A teacher giving her two cents here...
I do not like giving group projects for many of the same reasons other posters have stated here: students work, have activities and sports, after school; transportation is an issue. My students do a fair amount of group work in the class setting to get the experiences of working with others, but rarely for a "group grade." I try to set up the assignments so that individual work can be graded separately. The hardest part for a teacher, at least for me, is grading the group work fairly for many of the reasons already mentioned. The way I look at group work is that it is merely one tool of many that I have in my teaching toolbox. When it seems like the best tool to use for a job, I'll use it.
When I teach seniors, there are outside projects that have OPTIONS for group assignments. Students don't have to do them; there are other possibilities. One of the best projects I ever received was a group project that was a video parody of Beowulf that I still show to students to this day.
That said, there is a ton of group work in college and grad school, so I feel like I need to do some to help seniors know what's in store. When I was in grad school (finished in 2001) the only non-group work I did was reading the books (oh yeah, and doing my thesis research and paper). Everything else was done in groups. Every class had some group assignment.
I do have students in other grades complete group assignments for grades IN CLASS. However, I am there to help coach, steer, answer questions, etc. I also make sure I model, explain, provide rubrics, etc. so that students know what is expected of them and have options about how to break the task down and complete it. There really is no excuse for an assignment that allows one or two students to do all the work and others to sit idly by. That is lazy, poor planning on the part of the teacher. I also observe students constantly and when I see a "slacker", we have a chat. I put the onus on him/her. I explain what I have observed about his/her contributions to the group and have the student tell me how to grade that contribution. Students are usually quite honest and give me a realistic grade. I then inform the student to start making changes or that low grade will stand.
I ALWAYS have students reflect on the assignment, sometimes with just a brief essay, sometimes with a very detailed evaluation sheet. This helps students think about the process they went through and reflect on it. At the high school level , their evaluations are usually pretty accurate. To be honest, I have very few problems with assignments like these. The problems I do have usually arise from students who are absent. Of course some of this is the result of teaching for several years and modifying lessons as I teach them. As a veteran teacher, I have a pretty good idea about what works and what doesn't , and I try to plan accordingly.
I have found that students who emerge as the group leaders have never hesitated to let me know if someone else in their group was not pulling his/her weight. Life lessons can certainly be learned about how to do this; I just hope in my class that this isn't THE lesson learned!
Another point brought up was that students need to be taught how to work in groups. This is so true! Many of the "little" group assignments I have students work on contribute to that objective. There is a pretty good series of books by Kagan (can't remember 1st name right now) on cooperative learning. I have used several team building strategies from them. We build on this from day 1 when we meet each other and learn names and move on to bigger and better projects as we go throughout the year.
Of course right now I am teaching one of the ultimate group projects as the newspaper sponsor. I love this because it is as real world as it gets. The individual parts must come together or we have no paper.
Sorry to ramble so long. If you have specific points you still want addressed, I'll be happy to try. I hope this helps some.
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