Group work.

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I suck at group work. I like doing my own thing and getting it done as soon as the assignment has been set so i can get the lecturer to proof read and make suggestions. I hate leaving things to the last minute.

I am doing a subject that is 100 percent group work based. It is an online subject and so far i have done everything and nobody else has even started.

What am I supposed to do? How long do i leave it until i just do everything so my marks don't fail? Our first assignment is due in 2 weeks and everyone else hasn't even started the first activity yet!

If your group has an assigned leader, or someone who has declared themselves to be the leader, contact them and ask them when they are going to get the project started. If there is no group leader, that is probably why the group has not collectively gotten anything done.

Believe it or not, most people aren't natural born leaders, so it's not uncommon for someone not to step up as a leader in a group situation unless higher authority has assigned them to do so. Most people hope someone will just tell them what to do.

Groups that don't have clear leaders usually just don't get things done, and as a person who has to work in...or at least with groups a lot, I got tired of this a long time ago, so despite the fact that I have AS, I have occasionally volunteered to be group leader.

It's actually not as horrible as you might think. In working in groups, you just need to explicitly communicate your thoughts and intentions concerning the project, what needs to be done, and how it might be done.

When embarking on a group project, if no leader has been assigned, I first ask if anyone had their heart set on being the group leader. If no one really seems to want to do it, then I assert myself as the leader.

Then I need to figure out what needs to be done and I'll send out an e-mail saying what needs to be done and asking who wants to do what. I will also arrange a meeting date. Groups that meet in person, even to discuss things that can be discussed through e-mail, generally have more cohesion than groups that don't.

If someone seems to be absent, in that they haven't chosen a part to do yet, I will contact them privately and again ask what part they wanted to do. If they miss a meeting, I'll contact them and let them know I noticed they weren't at the meeting. I'll brief them on what happened and what was decided there and ask that in the future, if they can't attend the meeting, to please let me know ahead of time. This lets also has the effect of letting them know that people are paying attention to them and have expectations of them. People are generally more likely to "pull their weight" when they think others in the group are pulling their own weight, and have similar expectations of them....they don't want to be "the slacker".

I will also check in with group members to get status updates from time to time.

In an academic environment, if someone isn't doing their part, it's generally unproductive to get mad at them. You can't fire them and get a new person, and either way, their part has to get done, so as the group leader, it's ultimately your job to see to it that that part does get done.

Another important aspect of being a group leader is to tell people they have done a good job every once in a while. People like recognition for their work. Even if it wasn't as good as you would have liked it to be, they still may have put a considerable amount of time into it.

So I would sent out an e-mail to your classmates, or get all of them together and get the project going. You also need to tell people what you have already done, and what else needs to be done.

Chronos, this is absolutely excellent information for working on group projects. This should be a wiki.

I have a high school-aged son who is currently working on a project with two girls. He's not doing anything (although he will -- he has two weeks), and apparently the two girls aren't doing anything. He maintains he doesn't know who is to be the leader. He tried to work with the girls, but he made a social mistake of trying to "help" them when they didn't ask for help. So, besides the fact that they may not socially want to work with him, now they REALLY don't want to work with him because he overstepped his bounds. This is all conjecture on my part, but I've seen stuff like this before.

They basically have to do a presentation on different aspects of history dealing with Napoleon. They don't really have to work together too much, and I could see that he might get an ok grade if he does his part of the presentation -- he should just upload his visual aides, etc. to Google Docs and call it good. Well, that's my hope anyways.

So how do you guys work with a small group of people who don't want to work with you? and just for the record, my highly social NT daughter HATED group projects all throughout high school (and even college) because other people rarely took the group projects seriously, as you have discovered, Solvejg.

It's been ages since I've had to do a group project. But my old approach was pretty much just to do everything myself. I knew other people wouldn't get stuff done until the last minute, and to be honest I didn't trust them to do a good job at it (it sounds horrible, I know, but I have high standards). For this reason a teacher once told me that I need to lower my standards and let other people do some work. It wasn't long before I transferred to another school after that...

I Have tried all of that Chronos. My issue is that they are not even signing onto the course page to get the information for the units. I have sent over 10 emails including one with all my answers to all the units so they had no excuse not to want to start the assignment.

How long do i let this go on before i just do it myself? I am really mad. The marks get divided by 5 no matter who does what so i will be effectively getting them a free pass on this subject.

You might try contacting your group members before or after class, in person, but if your attempts to communicate have been ignored then I would speak to the instructor and request that you simply be allowed to do the project independently as part of a single person group.

I agree with Chronos that one should try all means possible but if you can't resolve it to speak to the instructor. Maybe he will work out a way you can hand your stuff in separately to those who aren't participating....

I will be saving this for when my son enters high school. He's in middle school at present and honestly at the moment he gets a job as a part of the group (usually the data collection guy) but high school it's a little different I suspect.

Thanks for that breakdown.