By Luca Woodruff, Third Year, Law
If you stopped a university student and asked them their least favourite aspect of higher education life, their answer would likely start and end with group projects. Other villains like Jigsaw, Vader, even that eye from Lord of the Rings seem harmless against the threat posed by mandatory group work. Luca Woodruff reflects on the unravelling system of group projects- why they remain ineffective and whether there exists a possibility for their improvement.
Misaligned schedules of sports, societies and part-time work mean that the division of group project tasks are unequal, rendering out-of-class collaboration more of a pipe dream than a practicality. Ellie, a second-year biochemistry student confirms this dissatisfaction with group projects. She said, ‘the final grade didn’t accurately reflect individual efforts.’ This is especially felt when unequal effort is put into the project- with some contributing more, others less.
This is backed by the national evidence that highlights the controversial nature of group assessment. A widely cited UK study of university students found the appetite for group projects split down the middle with 49 per cent in favour of individual assignments to 51 per cent who prefer groups. You do not exactly have to strain to understand the complaints. This system disregards input and focuses solely on the final result, granting the same mark to all.
At a time when annual tuition is almost £10,000, with interest rates on that debt climbing steadily, being handed a grade lower than you deserve starts to bear a heavy cost. More than that, it’s the final insult in an education system already crushed under its own shortcomings.
What is interesting, though, is whether there is an explanation for the failings of the group project format, beyond mere scheduling conflicts or drawing the short straw.
Have group assessments always been this lopsided, or is our cohort uniquely burdened with an impaired attitude to education and results?
In 2020, GCSEs became teacher-assessed rather than exam-marked, and the results were generous: 76 per cent of candidates achieved a grade 4 or above in England. Two years later, when that same cohort sat A-levels under normal exam conditions for the first time since the pandemic began, the results were humbling to say the least. The proportion of A*/A grades fell from 44.3 per cent to 35.9 per cent almost overnight. A generation went from being marked generously with minimal scrutiny to being marked properly, just as they were choosing a degree.
It is not a stretch to wonder whether a cohort whose results were asymmetrical to their effort during their most formative educational years might carry those perspectives into higher education. This is not applicable to every student's attitude to group work, but it would not take much, perhaps a quarter of any given group, to explain the imbalance so many current students feel and report.
That same generational shift is also observed every time a group member falls off the Earth and isn’t heard from for days.
Ghosting, a term once reserved for your failed date or hellish situationship, has crept into academic life too.
Messages on read, meetings agreed to and never attended, tasks claimed and just as easily delayed or abandoned. A culture of asynchronous, screen-mediated contact has rarely been forced to sit across a table and feel the brunt of responsibility, and group work is one of the few places left that still demands it.
Surprisingly, having to step up and manage a group is a net positive for the university experience. Despite the cynicism, there must be some positives to being assessed via group projects, for example: experiencing some form of simulation of the professional world. Delegating roles and responsibilities, confronting the friction between uncooperative members and competing priorities. This experience, at least, prepares students for the burdensome world of work and provides them with a taster of working in a team.
And yet even that simulation assumes something which can no longer be taken for granted: a shared baseline of how students communicate and disagree. It is an assumption which favours a group of domestic students who were educated under shared national conventions but serves a cohort which is increasingly diverse. Around 32 per cent of students at Bristol are international, following a Russell Group-wide trend that has seen the intake of international students grow over the past several years.
Additionally, for international students who are influenced by differing educational cultures, the need to be direct and confrontational during these projects presumes an ease and confidence that disadvantages them.
Although this all might read as an old man yelling at a cloud, it does not seek to catastrophise, only constructively criticise. Group projects are not irredeemable, only scarred by avoidant attitudes to education which are, ultimately, not really our fault.
Group projects may seem like a small aspect of the academic process, but the damage of unjust grading should not be understated.
Now more than ever, during the most turbulent period of economic life in decades, universities must attempt to restore the trust between academia and students. If this problem is ignored, they risk irreversible harm to the images of meritocracy and fairness which they are built upon. This could lead to a criticised industry becoming a hopelessly abandoned one.
Katy Bright
Emma Yeo
Featured Image: Epigram / Disha Angadi
What are your thoughts on group projects?
