the program!
