Master degrees and group projects

kiki162

I have to rant here for a minute.

For those of you that have obtained your Masters, or are currently working towards it, I have a few questions. One of the more frustrating things that I've coming across is "group projects." Is there any college/university out there (preferably online) that doesn't do group projects? If there is, I'd love to hear about it.

I'm currently in my second grad course, and I'm finding the same issue that I had in my first class, which were "slackers". Even in a more expensive and prestigious school, do you still find them there as well? I totally get the whole "real world" aspect of it, especially in IT or in a management role. Why does this have to be a necessary evil?

Ok...done my rant.

jeremywatts2005

Not that I know of. A lot of colleges build group projects in as part of the curriculum to show prospective employers they teach teamwork. I have been through a lot of them and they are really one of the worst parts of getting a degree. You have people spread out all over the world in some cases. That wouldn't be bad in itself but some students really don't care. So if you have Bob in New York and Jeff in England and Jeff says screw it I just want a C then you are all in a bad way. As an instructor I had a poll at the end of the project and everyone got a private vote on who did the most and who did the least. Then I would take that and look at the individuals performance and see if it matched up. Kind of like survivor except only one gets voted off well gets the lowest grade at least.

markulous

WGU doesn't have you do any group projects. I'm in the MSISA and although there's some things that are frustrating with the evaluators, everything is self-paced and done on your own. Plus tuition is cheap.

GSXR750K2

The only group project I know of that WGU has is for the MBA IT Management (and it's the capstone), at least it was a group project when I considered that program around this time last year.

TranceSoulBrother

WGU MSISA didn't have any group projects but I hear that their MBA has a group project for their capstkne and Im fully anticipating some frustration when I get there. Im sure that all MBAs have some type of group project to follow in the "MBA doctrine" but I don't think that professors weigh the grade depending on the level of participation. I wish it was so but the other side of the coin is that supposedly the students are supposed to monitor each other and police their behavior inside the team according to one theory. Graduate study is meant to impart such responsibility but it is lost in the pursuit of a degree to fulfill stupid HR requirements.

cyberguypr

I gotta say that even though I found the MSISA experience subpar, the fact that you don't have to deal with classmates that don't care was priceless.

MrAgent

I did my masters at George Mason University. Every one of my classes had a group project. Some had several. In only one of my classes did we have to deal with someone who did not care, and pick up the slack. I am glad I didn't have it that bad.

sj4088

I definitely can understand your frustration and can understand why you want to avoid it. On the flip side it might good to stick it out and see how you deal with it. Because it's something you mostly likely are going to experience in the workforce as well. At least you would have experience dealing with it. Of course this is just me looking for a silver lining.

dmoore44

I seem to be the odd man out... I tend to feel like I'm the slacker in all the groups that I'm in, though its not for lack of effort or failure to meet my commitments. I feel like my groupmates are much smarter than I am, and tend to stay on top of the assignments better than I do.

the_Grinch

My CyberCrime class did have a group Wiki, but it was the entire class that had to work on it. Otherwise, none of my classes have had a group project.

No_Nerd

Almost everything was a difficult group project in my MBA at the University of Hawaii . It was great super stressful...... I had one or two slackers in a group once , but all in all I guess I was lucky. The one Major slacker's grade was jus docked a "Letter" grade because he just refused to do almost anything.

Just stay course and pick up the slack where you need to but make sure the extra work is distributed fairly. Don't try to be a one man show and fix all the issues .... you will burn out.