Group Assignment v Individual Assignment

So - its the time of the semester again when everybody's busy with presentations to do. I have almost 100 presentations to listen to, and because of the circumstances, I had no choice but to limit each presentation to 7 minutes with an extension (if, this is totally unavoidable) of another 3 minutes making it 10 minutes per presentation.

Okay---with simple Mathematics , this gives me a minumum of about 700 minutes (11.7 hours) or a maximum of 1000 minutes ( 16.7 hours) of presentation. AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

So, my dear presenters--- if you think it is bad enough for you - you should try walking in my shoe .....and you will know what I mean.


You may well ask --- why not have group assignments as that would cut down the numbers drastically !
Well - when Level 5 was first taught to CCSS Class 1 - 9 , this was a group project , with  3 - 4 students to a group. However, this had a detrimental effect on the the majority of the students. These are :-

1) Scheduled could not be met as cooperation ( or the lack of it) was taking its effect when members could not work as planned

2) The blame game became a normal practice when members start blaming each other

3) Serious students were badly affected as the others were just dragging the progress of the project

4) Motivation and morale were at the lowest when frustration and dissatisfaction  crept in

5) Heavy reliance on the same students  to do all the work became rampant

6) The system was actually killing the motivation of the better students

7) I get too many students coming to see me to complain about their group members

8) Actual presentation became a sort of ' rehearsed role-play' and individual flair, creativity and initiative became the victim 

So, the following semester, I stopped the group assignment approach and switched to individual project. This way, you will 'reap what you sow' ! Students are at a liberty of working productively at any time of the day --- even if its the early hour of the morning if they could not sleep ! And immediatel all the above problems stopped.

It is also easier for me to tell off a student should he fall behind schedule. There is no one else to blame but himself  ---  or he gets all the credit and reward for the hard work put in.

Of course, the down side would be the presentation sessions and the time consumed ( for me ) --- but I guess the positive far out-weighs the negative !!!

So future students of ENG 511---it WILL be an individual assignment for my subject !