Group work: the farce in which only a few actually work
There's a phrase in academia that, despite its supposedly good pedagogical intentions, sounds like a curse after a certain age. The older you are, the worse it gets. Whether you hear it in high school as a teenager, in a higher education program, at university, or while doing a master's degree when you're already a seasoned veteran in the field, the order lands like bad news: "You have to do a group project." The moment they hear it, students know that an obstacle course of excuses and hurdles is about to begin. They grit their teeth, take a deep breath, and raise their eyebrows, aware that they've just been placed on the edge of a precipice that they'll have to skid down in the coming weeks. The end of the journey will have a bitter aftertaste and a more precarious outcome than they would have liked. Ultimately, all that remains is the relief of having gotten the burden off their shoulders.
During childhood, when social skills are still developing, group work is understandable: it fosters teamwork and teaches how to manage tasks, emotions, and conflicts. Depending on how it's done, it can also help you discover what role you'll ultimately play in life and prepare you for frustration. From adolescence onward, you start to see the pitfalls in this approach. The world begins to divide between the hard workers and the slackers. It's also the awakening of a curious group that persists across generations: those who commit to putting the different parts of the project together, and who 99% of the time do it late and poorly.
A 2018 study by Chang and Brickman reveals that the great tragedy of group work is inequality. We had noticed it. The vast majority of students surveyed in this research lamented that there are always members who disappear when it comes to working and that the final evaluation isn't fair to the reality of the process or the involvement of its members. The perception of injustice during the execution of the task is so high that group work ceases to be a learning environment, becoming instead a tedious exercise in patience and sheer endurance in social interaction. Another interesting finding from a similar study warns that the perception of injustice within a group affects the team's low performance from the outset. The project is already doomed before it even begins. Other studies describe a phenomenon inherent to group work: social loafingThis is the tendency to put in less effort when credit is shared. A 2005 study by Piezon and Donaldson, focusing on online university courses, concludes that in large work groups, a "shadow zone" is created, allowing certain individuals to mysteriously disappear without a trace. The rest of the group doesn't dare pressure these phantom colleagues out of laziness or fear of conflict. Nobody wants to play sheriff. The conclusion is as simple as it is devastating: if you want to slack off, go ahead, no one will chase you. Another consequence of this situation, analyzed in another study, is that faced with imbalances and a lack of coordination, some people tend to take matters into their own hands. They are the ones who end up doing the work for everyone else.
Teachers, being seasoned professionals, know perfectly well that this is the reality of group work. The size of the groups is usually related to the number of students in the classroom. The more people, the larger the groups. They perfectly detect inequality in the workplace, the lack of fairness and accountability. However, they insist on the method and create work groups of six or seven people, or however many are deemed necessary. They fail to emphasize that group work offers an undeniable logistical advantage: less need for corrections.
