<p>An update-
Thanks for all of your comments. With the advice of our son who is a senior at another college, we have been helping D compose an email to the professor describing the situation and asking for confidentiality. The email focuses on her situation, the future, and not assigning blame. She also admits her mistakes and last-minute approach. Now, if the professor does not have a humane response to her email, it will be very hard for me to not contact the school. By the way, the professor is also her advisor. Tomorrow, the groups are supposed to present orally on their outlines. I can’t imagine what the other team members are even thinking.</p>
<p>^^ Maybe she should consider speaking face to face with the prof on the subject rather than email. That way she could at least see how he reacts, he could see her seriousness, and she can respond in a varied way as happens in a real conversation rather than an email or letter.</p>
<p>"Now, if the professor does not have a humane response to her email, it will be very hard for me to not contact the school. "
Mom, you need to NOT contact the professor under any circumstances with regard to this issue. Your D has gotten great advise and needs to take it from here. Believe me, this is a life skills lesson she needs to learn for her own sake. You can’t come and rescue her or translate for her once she is in college.</p>
<p>Wow… that this still happens in college helps me understand why I am in a private practice.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what you mean by “humane” but if you mean that he rescue your D from this, that may very well not happen. I don’t think the original response that they waited too late to come to him is inhumane. They knew from the beginning that the facilitator wasn’t meeting with them. They knew early on that at least one girl wasn’t participating and progress meetings along the way should have informed them that others weren’t pulling the weight. I feel as though the response could be, “I am sorry the group has not been successful in working together. I look forward to hearing the presentation.” </p>
<p>I really can’t imagine a response that would justify your getting involved though.</p>
<p>If the student’s are allowed any absences in that class, have your D send that email tonight and ‘miss’ that class tomorrow.
Have HER attach her outline to her email.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m confused. Are you saying the group met to complain about your daughter? Who is the girl they were complaining about?</p>
<p>I also hate group projects. And lazy people in general. I frequently find myself wishing that some misery would befall people like this at some point in their lives as a result of their laziness.</p>
<p>Honestly at this point, it sounds like the only thing your daughter can do is make the presentation the best she can.</p>
<p>Thanks again for your comments.</p>
<p>My daughter prefers email because she will get the whole story out without getting upset. My son in college recommended email and feels that it is very acceptable in this situation. Face to face would be preferable but as an 18 year old freshmen far away from home, she just isn’t capable of it right now. My husband and I actually expect the professor to say “tough luck” so far but believe that he will make sure the peer facilitator attends their groups for the rest of the project. The peer facilitator was supposed to be attending at least one meeting per week for the first 6 weeks of the semester and only came once. However, if my D does end up on probation (a C- in this course alone can allow this school to put her on probation)- she has at least been assertive about her situation in advance.<br>
The Thursday meeting with the professor was about another girl who has essentially not come to any team meetings. My daughter believes that part of why the other students abandoned my D completely is that they saw that this other girl would not suffer consequences from her actions. She included this in her email.
Attendance does count in the grades - since my D is capable of presenting the parts of the outline that she worked on, she will do that and the rest of the team will present what they know.
I know that I can’t contact the college - but thanks for the warnings.</p>
<p>I think you should support your D from afar but you can’t get involved. That is her job. If a parent were to call me to discuss a problem their child is having with a group (and it has happened), I have said that I trust their child can come see me to discuss it directly.</p>
<p>It’s frustrating but a good learning experience: how to manage others, how to negotiate, how to choose groups and work with others (when given the chance). And how to dig your way out of the depths of despair, by yourself, when you finally think you are able to fail for the first time in your life. The point of college isn’t just to get some memorized knowledge into one’s head-- it’s to have experiences that develop you as a person and make you more capable and competent in the real world (hopefully). And unfortunately, not all grades will always be fair or controllable. They should be but theya re not. But one can trust that across four years, 100s of assignments and many dozens of courses, one’s true abilities will show up in one’s overall GPA, despite the occasion good luck and bad luck/error/unfairness along the way. </p>
<p>Support her and encourage her to see the prof, but please help her put it in perspective! This is not the end of her academic career and no, she’s not going to be on probation. The project will get done one way or another. The grade will not be zero. And none of the kids will be put on probation over one project no matter how you imagine worse can scenario to be. </p>
<p>I deal with endless student group problems (since I teach in a business school). Especially with freshman. Conflict and perceptions of unfairness are not uncommon. What I can share is that for every conflict I’ve learned about, every single member views the conflict in a unique and biased way. If I hear from just one student, I completely and absolutely see it the way they do and how very unfairly they have been treated…until I talk to the other students and learn other ways of viewing the same ‘reality’. It is always much much more complex than originally understood. No one is lying, they just genuinely see the situation uniquely and biasedly from their vantage point, and most do not see how each was party to dynamics that contributed to the conflict (heck its not even just them, even us ‘mature’ adults have trouble seeing this when in conflict). That doesn’t suggest your D hasn’t gotten the short end of the stick but that the real situation is probably different than how she sees it, and that she can learn from this experience to help with future ones.</p>
<p>OP - As many others has said, emotional support for you D should be the extent of your involvement. </p>
<p>As for your D, I’d advise against speaking with the Professor. Group projects are assigned in order to teach students about working with others. 'Nuff said.</p>
<p>If your D really needs a good grade in the course, have her drop it and retake next semester (when hopefully she’ll apply what she’s learned this semester to make the group project assignment a success).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Why would she be on probation because of one class? Are her other grades in other classes going to be at the C level too?</p>
<p>Add me to the list of those who HATE group projects, especially those where kids don’t get to pick their group members. In some ways, though, I understand them, because we end up doing group projects throughout life, whether at school, at work or in volunteer organizations. What I do, and what I’ve advised my children to do, when there are group projects to be done, is to assign tasks in writing with deadlines that are fairly early and to get their part done on time/. Then, if others don’t do the work, there’s time to try to guilt others into doing their share or to do it for them. This isn’t ideal, but I can’t even count how many “group” projects at work I’ve had to essentially do on my own. I can work well with others, if others are willing to work, and there have been many times when a group of us have cooperated and achieved good things. However, human nature being what it is, there are plenty of times when others have shirked and left the work to those willing to do it. I would NOT contact the professor, and I probably would not advise my child to do so either. The lesson of the group project, IMO, is to expect to do a lot more than your share of the work, to set deadlines in advance of when you need things, and to budget your time accordingly.</p>
<p>This is a required fall course for business students and she can’t drop it. The policy of the school is that if you get less than a C in your business classes (and this is her only one this semester when the other required classes are in arts and science), they can put you on probation.
The guidebook for this course (there are 8 sections) encourages students to go to their professors about problems with the project - especially about team process. So it is probably OK for her to present her situation. She just should have done it about 3 weeks ago.
starbright- your comments were so helpful. I am sure that there is another side to this story. I hope that the team members are able to work it out. Maybe they think she is too bossy - although she was convinced until the last minute that they were going to contribute. She actually emailed us their written work today and it was clear that no one except her had done any research - except maybe in Wikipedia.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>
Do not call the professor. It is up to her to deal with this. That is part of the education that you are paying for. And if she made a mistake, you can not blame the professor.</p></li>
<li><p>
This is HER education and she/you are paying for it. Why should she care about making others look bad when they clearly do not care about her. I believe you said they said she is the smartest so she should do the work. You said they then went off to party. And your D is concerned about MAKING THEM LOOK BAD? They are taking advantage of her and mocking her.</p></li>
<li><p>Tell your D to document everything that is going on. She should document who did not show up for what meeting, who did not have work done at scheduled times, what meeting the team supervisor did not attend. Your D should keep copies of emails, etc. Now she should go see the professor with this info. With clear documented and proven evidence, I think she will get a different response from the prof. And if not, she has the same documentation to take this further up (ie, Department Chair etc.) if need be.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>By the way, if there was any way that we thought that she could do the project on her own and not get a D, we would have told her to do that. That was her first reaction. It is just too big and she would have ended up messing up her other courses too.</p>
<p>I suppose the “no snitch” rule applies to the slackers - they won’t tell everyone in their learning community that they got a free ride off your D?</p>
<p>I know a woman’s son who got into this situation. He admits he ‘went off’ on the group members that did no work, he got the worst grade in the group (tho he did almost all the work) because of a bad peer review component (he didn’t burn the others, but they burned him), and he had to spend an extra semester in school to get his degree.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>They won’t let her take it next semester instead?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t think they should be using Wikipedia. All the professors I’ve ever had absolutely will not accept Wikipedia as a source for a research paper. That said, I’d also make sure the other students didn’t plagiarize anything (anything can happen with group projects), as that could land your daughter in even more trouble.</p>
<p>BTW, #3 above worked well for my D in a similar situation.</p>