Zhou Ziwei: Why college students' group assignments are disgusting（2023-12-17）
No college life is complete without group work. "Every college student has more or less participated in group work during college, the more common group work often requires students to form a team, according to the theme of data collection, PPT production and class report, it can be said that group work has become a common form of college course assessment, it stands to reason that this should be able to exercise people's collaboration ability, leadership ability, and jointly produce better results. But college students never seem to stop complaining about group work, so why do they hate group work?
Teacher inaction:
Failure to provide detailed feedback on the problems and improvements of the assignment
Group assignments usually have a general topic that is relevant to the lesson, and students are required to choose a small topic to report under this theme. It is worth mentioning that many college students feel that this is a group assignment for the sake of debriefing. The teacher didn't seem to care much about what the students were reporting, and they didn't comment too much after the report, which made the students tremble and wonder if the group assignment didn't get into the teacher's eyes at allTeachers may grade group work, but there is a lack of follow-up feedback, so students don't know what problems with their work are and whether they can improve further.
Students are isolated:
Only responsible for a certain detail without process cooperation
A good group work can test and train many abilities to a large extent, including but not limited to leadership, cooperation skills, communication skills, etc. But our common form of group cooperation is actually quite a bit of a "factory assembly line" style - setting the theme, selecting the team leader, determining the division of labor, processing, and output - which is very efficient and very fixed. But after each person has accepted his or her own task, in fact, what an individual can do is limited to the single task itself, and it is difficult to understand the subject in a complete and in-depth way. For example, if three people are required to collect information, then these three people will divide the data into three parts, each of them will be responsible for collecting one part, and after collecting their own information, their task in the group work is completely over. The group work becomes an assembly line, and everyone is responsible for turning one of the screws, and in the end, although a result is produced, no one can recognize the full picture of the result. Factory-style collaboration makes it difficult for students to actually participate in the whole assignment, and therefore to develop enthusiasm for group work, which in their view is just a job that has to be done by the curriculum.
Emotions are broken:
Hitchhiking and online communication lead to personal attacks
Some netizens jokingly said that there should be a leader in a group homework: a leading sheep, a far-sighted eagle, and a warlike wolf;Actually, there are: a fish paddling, a black sheep horse, and a big wronged team leader. Being the leader of a group assignment is not a beauty difference, it often means that you have to be in charge, you have to assign work, you have to connect with the team members, and you have to be responsible for more work. Many college students have encountered "fish touchers" in group assignments, that is, they are not active, nor passive, and they focus on a lying corpse, and it is too late to hand over a heart-wrenching result of quality. In the face of this kind of teammate, there are usually the following ways to deal with it: 1. Team leader and others help him complete his task 2. Know him with reason and move him with emotion 3. Kick him out of the team and leave him to fend for himself. From the author's own experience, it seems that methods 1 and 3 are used more, and method 2 is less. The follow-up of 1 and 3 is also more obvious, and the whole group quarrels with the fishman in person, or scolds the fishman behind his back.
The lack of cooperation is the main reason why many college students hate group work, and I think it can be attributed to the lack of authentic communication. Many group assignments are completed, that is, the communication of all team members and the completion of tasks are solved, and for some interdisciplinary and cross-class cooperation groups, it may not be clear what their teammates look like. In the case that they don't understand each other, they rarely communicate face-to-face, and all communication is on WeChat QQ. Online text communication itself is prone to many misunderstandings, and when there is a situation where group members do not cooperate, online communication is even more difficult, and prejudices, misunderstandings, and emotions will be amplified. Therefore, face-to-face communication is important in group work, and before the homework starts, during the beginning, and after the end, should we all simply meet each other, burst out of thinking, exchange feelings, and exchange experiences?