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Plagiarism and Group Work at GMU

Feb 21, 10:21 AM

George Mason, one of the principal architects,...

THIS guy knew how to work in a group.
Image of George Mason via Wikipedia

So I have a MSOM group project due today at 9:00 pm. We’ve divided responsibilities over time, projects and tasks. For this project, a group SWOT on Oreo Cookies, members of my group decided to take on the task of writing the document themselves. I reviewed their work briefly twice and thought it was ok. Then, when I was taking a detailed look at the document to copy edit it I noticed something…

I left the writing of this project up to other group members and 90% of the essay is quotes. When I brought it up to the members who wrote the document, they said that they are prepared to hand this in. I can only assume that this is because they do not understand the definition of plagiarism within the honor code. I, however, do not feel like getting kicked out of school for honor code violations. Therefore it is now MY job, in the 11th hour, to rewrite significant portions of the work.

What does this tell me?:

Group projects don’t work.

In the five years I’ve been an undergrad research student, I’ve been assigned many group projects. I’d estimate that I’ve likely undertaken somewhere around 20 separate group projects for various classes in various subjects. I’d say that only about 3 times have we functioned as a group. Over 75% of the time, these groups have had one or two people doing all the work and a bunch of people either taking undeserved credit for the work or actively screwing it up. Almost all of the time, one of those people actually doing the project was me.

Students can get to the 300 level of classes without being able to write.

This is a student in my group, more than one it student it actually seems, who has reached either the sophomore level or higher in their college career without ANY definition as to what writing means. How the HELL does someone get through two years of college and still think that pasting a bunch of quotes into 6 pages and citing them is acceptable behavior? It seems clear to me that all of Mason’s “writing-intensive” required classes are either waaaaaaaaay too late in the curriculum or complete and utter bullshit. Alternatively, it could just be that the professors who have administrated these classes for these particular students just didn’t have the time to pay attention. In my experience of these “writing-intensive” classes across the curriculum, the professors are required to assign too many pages of writing to deal with from the ever increasing size of the average class.

I could gain equal reward for doing absolutely nothing as I can for intensive work.

For most of the group projects I’ve worked on, the professors do not use a peer-grading mechanic. As time has gone on and I’ve become successively more disillusioned with the whole group work idea, I’ve reported slackers more frequently. I still feel guilty about it and most of the time I haven’t reported folks who have sat around and not done anything while their name gets attached to a project. There’s something about students sticking together that makes this seem anathematic to me. I don’t want to and often don’t. Though it seems that these students still pass class even if I do report it, so it doesn’t seem to matter much either way. Even with this project, one (out of five) of the people already volunteered to rewrite the entire thing. I could have just sat back and let him do it, but I’m not an asshole.

People are stupid, so I get screwed.

I had thought that this time, on this ridiculous project, I could sit back and take a lower role. That I could help complete other people’s work, that I could copy edit and help with slides, that I could go forward without having to take leadership of the group. I’ve done enough of this, right? For this one group, I could get away with being ordered around, instead of having to take charge. Of course not. Somehow, though this was not my fault, this gets put on me, because GOD FORBID, I want to pass the damn class. It’s not like the person who thought that copy pasting an essay is going to have to do anything, because now it is on me. This person is literally too dumb to know that they did something wrong or how to correct it. I can’t correct them, it would take way too much energy to continue in my attempt to explain the issue. So now I have to do a huge amount of work at the last minute because I made the mistake of assuming that group members could be relied upon to do their work. My mistake apparently. After all the times I’ve been disappointed on that count, I should have known better by now.

There is no excuse to assign a group project.

There is this mentality, among professors, that assigning us to groups is somehow preparing us to work with others in the workplace. 75% of the time, these groups function with a worse dynamic than elementary school kickball teams. Therefore there is no reason to assign us a group project when you have no way to make these projects function correctly. These are really just an excuse to compress a high-man-hour project into too small an amount of time by claiming that there will be more people working on it.

There won’t be.

The result is that the people who care get overloaded and the rest just slide by. This SUCKS. It is rare that any group can find a functioning dynamic within a University setting and even if they did, it would be nothing like a professional work-group dynamic. The University setting has different requirements, crazy scheduling, and an unending flow of work that must be dealt with both at home and in class. On top of that, many people at GMU work for a living. This makes it impossible to do work as a group, to meet regularly and to generally function as a unit. It JUST DOESN’T WORK.

NOTE: There are a few exception, mainly classes that are designed to be dealt with through groups, as opposed to just tacking them on to the syllabus. The main example being my IT Senior Capstone project. That’s because the whole course is designed to be done with a group and there is a lot of time set aside to meet in-class. Also because most of these people are professionals already and understand how to work with others. Thank god for them, otherwise I’d be going crazy.

Ok, rant over. Now excuse me, I have to type very quickly to rewrite a huge project at the last minute.

posted by: Aram

Comment

I have bad news about the workplace…Those idiots on your team, the ones that aren’t doing anything, they grow up and get jobs too. Unfortunately many of them(or others like them) will be working with you, pulling the same nonsense they’re pulling now.

I’ve worked for a couple of companies now, both public and private and these slackers always seem to squeeze in somehow. I’ve got a peer supervisor now who I swear hasn’t done any work since I started here 5 years ago, in fact a large part of my “other duties as assigned” is cleaning up after her poorly completed (or not completed at all) work. Yes, people know about her. No, they don’t care.

So you see, these group projects are providing you with valuable, real-world working experience.

— Lori · Feb 24, 01:14 AM · #

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