Assign group projects early, not late

You’ll be fair to your students and you’ll spare yourself headaches at grading time

Scheduling collaborative assignments right off the bat was sound advice I got from a veteran teacher during a faculty development workshop, and it was just in time for me because I was planning assignments for an upcoming course.

She said, whenever students aren’t 100 percent in control of the amount of work or quality of work that other team members produce in a group effort, it never fails, she always hears complaints about that person (there’s always one) who hardly contributed and didn’t pull their weight. Therefore, she found that the grades she is forced to dole out for group assignments can be a little lower than what the type alpha, straight-A, super star students are accustomed to receiving.

So I thought about it and had to agree that, to be fair, students deserve time to go hard on the remaining individual assignments to make up the difference. Often times they even insist on the opportunity to do an extra credit assignment.

If group assignments happen late, then that potentially lower grade would come as a huge surprise and you’ll face a rebellion.

Spare yourself the clamor of an angry mob during your office hours, or the sudden turn against you during student evaluations, or expletive-filled rants on RayrMyProfessor by being fair about when you schedule group work.

I’m not making the case against group work, not at all. I think in many cases students perform at high levels because compete a little and the star students tend to pull a little hard work out of the other not so hot students. Plus, it’s less likely that groups turn in the assignment late. Star students keep other students on their Ps & Qs. It’s with the individual assignments that I usually hear the dog ate my homework excuses.

This veteran teacher also said that in some cases, that one slacker student gets completely outcast, voted off the island, so to speak, kicked out of the band, in which case the complaints she hears actually come directly from that person, the slacker, the guilty one, and now it’s he or she who begs for an opportunity to do a make-up assignment. So if, as the instructor, you find a reason to grant that opportunity, then you spare yourself headaches of factoring in new assignments at the last minute when you’re devising the math to grade everyone fairly.

You only have 100 percentage points to play with, there isn’t much wiggle room for extra credit.