Not OP but often group projects are used by teachers to reduce the # of things to grade and ostensibly give students a reason to "learn teamwork" but the projects are increasingly less suited to being group-orientated with the reduction in school funding and increase of class sizes.
For example, i had to do a frog dissection in biology in school, but this was for some reason a group project. Now i don't know if you've seen the size of a frog, but it's really just a 1-person job. And only one set of tools per group. So basically you just have projects where it's 1 person doing all the work and then one person to write it down, then 2-3 others just kinda. Doing nothing. there's a whole subset of memes around group projects.
There's also group papers assigned frequently, which are a fucking nightmare to write. "each person just writes a section" but why? you all have to learn the same material and it's going to make for a less cohesive paper. In the end, it always leads to one person being forced into a leadership role they don't want (the teachers don't pick groups based on who would be a good group or leader, or even say who WILL be the leader) and taking on the slack from people who recognize that it's bullshit make-work that won't teach them anything and exists soley to give the teacher some easy grading days.
Oh yeah also the topics are either assigned (boring) or the groups decide themselves, which, as all of us know, leads to a bunch of fighting and then 3/4 group being disinterested in the outcome outside of their grade. So no one enjoys them, they don't teach you how to work together or actually complete anything interesting unless you get SUPER lucky with the assignment/group.
Not OP but often group projects are used by teachers to reduce the # of things to grade and ostensibly give students a reason to "learn teamwork" but the projects are increasingly less suited to being group-orientated with the reduction in school funding and increase of class sizes.
For example, i had to do a frog dissection in biology in school, but this was for some reason a group project. Now i don't know if you've seen the size of a frog, but it's really just a 1-person job. And only one set of tools per group. So basically you just have projects where it's 1 person doing all the work and then one person to write it down, then 2-3 others just kinda. Doing nothing. there's a whole subset of memes around group projects.
There's also group papers assigned frequently, which are a fucking nightmare to write. "each person just writes a section" but why? you all have to learn the same material and it's going to make for a less cohesive paper. In the end, it always leads to one person being forced into a leadership role they don't want (the teachers don't pick groups based on who would be a good group or leader, or even say who WILL be the leader) and taking on the slack from people who recognize that it's bullshit make-work that won't teach them anything and exists soley to give the teacher some easy grading days.
Oh yeah also the topics are either assigned (boring) or the groups decide themselves, which, as all of us know, leads to a bunch of fighting and then 3/4 group being disinterested in the outcome outside of their grade. So no one enjoys them, they don't teach you how to work together or actually complete anything interesting unless you get SUPER lucky with the assignment/group.