Reflections on QKS 520 Project Work

QKS 520 Individual Assignment

I recently interviewed my student who has finished her H1 Project Work just last year in order to gain some of the insights that the current students have towards this module. Most of the time, when asked about their initial thoughts towards Project Work, students invariably profess negative sentiments such as “such a waste of time”, “useless” and “no idea what it is for” just to name a few. My student was no exception and vehemently opposed to Project Work being part of the curriculum.

When asked to highlight some of the perceived flaws in the current Project Work syllabus, the largest complaint she had was with her group. The teacher had assigned the various group members through a balloting process. This made the initial survey on the students’ respective characteristics seem redundant since the results of the survey was not even used as part of the grouping criteria. As the name Project Work suggests, a great deal of “Project” entails a great amount of collaboration between team members. Being grouped with random classmates through a balloting process was a sure recipe for disagreements and altercations. Within a JC classroom, there was a variety of cliques. Some lucky students got to be in the same group as their friends while the unfortunate ones like my student ended up with group members that she did not particularly like. This resulted in a feeling of unfairness that some classmates got a better deal than others.

Being unable to work with her friends meant that the group had divided opinions regarding the direction of the project. Everyone had a different interest, which meant that whoever’s idea was used alienated the other 4 group members. This resulted in a general loss of enthusiasm within the group. Furthermore, the teacher played a big part in crafting the direction of the project. This led to the group losing the sense of ownership over the project as it felt more like they were doing what the teacher wanted. Having group members who were lazy led to unequal work distribution, further exacerbating the sense of exasperation that she felt. These members also failed to turn up for the majority of group meetings citing pending examinations and tests as an excuse. This was an appalling lack of respect since the other group members who turned up for the meetings had the same tests and examinations as well. It translated as meaning that the absent members felt that they were more important than the rest and hence had more right to skip such “trivial” meetings.

As a result of all these disagreements, my student felt that such a scenario could have been best avoided if the students had been allowed to form their own groups in the first place. She felt that she would have had a much happier experience working with her own clique of friends. However, since the Project Work module was crafted to allow students to handle real life problems and prepare them for possible issues in their future workplace, I reminded my student that this was a realistic scenario. Many times in life, we often have no say as to whom we are working with. Instead, we have to learn to deal with changing circumstances.

In addition, whether or not the group members turned up for actual meetings or did any work would not be reflected on the overall grades. As such, there was no real incentive for the lazy group members to put in all their effort as compared to being able to spend more time on their personal tests. This results in a culture of selfishness where everyone wanted to take care of their personal interests first. Furthermore, the written report carried 40% of the marks and this is the group mark since the individual components was not really reflected here. The oral presentation took up another 40% and this was the individual component. As a result, this meant that students who put in minimal effort throughout the project could possibly get higher marks than those who put in the most effort as long as they eloquent during the oral component. This was seen as being highly unfair to those who put in most of the effort into the group project but not having the grades reflecting it.

One way to solve this poor allocation of group effort was to minimize the marks in the individual component, while increasing that of the group component.  Similarly, there must be a good measure of how much effort each team member contributes. For example, there could be a peer evaluation after the end of the project where every group member will get a percentage of the marks as determined by the average from the peer evaluation. For example, if all the other group members assigned 0% to a particular member, he will get 0% of the group marks.

Another key point brought up was the role of the teacher in Project Work. My student felt that her teacher was restricting their creativity by forcing them to carry out the project according to her guidelines. This resulted in a feeling that the students were merely doing the project just to meet the criteria and the rigid structure led to a loss in personal creativity. Furthermore, the teacher “forced” them to make cupcakes instead of doing a collage. Merely carrying out orders resulted in a loss in sense of ownership of the project and were doing it simply for the grades.

When asked if there were any positive takeaways from Project Work, my student said that she learnt to be more patient and tactful when dealing with people, especially with her group mates that did not carry out their responsibilities. At the end of the project, the group on the whole also became more united through the many obstacles they faced, and they learnt to deal with each other’s flaws and accept the different characteristics within the group as complements rather than failings.

On further reflection, when asked if she was willing to go through the entire Project Work process again, my student said on hindsight that she actually learnt a lot about how to perform research as well as coordinating events. On the whole, despite the earlier protestations, she felt that the journey through the Project Work enabled her to grow and learn a lot.

As a facilitator of Project Work, I would ensure that there is a greater emphasis on research methods rather than focusing on the end result. I would also guide students to come up with their own ideas and scaffold them for higher order thinking skills in order to meet the mark for the Project Work requirements as well. Furthermore, I will have to ensure that students are able to settle their differences amicably and learn how to work together as a team despite their different personalities because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.