I had my defining group-project experience senior year of high school, in Mr. deGroot’s chemistry class. We were given group assignments once every few weeks, and the groups were either randomly populated, or I wasn’t forthright enough to pick one I wanted to be in. (I can see high-school-age Kris wanting desperately to be in a group with the girl I had a crush on, but never saying anything.)
The experiment involved titrating caffeine out of a solution — probably coffee or soda — and seeing how much of it we could extract. It was a five-day lab, Monday through Friday.
I was the best pourer and estimator in the group by a longshot, and group projects always devolved into watch-me-do-everything projects, because I didn’t want an F. Monday through Thursday involved preparing the solutions, balancing the equation. I remember we used 1,1,1-trichloroethane, because I liked its name. Friday’s part of the experiment was taking the filtered solution and using a centrifuge to separate the caffeine out. Then we’d measure the amount and our grade was based on how much we managed to get.
Friday, I was out sick. I got a cold or something, something bad enough that my mom kept me home.
Monday morning I went to chemistry class, and asked how much we ended up with.
“None,” they said.
“How did we get no caffeine after all that?”
“Maybe we got some, but we didn’t find out. We put too much into the centrifuge and it caught fire.”
We all got an F.
Noooooo D: I am currently writing most of one of my group projects right now. I'm leaving some parts open to see if my group members will fill it in, but I'm fully prepared to finish it myself if I need to. Group projects: the worst.
My group experiences were very similar. Except instead of doing everything, my contributions are more along the lines of, "I don't know man, I didn't take notes. Try lighting it on fire or something."
As a teacher, I'm always really hopeful when I assign group work, after all it seems to be a focus on the new national curriculum here (I'm in Scotland and we're currently rolling out the "Curriculum for Excellence").
But I always end up rather dismayed that it's always the usual suspects (mostly girls) who just carry an otherwise apathetic group. I don't want to give up on group work, and I'm trying lots of different tasks/ways of picking groups, etc.
Bleh, I dunno.