Now, I trust you’ve all looked over the syllabus and the academic honesty outline I posted prior to this class. Any questions? No? Good, then let’s talk about the group project assignment due in November.
I know most of you hate group projects — and why wouldn’t you? Being partnered up with three to four other university students who are as disorganized and busy as you are? It’ll feel like an assignment just trying to find a time when you can all meet for an hour. Don’t worry, though. Someone will inevitably sleep through their alarm, fake sick, or get called into work, so none of that planning will have really mattered.
To give you a bit of flexibility, I will let you pick your own groups so you can decide for yourself who you want disappointing you come the assignment’s deadline. I know we just started the course so you don’t really have a sense of which of your classmates you like/dislike yet, but doesn’t that just make it more exciting?
That person you’ve said one sentence to sitting beside you? Now’s the time to decide if you want to enter in a several months-long pseudo friendship with them. They might seem nice enough, but what if they don’t even have a Gmail account? You’ll try making a Google doc for the project but they won’t be able to access everything properly because they have a Yahoo email or some bizarre shit like that. Who has a Yahoo account in 2014 anyways?
Picking your group members is like Russian Roulette, but it’s worth 15 per cent of your grade — and who doesn’t love Russian Roulette?
There are four components to the assignment. The first will consist of you and everyone else in your group pushing the assignment back to the very farthest reaches of your mind. Let’s be honest here: it’s not due until November, which might as well be next year. Wouldn’t you rather hang out with your friends or do something for enjoyment instead of work on this silly, old assignment? Just relax and forget about it for now.
The second part of the project will involve everyone scrambling to come up with something last-minute. This section will include skimming the secondary reading on the bus on your way to SFU, waiting around for everyone to show up, and gradually losing what remained of your faith in humanity.
The third part of the project will be a powerpoint presentation for the rest of the class. Attention-wise, I know slideshows are the equivalent of shooting holes in a dingy and asking someone to boat across the ocean, but they’re easy to make and even easier to tune out. Your classmates will enjoy the extra time to spend discreetly texting underneath the table.
The last part of your assignment will be an individual essay, three pages, double-spaced.
As people in the 17 to 65 age bracket, it’s crucial that you all learn to work together and thrive in a group setting — even if that kind of consonance is pure fantasy. People rarely get along in these kinds of situations, regardless of whether they’re for academic purposes or in the real world, but that doesn’t mean we’ll stop forcing those values onto you regardless.
But don’t you worry though. I’ll make sure that everyone in your group is marked equally and fairly, no matter how little time and effort some of members contribute.
