Group Work AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

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group work bites and is the bane of my existance. my school is so full of slackers that it isn't even funny and I always get paired up with them.

suggestions on the evil thing? (aka group work)
1. tell the slakers in the group to pull their own weight.
2. do your own work. if you do anyone else's work they might decide to dump the rest of it on you
3. if the others don't do their part, don't let your grade suffer for it. tell your prof. or teacher
4 if you work better alone, ask the others in your group if you can each do your own part separately, then put it all together later. <--that saved me in my english class more times than i can count
5. don't keep to yourself. if you need someone else's help, ask. if you think they need help, offer. and if the pieces of the project are related and you are working separately, try working together for a little while.
6. if you are allowed to, pick your partners, just be smart about it. if you can't pick, hope you get people you get along with

My latest group work assignment involved having to deal with three immigrant girls, of which one also happened to be a racist. I wasn't very helpful, to say the least.

I hate this! Especially PE because I suck at PE and the girls in my group just dos. I even hate going into pairs because my friends are in different class.

same, i agree with all 3 points right there... i hate groupwork, and i ahve to do it quite a bit... i don't mind it with my friends... but complete strangers, who are PREPS, heck no..

I've always hated group work. I am working on a master's degree part-time and much of my coursework includes group projects. They're always annoyed with me because they want to get everything done a week early, while I prefer to wait until the very last minute and hammer it out right on time. Also, they do stupid things like format documents improperly or use bad grammar, etc. I just want to take the whole project and do it myself because I don't like the way they do things.

I do my worst in groupwork.

I cannot communicate properly, I get ignored and I do not like being given a mark based on something that was done by someone else. Especially if they did it badly.

Exact same problem here.

In high school, I would find a group and then do the whole project by myself. At the end I'd hand the answer to my groupmates to copy in their own handwriting or type up a script for everyone in the group if it was presentation to the class. At first NT's found this advantageous, because we got pretty good grades and they didn't have to do any work, but eventually I think they just thought I was insulting their intelligence and I became the odd man out, so the teacher was always placing me in groups with random kids I didn't know.

I almost had my first complete breakdown (academic related) in college last year when we had to work in groups for a final project. It was four-person groups, and everyone else had their own friends in the class and their own groups they'd been developing over the semester during classwork. Out of 40 people, I was the only one without a group. I begged my professor to let me do the project alone, almost breaking down in tears in the process, and he said okay, on the condition that I would be graded as if I was a full group. In the end, I did the project, made a stellar presentation (I'm pretty good at public speaking) and got an A+ with some compliments from my classmates. It all worked out in the end, except I still can't do group work.

I think the problem with Aspies is that we need to be part of a an ordered chain of command, either we're the leaders and have total control over who in the group does what, or a cog with a specific assignment. In the working world this might be more common, but in school the teacher doesn't assign those roles.

lol, I wish I had your courage. I've had that happen many times, so usually I just let them work their a**es off while I get the marks. I mean, if they don't want my help, they shouldn't get it.
But I've never been able to mouth off at anybody - too scared of getting in trouble I suppose.

I think that part of the issue here is that Schools and Colleges are shifting to a more Extroverted learning style. That's group-work. See:

http://psychology.about.com/od/educatio ... yles_2.htm


In the past, group-work wasn't a strong element of the courses or was non-existent. The courses were geared to people with a more introverted learning style (working and reflecting alone). See:

http://psychology.about.com/od/educatio ... yles_3.htm


I think that many of us here are geared to a more Introverted learning style and therefore struggle with group-work. It is possible to struggle learning a subject you love if you're forced to adopt a learning style that you're not comfortable with.

I think that lots of the NTs thoroughly enjoy group-work because their brains are geared to learning by interacting with others. They seem so happy, so the minority of extreme introvert learners are overlooked. This is one of the reasons why I haven't been able to progress in my education as far as I would've liked: I underestimated the social element.

Lots of the teachers who teach these more extroverted courses learned via a introvert learning style. Their day to day work is more introvert, so they can't see the problem. They're effectively blind to it because they are telling the students to get into groups while effectively remaining aloof or working alone themselves at their desks.

Ironically, if you were to to put some of the teachers teaching group-work parts of courses into a group-work situation, they'd either struggle or completely dominate the discussion.

I couldn't put it better myself. Unless I'm working with friends, too bad my only friend in college doesn't do the same subjects as me, ho hum.

I keep forgetting what it was like to work in a group in high school. Surprisingly, it was not as horrible as your experiences seem to be. About 30% of the time, we had to choose our own groups, and nobody wanted to work with me, so my teacher had to shove me into a group with people who cared less. In those cases, I avoided the problems by not contributing to groups, even if they came up with a wrong answer or arrived at a logical contradiction. 50% of the time, we were assigned groups by one method or another, where people would acknowledge me only half of the time. The remaining 20% of the time, teachers asked us to choose groups and people actually wanted to work with me. The result here was insightful discussion and creative solutions. Unfortunately, this was confined to two classes in tenth grade.

That being said, I only had two group projects in high school, both in tenth grade, all of which were created in class and with people who acknowledged my existence.

The irony is that I am running a word games course right now (part of a student program at my university that allows undergraduates to teach "fun" classes for credit) where the two major assessments are group projects. Everyone in the class has friends and we observe laughing and joking while students work on the projects. It's what working in groups is supposed to be. However, it's a bit hypocritical that, after being ignored in groupwork (thusly hating it) in high school, I am forcing it on other people.

I dislike group work as well I prefare to work on my own so I can do things in my own way. Plus I think that working on your own educationly wise can be benerficial as you leanr to think for your self.

I also find that group work seems pretty unfair because quite often you may aswell have a group leader and just do what he/she says as social conformity kickcs i(depending on the size of the group usually 3 to 4+ not counting myself) and then its not really group work as some one often dominates it. I often find that my ideas are lost in group work.

Group work is the worst. I was bullied viciously and relentlessly in grade school and high school, EXCEPT when it came time to work in groups. Then everyone was my smarmy fake friend, because they knew full well that if they got into my group, they wouldn't have to do any work because they knew I wanted an A. I can't remember how many times I ended up doing the work of four people when I was a kid. I am scarred by the experience and hate group work to this day.

The reason colleges are pushing it so much is that, as another poster said, we are heading toward a much more extroverted work environment. Being able to work in teams is more important now than actually knowing what the hell you are doing.

That said, now that I am an upperclassman in college and taking higher-level courses, it seems like the slackers are being increasingly weeded out, and group work is getting easier to cope with. I actually had a pretty cool group for my last project because they were all focused on learning and doing well, and everyone pulled his or her own weight. It also helped tremendously that while we planned the project and did the field work together, ultimately each person's grade depended on reports that he or she did individually.

However, the wounds from childhood group projects sometimes surface and sting horribly even after 25+ years, and I wonder if the pain will ever stop.

I've always hated group work, I'm much better working on my own.

Group dynamics don't suit people on the ASD and therefore I find it discriminative to force us do perform in group based tasks.


When I was teaching I was aware of all the pitfalls even for those not on the spectrum. There always is at least one slacker, one bossy boots who delegates all the work to others and just cashes in on the results, a few insecure people pleasers who may or might not be too bright who "research" ( the way this word is used is a joke) the subject and a disconnected hotch potch of information is jig-sawed into a mediocre piece of "work".

If group work is necessary, because NTs perform better in that environment, I believe it should be limited to the "brain storming session" (another stupid and inaccurate term as there are always a few who just want to chat), and from this " illuminating session" each individual could produce her/his own work.
This I reckon is still unfair as an individual should be able to gain credit for her/his OWN thoughts , approach to the topic at hand.

Basically team work is dumbing down.... and actually disadvantages the "slackers" who will not acquire the skills but depend upon others.
IT IS A FORM OF DISCRIMINATION!

I have dealt with group work so many times, but I had the worst experience during this project I had for US History class back in high school. (I was a junior at the time.) I had to work with about two or three other girls and they would mostly talk their butts off during class and it bothered me. Since I lacked the initiative to tell them to stop and focus on the project, I ended up doing most of the work. Then, I ended up having to type the entire script down on my own until 2 in the morning. At some point, I managed to e-mail my teacher about my concerns about the two girls being uncooperative so I guess the issue was settled. In the end, I made them do the entire skit for themselves while I just did the opening narration.