Valhalla Island

Group assignments are something I really dislike. They’re made worse when most of the people at university don’t seem to want to be there. They’re made worse when your group members expertise extends to basic Flash development and nothing else. They’re made worse when the majority of your group is foreign and barely speak English let alone understand it.

When group assignments are assigned the focus is completely removed from the actual assignment and is moved to managing your group. It’s often so much harder trying to separate tasks, make decisions democratically, correlate data, make it all flow, arranging meetings and sharing files than it is to actually do the task. I wish everyone knew how to use subversion.

Then, I don’t want to sound racist, I’m definitely not, but if you’re going to attend an Australian, English-speaking university, should you have a reasonable understanding of the language? Students were failing our first UI assignment because the English used in the assignment was incorrect.

So because half my group doesn’t speak English and the other half don’t say a word, I’m left trying to run meetings with people who don’t want to be there, who don’t want to do anything and don’t understand a thing I’m saying anyway. I delegate tasks whether they know how to do it or not, whether they’ll be the best for that job or not, I really don’t know. I ask what their expertise is and they shrug their shoulders. I tell them I know a thing or two about HTML and CSS and a wave of relief crosses their faces.

If I don’t do that, I’m faced with a barrage of oh-no!-if-I-don’t-do-anything-I-won’t-get-any-marks “what should I do?” questions. Argh! There’s a lot of people that just shouldn’t be at university.