I am currently attending StonyBrook University in New York and am forced to work in a group for one of my CS classes. There are numerous ways in which you can potential take advantage of the situation, so that other members do more work than you. However, the few checks that are down, is on top of the work required for class (as a group) we must provide a list of what we have done over the course of the week, as an individual, which is a powerful check, when checked against current project performance, as well as what other people have submitted. So cheating is not a huge issue.
I believe that there is a huge need for this type of work, because without it we would all be ill prepared for the real world, and even with such projects we will still be ill prepared.
When you work on projects in groups (greater than 2) you become aware of different personal expertices, and how to best use those to achomplish your goals as fast as possible.
It is hard at first, but it is a great way to learn. Group work allows you to persue larger projects than you could persue on your own, which helps to improve the class enviorment.
Overall group work is good. There is a time and a place for it. In some classes you do need to learn all of the basics, such as in your intro level classes, however once you have the basics down there is no reason to continue to work on your own when productivity and real world teaching would be better served by group work.
links of interest: http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~cse308 - course web page
http://virtucom.codearama.org - group project page
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I am currently attending StonyBrook University in New York and am forced to work in a group for one of my CS classes. There are numerous ways in which you can potential take advantage of the situation, so that other members do more work than you. However, the few checks that are down, is on top of the work required for class (as a group) we must provide a list of what we have done over the course of the week, as an individual, which is a powerful check, when checked against current project performance, as well as what other people have submitted. So cheating is not a huge issue.
I believe that there is a huge need for this type of work, because without it we would all be ill prepared for the real world, and even with such projects we will still be ill prepared.
When you work on projects in groups (greater than 2) you become aware of different personal expertices, and how to best use those to achomplish your goals as fast as possible.
It is hard at first, but it is a great way to learn. Group work allows you to persue larger projects than you could persue on your own, which helps to improve the class enviorment.
Overall group work is good. There is a time and a place for it. In some classes you do need to learn all of the basics, such as in your intro level classes, however once you have the basics down there is no reason to continue to work on your own when productivity and real world teaching would be better served by group work.
links of interest: http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~cse308 - course web page
http://virtucom.codearama.org - group project page