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From: john@nmt.edu (John Shipman)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Group projects
Summary: What do when someone doesn't pull their weight
Message-ID: <1990Jul19.215334.28746@nmt.edu>
Date: 19 Jul 90 21:53:34 GMT
References: <1522@abvax.UUCP> <1990Jul17.120036.8944@pdn.paradyne.com> <804@qusunitg.queensu.CA>
Organization: Zoological Data Processing
Lines: 45

I am a great believer in confidential peer review.  If you
want to know whether someone did their share of the work,
ask the other people on the team (in private).  I don't
think that someone on a successful team should get a good
grade if that person didn't do a fair share of the work.

In our software engineering course, we require that students
write two papers a year, one at midterm and one at the end
of the term, describing (among other things) the functioning
of the team.  We specifically instruct them to name names
and give their opinion of how the others on their team did.
Naturally, we tell them that their peers will not see the
papers, so they don't have to worry about losing friends.

The toughest situation is when a team failed because of one
member, yet the others worked hard and did good work.
Clearly, the offender should get a low grade.  But should we
also penalize the people that worked hard?  I can think of
arguments both for and against this.

In industry, if a project fails, excuses are futile, because
even though there was a ``good reason'' for the failure, you
have still failed, and the marketplace is unforgiving.  If
the company is a start-up, one failure can be fatal.

Yet, on the other hand, it is not fair to the hard-working
students to penalize them for the actions of others on their
team; it would tend to make those students bitter.  I
suppose it depends on how closely you want to simulate an
industry environment.

I think it is very important to get people in the habit of
succeeding, especially people who are bound for industry.
Therefore, I don't want people saying, ``it's okay that the
project failed, because it's not my fault, it's because
Clodworthy screwed up.''  In practice, when we have a
situation where one team member is not contributing, we
encourage the others to take up the slack, and reward them
if they do so.  In this situation, people can make a project
work despite the failures of some members, and those who put
in the extra effort will feel even more proud of their
achievement than if everything went smoothly.
-- 
John Shipman/Computer Science Department/New Mexico Tech/Socorro, NM 87801
(505)835-5301; john@jupiter.nmt.edu