ShmoopTube

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And here's your shmoop du jour brought to you by group projects

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otherwise known as the internal battle of the studious and lazy, well when [a dog wearing glasses studying and a dog laying down sleeping]

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completing a group project responsibility for the project

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completion is spread across the group's members so no one person feels she needs

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to be as motivated as she would be if completing the project alone..what is the

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best choice for producing better productivity and here your potential

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answers [mumbling]

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....Alright well a recent and definitely not made up survey asked high

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school teachers why they decided to make their students complete a group project [a woman teaching students in the classroom]

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well ten percent said that they felt it built strong teamwork and cooperation

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skills, forty percent said that putting students into groups of five meant five

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times fewer projects to mark. The remaining fifty percent said they did it [pie-chart of reasons teachers make students do project work]

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simply because they wanted their students to suffer..but what exactly is

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going on when a group of otherwise over achieving students suddenly become [boy studying alone and falling asleep]

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simultaneously stricken with sudden laziness syndrome when put into groups

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well it's actually something called social loafing this is a phenomenon in which a

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group of people put in less effort to achieve a shared goal when working within

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a group than if they were working individually on the exact same goal. The

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entire motivation behind this thing is described as free rider theory which

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describes when an individual benefits from the group without putting in the

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same amount of effort and results in the sucker effect and what's that well [a selection of colorful sweets]

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basically it just means that no one wants to be the sucker because suckers

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well they stuck the idea behind the sucker effect is that no one wants to be [man dragging the lazy group member along]

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the one pulling the weight for the lazy person getting a free ride no one wants

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to work harder for the benefit of the lazy and so ironically everyone becomes

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lazy no one wants to be the sucker so in a way everyone becomes the sucker well [a group of lazy people not doing the project work]

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what's the best way to combat this.. well it's definitely not to starve them you've got

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to toss a few suckers or preferably a healthy well-balanced meal to the sucker [a healthy meal on a plate given to the group of students]

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if you want them to stop sucking it's definitely not to tell their parents

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because the question doesn't even refer specifically to students, besides taddling on a

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45 year old businessman to a seventy year old mom might be a bit odd.. Encouraging [woman telling Jonny's Mom he isn't working well]

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everyone to talk more about their lack of productivity seems well

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counterproductive if everyone's wasting time the last thing you want to do is [clocks ticking forward rapidly]

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waste more time talking about how everyone is wasting time as for E we're

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talking about group work here so giving up on the

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group work aspect of it seems to defeat the purpose which is why the best [male student walking down the road with a back-pack]

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counter to social loafing is to promote competition.. competitive drives are often

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a strong motivator for people and pitting members against one another in

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order to see who can do the most work instead of who can do least would [two boxers fighting]

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likely be your best bet of course in an ideal world teachers would simply never

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ever ever assign group projects but that would involve teachers not getting a

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sadistic joy out of torturing their students, though we wouldn't count on it. [a sadistic monster shouting at students]

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