A Love/Hate Relationships with Group Work | The Reschool'd Podcast

Welcome to the Reschooled Podcast, the show that discusses all the things that schools

may have missed with your hosts, AJ Couttee and Jason Gordon. Hey everyone, we're back

Again, if this is the first time you've heard of us, we are the Reschooled Podcast, the

show that discusses the things that schools may not have prepared you for. My name is AJ. I'm half of the co-hosting duo. Jason, Jason's the other half. How are you doing, Jason

I'm doing great, AJ. Can you believe we are at our 25th episode

Hard to believe. These milestones keep checking off. I'm ready for 50

And we haven't even scratched the surface on all the topics that we have. Oh, yeah. I mean, honestly, in some ways, I wish I could just like drop them all at once and just say, look at all this great info

But we got to keep you all, you know, on the hook out there. We got to make you walk

You got to want the next episode. Well, Jason, I know you have two girls

I have two girls. Do they know what you do? Sort of

They know that I teach adults. But all this other stuff I do, like creating music, writing, selling a baby product, mess like that, they don't quite understand that

They know daddy does it to make money, but they don't really understand all this recording stuff

I had an interesting thing happen to me a little while back. So I went to my daughter's, my eight-year-old's teacher, parent-teacher conference, and I was talking to them

And they said, you know, during the conference, they said something, well, you got to go back to class

And she said, what were you studying? And I said, oh, no, no, I teach it

I'm a professor in college. And she said, oh, your daughter thinks you're a student still

And I went back into the car like afterwards when I saw her and everything

I was like, what do you think daddy does? And she says, you're a student. And I'm thinking, no, but do you only think mom's the only one that works

I just go to class the whole time. And then I got to thinking about it

Every time I've ever told her I go to work, I just say I go to class. I got to go to class. You know, daddy has to go to class

I don't tell her I'm teaching it or anything like that. And so for eight years of her life, she thought I did nothing more than was a student in class

Well, you should have let her keep thinking that it would have been easier for her to just keep on going to school

Next thing you know, she's got two PhDs and an MD. No, she probably thinks that's the biggest idiot ever because he still hasn't graduated

Did she ever ask what grade you were in? No. I mean, I guess she just assumed it was just going on forever

I had to explain. I was like Saturday night. I was like, Daddy teaches, baby. He's not a student anymore

She said, and I just remember her face was just like, oh, good grief

That was such an opportunity for your wife. She could have played along with it. Yet daddy's looking to get out of seventh grade this year

Exactly. Well, today we are going to be talking about what could be the bane of some students' existence

I know this is a very polarizing topic because some students actually like it

But I would venture to say most students probably don't. And it's not because they don't like it because they just don't like the work, but they've probably had some bad experience

We're going to be talking about group work. So, Jason, does that sound good to you

Oh, yeah. You know, that has been a hot topic with my students for years as far as designing class assignments and things like that

So I'm excited about this one. Before we jump in, though, remind everybody, visit Reschool.com

That's Reschool with a D, not an E-D. You know, send us a message, tell us about your successes, tell us about the things you want to hear about and also visit us on our social media handles

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So let's start with our quick question of the day, as we always do

what has been the best group work policy that you've ever experienced in your college career

well you know for me in terms of teaching i think one of the best teaching experiments

is to say that nobody's in charge oh interesting i've never had that one nobody's nobody's a boss

everybody's got the same level of authority that leads to absolute chaos with some and success with

others but you know it's a great teaching exercise oh man trying to figure out how that would work

that would be that would be tough because usually you always have the alpha that was like all right

you do this you do this you do this you do this well therein lies the problem right it frustrates

the alpha okay people who are high structure need or want that structure uh they don't get it right

So someone tries to rise to the top. Now, most of the time you're going to naturally form some level of ranks and things like that. Right. So to throw out there as an exercise and I wouldn't do this every time. This is just a one time thing to just as to make this the teaching point. Right. That when you don't have a chain of authority like that, it makes it extremely difficult. Makes people start to value the organizational structure. Right. The tiers of authority

What about you? I want to hear yours. Mine is when I was in grad school, I had a teacher do this

And then I started doing it when I had group work in my class. And that is you're able to fire somebody in your group

Oh, yeah, that's a good one. Under certain circumstances. So certain things had to happen

You had to go through like mediation with the teacher to see if that person starts to pull their weight more

But if they didn't and the whole group outside of that one person voted anonymously to fire that person

And that person would be fired from the group. And they either had to be hired by another group at a lower salary or a lower grade, or they had to do the entire project by themselves

Oh, that's interesting. You know, that'd be a great dispute resolution exercise in negotiations

No kidding. Well, it was so funny because at that moment you're so scared because you don't want to do the whole project by yourself

And you start to pick it up. You don't want to be that low man on the totem pole that everybody thinks you're not doing anything

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's a great one. I'm going to try that in the future. You know, I teach negotiations

Oh, man. Yeah, that whole, please get me on your team. I'll do it at a lower grade conversations you have

All right. Well, let's get to the main topic. And first question, like we do with most of our tips and tricks, is we just, let's define it

So what do we mean when we say group work? Well, in my mind, it's any type of exercise that where you work on it together, your grade is dependent upon the activity of the others

Right. You all contribute some level of work product to a final, you know, outcome or a final project that you're turning in, something like that

Yeah I would say it is some sort of teamwork It is group It is teamwork where you reliant on somebody else to do different things Depending on what that is you kind of make that up as you go But the grade typically comes from the group as a whole

That doesn't mean that everybody's grade has to be the same. I've done group work where each person gets a different grade because not only does the professor of the class give your group a base grade

but everybody in the group gives each other a grade as well. So that could possibly skew some grades and not be the same

And so, yeah, and a lot of people, they either love it or hate it because they love it because typically the ones who love it are the ones typically in the mid to lower area because you get people to pull you through

And the people who hate it are in the mid to upper area where you do all the work and people are just riding your coattails

Agreed. That's my same perception. I will add one point to the definition and you were astute to point out is teamwork, right

And also, you're not going to necessarily be doing the same tasks

Normally in teamwork, it's generally either you're doing the same task, right

So your general multi-party teamwork could be some agency type thing where, yeah, one

person represents the interest of the other. So they do different things, right

But some kind of aligned interest could be a coalition, right? Where you have, you know, groups that come together or people that come around that have

independent, you know, whatever objectives and things like that, that come around to the same

overall objective that they're trying to achieve, but the reasons for that objective is a little

bit different. So there's all kinds of ways to structure this whole team working environment

that are not as straightforward as we all want the same thing. We all want that for the same

reason. We're all at the same level. We're all doing the same thing. So that's, you know

what makes teamwork or group work so unique, the fact that you can structure it in so many ways

Yeah, I would say it is important to point out, and I think you're right on it when you say

more or less, the objective for group work is going to be different from class to class

from project to project. You know, I had a group project when I was in grad school

where the whole point of having the group wasn't necessarily for us to have an hierarchy or for us

to have different roles, but it was really for us to work and feed things off of each other

And then we came together at the very end and then presented the idea of the project

Whereas I know some of them say, okay, you do the research, you do the paper, you do

the reviewing, you do this task, you do this task. So the objectives are going to be different for different ones

And so it is important from the student's perspective to understand that not all of them are going to be the same

That makes complete sense. And like I say, so how you're going to experience it's going to be different

It's going to have a different teaching objective. It's going to have a different structure. It's going to have a different, you know, way you receive your grades and things like that

So we're going to try to focus on the commonalities as much as possible

So to get the most out of it are things to avoid. So as polarizing as group work can be, again, you either love it or you hate it

What are some benefits to group work? Well, it's necessary. I mean, in today's environment, most of the jobs out there are part of a larger organization. It's very rare that you're going to step out there and your entire existence, right? You supporting yourself, your career is going to be you doing the thing you want to do

you know, the way a person doing gigs, right, a independent contractor who's just out there

doing freelance work might all they do is design work, right? Somebody sends them the design project

they do it and send it back, right? That's that's the perfect scenario for them. But that's

not how most of the economy works. Usually you're part of a larger organization

And when that's the case, you become part of work teams. It's not very often that all of the work

that you are responsible for that the organization needs you to accomplish is for you to do alone

It's for you to do along with other people. Okay. So with that being said, it's going to be necessary throughout your career

You're going to find yourself involved in team or group work. So when it comes to the academic environment, in a way, we're trying to replicate that

And we're trying to replicate it in as many ways as that could happen, And whether it is a constituency or a principal agent relationship or groups, you know, working with other groups, right

You know, but cross-functional teams, for example, where you have different objectives, right

You know, accounting might have a different objective than marketing. One watches the numbers, one makes the numbers higher, right

You know, type scenarios. Well, I mean, you could argue accountants make the numbers higher, but they go to jail for that one

Yeah, there you go. It's all about perspective. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's not illegal until you get caught. Don't live by that rule, by the way

That's terrible advice. That's terrible advice. I would say, I mean, mine was exactly what you just said. I mean, it's the closest thing that we can do in college that's going to represent what you're going to see in life

You're going to see the goods of group work in life. You're going to see the bads in group work in life. You're going to see, you know, you're going to learn how to work together

that's something that good that comes out of group work but you're also going to see that there are certain things that happen that are not fair and life's not fair and you're going to have

to deal with that you're going to have to learn to deal with that and so that's kind of what i took out of group work is it's it's just a good representation of life it's a good training

exercise for life and you're going to need that like like jason just said you're really going to

need to know how to work with people because nine times out of ten you're going to have to work with

people. Absolutely. And, you know, I mentioned earlier, like, Graydon, you know, one rule that

I've seen that was very influential in the group work setting was not allowing somebody to be boss

Well, that's, there's one singular salient learning point there is that when you don't

have a structure, when you don't have somebody who has the ability to organize the efforts of others

and to hold people accountable through some level of authority, things start to fall apart

It gets extremely difficult, right? So, yeah, I mean, I look forward to, in a minute, we're going to talk about the do's and the don'ts, I know

But, you know, our purpose behind it is not just to torture students, right

It's not just to say. It's not a torturing device for us. Yeah, it's not fun for us

It's more work for us, right? Honestly, people don't realize that, but we do it for a good reason

What would you say would be a disadvantage or a pitfall of group work? And we just talked about the benefits

Your grade can ultimately be hurt by others that you don't control

No matter how much effort you put in, you can make a lower grade than you would have been able to earn or would have earned by yourself

And that's a negative thing. There's no question about it. That's why I try to structure mine around more of a learning point rather than it being a substantial part of a grade usually

Because I know for many people who, you know, their GPA means so much to them or they're very proud of their work effort that they put in and things like that

Well when you dependent upon others you know that could be a negative Right And I certainly don want people avoiding my class taking my course which I hope is valuable for whatever they looking to learn just because they scared of that aspect

Yeah, I would say you've said this before on past episodes and how important it is to you, but I think with group work, there is a limitation with autonomy

You know, if you have a project that can be done or the professor teacher gives you three weeks to do it

some people may start on it right away. Some people may wait to the end. But when you're dealing with group work, you don't have that ability really to choose

because usually the group work, the group internally chooses how it's going to go

So you lose that kind of autonomy of how you would like to do this

And so I would say that would be a disadvantage, you know, outside of what Jason just said

That would be a big one for me. Just side note, side question

When you do group work in your class, are you the teacher that creates the group for the students or do you let the students create the group

I usually create the group. Okay. Do you see one better than the other

Well, here's the thing. What I've noticed is that people tend to – well, we always have this thing of implicit bias, right

We gravitate towards people that are similar to us. So even just walking into a classroom when you don't have assigned seats, you do have a tendency to sit closer to somebody who looks like you

Yeah. Right. And when you just say make your own groups, people default two ways

Go to the people I know. Right. So already smart in the classroom. Right

You know, so people who are very similar in so many ways gravitate towards each other

And the other time is they just look to the person beside them, in front of them, behind them type thing

And so you end up with groups that are demographically very similar, right, in so many ways. And that doesn't always make for the most realistic group environment, right? You know, diversity is a big thing in terms of understanding the one, the value of diversity and, you know, diverse work groups and things like that

But getting an idea of how you deal with diversity, because it does create, you know, the reason people gravitate towards people who are similar to them is ultimately an underlying ease of communication thing

Yeah. Right. People understand each other better. You want to feel like you're understood. You want to feel like you understand the other person

Well, if you put people in a diverse environment, some of that communication has to be built from the ground up

And that alone is part of the learning experience. How did you not say how I chose groups? And that is you go for the person who's the smartest in the class

Well, that's a problem, too, right? It's a whole nother separate problem, but that's what I would typically do

Then you put them in the driver's seat of selecting their group members, right

Yeah, but. And I'm not looking for, you know, just all the super diligent, hardworking students to get together and just blow everybody out with their presentation or their product or things like that

I want the actual real life experience of, you know, you in the work world, you don't pick your colleagues

No, not usually. Right. So in the classroom, you don't get to pick your simulated colleagues

I will say this for the listeners who thought exactly what I said about I'm just going to go for the smartest person because we've said that the grades can be affected by the group

There is a severe disadvantage if you're going to go into that with a mentality of I'm not going to do a whole lot of work

I'm just going to go for the smartest people. If you go for the group with the smartest person, their expectation is going to be huge compared to other groups because they're looking for the A

So they're going to push you harder than you ever thought they. So if you're going to go in this going, I'm just going to try to find a group that I don't have to do as much work

That is the worst idea you can do because those people at the top are at the top for a reason

They work hard and they're going to expect anybody in their group to work hard as well

So keep that in mind. Don't think I'm just going to slack off by getting the person with the top grades

They're going to push you. Yeah, which reminds me of something else. And we're going to do another episode on this

What is the definition of smart? Right. That perplexes me all the time because I know who makes the best grades

It's the people who work the hardest. Yes. Right. And there are all types of smart, right

Emotional, emotional intelligence, you know, the intelligence quotient stuff, the ability to figure out

Learn knowledge, all that kind of stuff. So I don't really, yeah, I don't fully understand the definition of smart

And I think it's one of the most misunderstood concepts. So we're going to do a whole nother episode on that

But I think what you're getting at is the students who get A's tend to be the ones that just stick to it

They're hardworking. They're very organized. I made mostly A's throughout college, and it was because I was diligent and organized, right

And I expected that of my group members. I loved group work

That was, I mean, that's something that's probably shocking to most people because I always talk about how I just was, I didn't, I mean, I obviously cared about my grades and, but group work, I loved group work and not because I was a slacker. I just, I genuinely enjoyed group work. It was just fun to be around other people, work with them and get other ideas, see how they work. I got a lot from it

It was a hit or miss with me. I'd say I disliked it in the school environment generally. I liked it in my graduate school programs because the group dynamic was accounted for and you all had a similar mission and that type of thing

But an undergraduate, I wanted that A, right? I was so driven to get a good grade. And usually, I was that person in the group. And it meant I had to be the bad guy. It meant I had to be the one driving the train

And I tended to be kind of a type A personality where I wanted to be the one controlling our project, what we were doing and things like that

So, you know, it didn't make me any friends with the people in the group

And it stressed me out as much as anything that they weren't going to do their work or pull their load and I wasn't going to get the A that I wanted

So oftentimes I would do their work for them. And so in that sense, I hated it

In other scenarios where they were willing to pull their weight and I felt like they were bringing more to the table or as much to the table as I was

Usually I liked it when they brought more. Right. Then in that scenario, I was super happy to be involved

Right. I just have a feeling like going through 25 episodes of this podcast and we're good friends

I just have a feeling if we were in college together, we probably wouldn't be as good friends. We probably wouldn't study together

You probably would have thought a lot less of me. Let's get into our tips. So we both have some tips like we always do with our tips and tricks episode. And so we're going to be talking about these. I don't know his, he doesn't know mine. So there's a possibility for some overlap

But I will start this off by saying my biggest tip for any group work is to communicate

Never make assumptions. You need to start communicating with an open line of communication in some way

whether it be email, text, group me text, whatever. But make sure there is no assumptions being made Make sure things are established Make sure roles are established and so on So that would be my first one I mean it pretty cut and dry pretty straightforward

Yeah, great one. And I'm just going to piggyback off of that a little bit with a very short one too

Start early. Time becomes a crunch in all of these scenarios. People have differing schedules

Getting everybody on the same page is usually the hardest thing. But if you can start early, then you'll figure things out, right

You'll figure out people's schedules. You'll get people moving in the right direction. So when the crunch time comes, all of that stuff is not holding you back

So start early. That's interesting because, okay, that will – I have a feeling some of these are going to link together

One of mine is strive to finish early. That's great advice. I want to – as much as you're starting early, I want to strive to finish early

That way there's nothing that's going to surprise you. If something were to happen and you say, okay, if the due date is on this Friday, we're going to strive to submit it on this Wednesday

And if the person in charge of submitting it misses that Wednesday, I still have days to compensate for that where I don't get that late or I'm not able to turn it in

I have the backup plans. I have the things that – I have the procedures put in place that will compensate for any problem that we may have in the end

Sure. I would say that's a hard thing to do. So you really have to be diligent

You do. Absolutely. Which gets me to my next one, assign roles

Right. Somebody has to be the commandeering one that says, all right, this stuff's due

Send this to me. I'll be the one that assembles it and follows up with a one group member who hasn't done their part or what they turned in was in nowhere near the same quality as the others type thing

So assigning someone to be in charge of different aspects is a big part of it

It's a big part of efficiency. It's a big part of that whole comparative advantage thing where you do the things that you're best at or more, maybe not best at, but more inclined to do, right

More engaged in, which normally over the long run will mean you get to be better at it than you are at other things

So anyway, assign roles. How did you go? Like, what do you feel is the best way to have those roles assigned

Like, do you feel like the voting strategy of, okay, I'm going to vote this person as leader, or is it just volunteering, but sometimes you have two people that are type A and they

volunteer and they want the same role? Usually it's pretty organic that somebody kind of identifies themselves as, all right

I'm going to be one organizing this thing. And I think other people can recognize when somebody really jumps in and starts to do that

You run into an issue when you get two of those type A's who both want to start planning immediately

Then, you know, you run into a little bit of an issue. But if somebody stands out to start with, then usually what they start with is saying, this is what we need to do, right

These are the things that need to get done. And when they start laying that out and everybody starts ideating together about what needs to be done, people naturally start gravitating towards those activities

I think, you know, organically, oftentimes the person in charge kind of makes themselves obvious

The hard part is when you get multiple type A's and then, you know, there is some contention between who is going to take over that role

So that's normally how I would say role assignment happens. When you have multiple type A's, usually it comes down to a vote

Right. Right. When you don't, when you have more of a mixed group where one person is obviously standing out as the person to be in charge

Usually other people say, all right, well, OK, why don't you be in? OK, we're going to make you in charge of this, which is kind of the roles of the leader

I'll do this. Does anybody else want to do that type thing? So you're more able to communicate and work it out between each other that way

Makes sense. I will say my next one would be do not be the weakest link

We know that TV show back in, you know, I think it's just actually come back. But you do not want to be the weakest link because you don't want to be, one, known as the weakest link

And two, again, if you're talking about separate grades, then everybody's going to know you and they're going to grade accordingly

And so you don't want to start as the weakest link and you don't want to end as the weakest link. You want to be involved

Don't take it as I'm just going to ride the coattails of my group works because that can have a very bad effect on future group work and just the general opinion about you

So that would be my next one. One of mine is the same as yours. Mine, I worded it, do your part

There you go. Yeah. Right. Because if you don't live up to your obligation to the group, you are the weakest link

And I will say this, I guess there are degrees of weakest link as well, right

So, you know, multiple people cannot pull their parts. And make sure you're living up to the standard that the group has

And I would say normally the group standard starts to pin itself to the standards of the person who's driving the train, right

whoever becomes the leader kind of drives the train as to the standard of work that people are planning on turning in

My next one would be do not fully rely on a single person

You always want to have backup plans to every step just in case something falls through

I've been in many of groups where, you know, the last person who's in charge of the final step of the project just stops all communication

and I've actually seen it where they just drop the class and they don't tell the group at all

And then you're assuming that this student is actually doing their work, and then when it's time to turn it in, that student has actually just left the class

and now you're stuck. So you want to have ways to have backup plans, to have check-ins

to make sure things are going the way they needed to be going based on scheduling or whatnot

You'd never want to be fully reliant on a single person or a single step

depending on how you've broken it down. That's great advice. Great advice. My next one is have a system of accountability

Oh, yeah, that's a good one. A lot of people pulling in different directions, doing different things, different ideas about, you know, what is expected and what they should do

So have a system of accountability that says, you know, if this does not happen, right, if you did not do your work, what do we do

Right. And your rule that you liked was the ability to fire somebody. Right

But, you know, my and I'll go ahead and tip my hand on my last tip and leave it to you after this is get the professor involved early

Right. If you see that somebody is not pulling their weight and you don't have the authority to fire them, you don't have the authority to really do anything

And that's the reason, you know, group exercise is such a great leadership project, because, well, if no one has authority, it's a lot easier to lead when you have authority over somebody

You know, people would talk to me all the time and say, you know, in the Army, I bet you got a lot of good leadership experience

And I said, honestly, I would say I did. And I say people do

But the Army is one of those, you know, straight up and down traditional organizations where the person ahead of you has more authority than you

You have to listen to them. And it's one of those things where. You don't listen to them. You don't obey orders

You can be prosecuted, right? It's the only place where you can go to jail for not listening to your boss, right

Now, very rarely does somebody go to jail. You can end up getting kicked out of the army with losing your benefits and things like that

Now, it has to be pretty severe, obviously. But what I'm saying is what I'm getting at is somebody has that level of authority over you

So you have to listen. Leadership, you know, management is managing resources, assembling resources

Leadership is the ability to inspire and motivate people in a given direction, right

The direction you choose as the leader. So if you do not naturally have that hierarchy within your group, someone doesn't have the ability to fire somebody else in the group

Somebody else doesn't have the ability to affect somebody else's grade. Well, then you have to at least establish some method of accountability that says, if this work doesn't happen, this is the trouble you're going to get in

If you approach the professor early enough and get the professor involved, the professor has all kinds of ways that says, OK, well, I'll remove you from the group

I'll I'll you know, I'll make you turn in your part separately type thing

Or I want you to label your parts that you did. Or I want to I want a summary from the group as to what each person did, things like that

So if you didn't pull your weight, then your grade will be dramatically lower than than others

Right. And if you know, you can even. and say if there's a consensus, you know, you fail, right

The rest of the group may get an A, but you get a zero because you didn't contribute anything

right? All of these things are just examples of ways that the professor can add that level of accountability

that you try to establish. But I'm not saying go to the professor first, right

Of course. Use it as the learning experience of establish some structure on your own

Try to establish a level of accountability on your own. Because once again that an opportunity for you to demonstrate leadership because you know even very poor participants in your group they can probably be motivated in some way right It up to you as the leader to find that

I would say my last one, and this is only when it's possible. I know a lot of group work

the professor has a lot of parameters that you have to meet, but I've always liked those group

works that is pretty broad in terms of what you're like. If it's a presentation, I'll give you an

example. So having a presentation and the professor told us, okay, the parameters are

it's a 25 minute presentation and everybody has to speak on the topic during that 25 minutes

And then obviously you have question answering at the end. And that's pretty much the whole

parameters of the presentation that they gave us. And so my fifth tip is to think outside the box

when you can. Like use what they give you and figure out what works best for your group. So

So in that group, we had some people that were fairly shy to get up in front of a large group of people to talk

Now, granted, they would have, but the parameters were we had to do a presentation

It had to be 25 minutes long, and everybody had to speak. We took that as, well, it never said that everybody had to speak in class

It just said everybody had to speak. So we did a 25-minute video. We walked in

We put the DVD, at the time, DVD. Good Lord, we're dating ourselves

at least it's not VHS but we put the DVD in the player hit play sat back down and our presentation

was a 25 minute video and we didn't we didn't say anything until the question and answering

and so it was awesome that the teacher loved it we had so much fun with it we got a lot out of it

and we thought outside the box so I would say when you can think outside the box see if there's

something else you can do you know you mentioned getting your professor involved oftentimes I saw

students ask the professor to be in their video which is really excellent yeah i would love that

i never been asked to be part of anything like that when i saw that i was like man i hope when i a professor that students will ask me to be in a video never happened yeah that would be my last tip We doing something wrong AJ We are Apparently we not cool enough

Well, I'll echo that. I agree we're probably not cool enough. I got one last question

And what do you think students should do if they're in a group and they have strong feelings that the group's consensus direction that they're going for the group project is the wrong direction

Like they feel like this is where the whole group is wanting to go as the answer to this project, whatever that answer may be

And I feel so strongly that that answer is actually wrong, that I'm afraid to get in to that group mindset because I want to separate myself

What do you think students should do in that way? That's really interesting. Every professor is going to respond to that differently

Like in a leadership class, you know, the answer is work it out

I want to see what happens. Right. Go back there and try, you know, some of these techniques that can maybe assuage the group about or maybe, you know, direct the group towards something or assuage your fears

Right. That type of thing in a different type of class where it's, you know, you got to build something and it might topple over

Right. Yeah. Type scenario. Maybe you need to involve outside. Third party. Right. Like the professor to say, OK, look, I'm going to need to be in a different group

I can't contribute. I can't do this. And if the purpose of the assignment is the final product or output or things like that, like a like a client project or something like that, where you have external clients come in for a design project or something like that

Right. The objective there is to give good work product and to give you the best experience on a real life team or function

Well, in real life, I think you would ask your boss and say, look, this is the wrong direction. I'm not going to be able to add value here

Can you assign me to a different team or project type scenario? And I think you have to do that in the same scenario in class if you were going to do if that the objective right quality of output or product yeah my answer was kind of what what your tips was is get the professor involved early i

mean just just talk to them and see what they what they have to say they may have a solution or they

may like you said may want you to work it out and see kind of where that goes but if nothing else it

if if the project goes south because of the direction that the group did go at least in

their ear, they're like, well, this person actually had a better idea and the group didn't

listen to it. And it might not change the grade or it may, who knows? But you just want the

communications with the professor to happen. Right. And, you know, we talk about in a different

episode and it's a really good one on the role of the professor, right? A professor is not just a

radio that you turn on at the front of the classroom and delivers information. That's the

reason college isn't just a YouTube video, right? The professor still adds things. And part of that

is being a referee. Part of that is being a mentor. Part of that is being a sounding board. Part of

that is being the devil's advocate or just challenging your position, right? You know, so

anyway, in this scenario, that's where, again, use the professor as a resource. They're there for a

reason, right? You know, so. Well, this has been an interesting show. This has been a lot of fun

about a topic that a lot of people don't think is very fun. So Jason, before we head out

do you got any other parting words to say? Just remind everybody, we want to talk about the things that matter to you

So go on our website, reach out to us, contact us on our social media handles

Give us some of your successes too. We'll celebrate with you, right? If we're helping you out, let us know about it

That makes us feel good too, right? So anyway, that's it. Reach out to us

Awesome. Well, until next time, we hope to see you then. Goodbye. Take care

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