Do you think professors should make you do group work?

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I'm starting my Bachelor in Criminal Justice and have 2 group assignments for my online class. She assigns us to a set of other students and we keep in touch and do some assignment. As usual she insists it helps with teamwork etc. She doesn't take a NO for an answer on doing it you HAVE to do it. She seems rude and as usual IMO these professors don't understand the aspect that group work might be a problem for some people. They just believe it builds teamwork and working with others etc.

My experience hasn't been that great with group work before. Do you think professors should make you do it? I think not. Thanks!

I think it largely depends on the program. If you're preparing for a career where you're going to have to do co-operative work sometimes with other people, than I don't see an issue with requiring it.

Same here, any/all degree's has some form of Team/Project component that is the core of passing the degree. I had the same difficulties with a team to build a computer system, I was given the project leader role due to having the highest expertise at the time. Not easy giving orders and keeping in touch with the team to make sure a carefully structured time table is stuck to. I can honestly say the interaction and social contact required was MUCH harder the the set work. Singled out for having brains... Suffered a meltdown just because social interaction.

I'm guessing that in the curriculum, the majority of jobs are team based and will require some form of social interaction every single day

even if you just have a lab partner, there can be problems. i had one who put all the work on me. i had another who insisted that we do two separate sets of work, though only one joint one was required.

i had a good experience with group diagnosis in med school. we out-diagnosed the expert's computer. credit was given where credit was due.

another good thing about group work: i can usually convince another group member to do the presentation portion, saving me from public speaking, which i don't like.

I don't think you should have to do it if you're doing an online course but for some courses one group project here and there shouldn't be a big deal. Actually, I prefer group presentations over individual presentations. In the workplace you're going to have to work with people anyway.

I don't think you should have to do individual presentations on the other hand. I believe it's inhumane to certain people. To some people it's just torture and a matter of severe anxiety.

Yes, they make this mandatory to "prepare you for the vocational world". It will really help with job applications, to be able to use examples from uni to answer questions about teamwork and collaboration (I have used them several times). You may only be looking for autonomous work, but your professor will argue that this may not be an option, depending on the market, so you need to be prepared for all types of work that you might end up applying for.

just quickly from a uni student doing Criminal Psychology myself for this semester, I am wondering, HOW DO YOU DO/MAKE teamwork work online, over a computer. It takes the logic out of team work, there is no callabrotive effort as everyone is still doing their own thing...
I have a lecturer who i need to email about exam times as shes set our exam at a really stupid time (one i cant make) becuase its online -_-

Ahh! Your question excited me! I made an undergrad questionnaire (which I have not gotten to turn into a real research project yet, but might) about something similar!

My questionnaire was about required group interaction in the workplace for workers with high functioning autism or Aspergers. I wanted to know if being required to interact in groups caused 1) a decreased sense of well-being, 2) an increased role confusion, 3) an increased task confusion 4) a decreased confidence in social skills, and 5) a decreased perception of productivity.

Then in the same questionnaire I asked if accommodations were being given at work to help the HFA/AS worker in his/her job.

I guess I can't say what I THINK I would find since I might actually study this, but I'd be interested to read what other people think I might find if this one day turns into a real study. I might change it so that it's applicable at school as well. And BTW the group interaction has to be REQUIRED. If one chooses if and how often to be part of a group it's a whole other dynamic.

I hated group work, but honestly.

99.997% of jobs in the real world require some form of group work.

Group work was always a problem for our family member so he would ask the instructor to help him navigate getting into a group and for support in working with his group. He was registered with the college disabilities office so if a professor was unwilling to accommodate they would intercede.

I hate group and team requirements. I go on-line as well and I hated it >,< but I grit my teeth and bare it. I hate having to depend on individuals I cannot control for the performance and result of my grade.

Technically if you have your diagnosis and have notified disability services in the college then the proff. cannot 'force' you to do something that you have great difficulty/strain with. In these cases the proff. could simply let you do the assignment solo.


But yeah it sucks. I've two classes now forcing me to do group projects. The one meeting we've had so far have resulted in 2 hours of listening to their inane small talk (rather than work on the project) followed by a rapid 'ok you do this,that and this' splitting of the work which in the end, as it always happens, ends up being haphazardly put together.

It's not quit that easy, you have to convince the DSS office to add "No group work" as an accommodation.

I've never heard of ours giving such an accommodation.

It's definitely stressful. I never do my best work and usually end up sitting there quietly during the discussion part of the project, even though there are ideas going through my brain. I even had a professor comment once that he was surprised at the low quality of my group's project because I do such good work on my own. It totally went over his head as to why.

That said, I've come to terms with the fact that they're going to keep happening, and I am okay with them as long as the groups are preselected. When they make us choose our own groups, I always just sort of sit there awkwardly and don't get into a group until they are all sorted out and I just pick whichever one has the least people. Unfortunately this makes me feel like even more of an outsider in the group because I wasn't really picked. I always think if I were a professor, I would never put students through that.

I read a study which proved that agile methodologies (such as scrum teams) actually take MORE time to develop an end product and result in MORE stress for those in the work groups. The reason it took so long to develop the product was because the people on the development teams were talking to each other about social things and not about the work.

I'm probably going to do research this year to find out if required participation in groups has notable effects on people with ASD. I think work groups are the pretty much the same (socially) whether it's at universities or at a paying job.

Here's the information about the agile study in case anyone wants to look it up:

Syed-Abdullah, Sharifah, Mike Holcombe, and Marian Gheorge. 2006. “The Impact of an Agile Methodology on the Well Being of Development Teams.” Empir Software Eng 11:143-167.