The most fun / worst college projects EVER...
 

So, I'm taking a capstone "illicit drugs and society" class this semester and it's like high school all over again. We get assigned to little groups based on our last initial and after sixteen weeks we're supposed to spit out a fairly elaborate PowerPoint presentation on a topic that was picked before we met each other. I'm not complaining, but it does seem to me that those in my slice of the alphabet have zero computer skills. When I say "zero," I mean they have a hard time inserting hyperlinks into Word documents.

Turns out I was assigned to Group 7. This is ironic only in that I'm assigned to Group 7 in two other classes this semester. ...I wonder if the Borg mind is at work at the university?

Anyschways, she handed out the group numbers during the first lecture and left us hanging. Yesterday we were issued our assignments. I read my sheet a few times and started cackling. Best project ever.


Hah, this oughta be real good. At least I won't be short on clipart and video slides.

Seriously... I have to write a paper about media containing humans engaging in sexual activity.

Where do I start? I doubt there is a NSDUH or ADAM report for "porn victims."

...

Thread Question:

What was the most fun / worst academic project you've ever had to produce?

My senior year CIS project involved getting a database working for a YMCA camp website. Nobody on our team knew how to get the database working and we never did but for some reason we made an A anyway because me and my brother could bullshit really well. That semester was a nightmare.

Then again I hated any and all group projects in college because A) nobody can write well, B) nobody is dependable, C) no one cares about their grade.

Nice project topic, Crompsie. Let me know if you need any "sources."

Most of my stuff was pretty normal. I did, however, have a fun time writing a Marxist literary critique of J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Unforch, it was before I watched the films, so I had to actually read the whole thing. ;)

In Shakespeare Studies, I had to write a paper and give a presentation on sumptuary laws in the Elizabethan Age. Some of these laws are available in microfiche, wherein one can produce a copy of a copy of the original text. My own university's library didn't have any of these microfiche despite having plenty of information on the topic, so on a visit to my parents' place up in Washington, I persuaded them to join me on a daytrip to Seattle so I could fetch the needed microfiche from the Suzzallo Library. With some assistance from a friendly librarian, I was able to get my copy of a copy of an original Elizabethan sumptuary law, complete with Elizabeth's signature. I passed said copy around during my presentation, and it being an upper division English class complete with grad students, everyone was suitably impressed. It was worth the extra effort to track down that microfiche.

The coolest project I've seen presented in university would have to be in my introductory Shakespeare class. We were split into groups, and had to perform a brief section from one of the plays we read in class. My group did one of my favorites, Titus Andronicus. But our video performance was not the best. Oh, no. The group assigned Henry the IV, Part I played out their scene using South Park characters, with Cartman as Falstaff. They did such a great job that even six years later, with many classes in between, that performance really sticks with me.

The middle school class I'm working with this term will be producing their own children's books this quarter. They will be partnered with a first grader from a local classroom, and write the book specifically for that first grader, with the child's interests in mind. As part of writing their own book, they will read other children's books and analyze them. We did the first analysis yesterday. It's interesting to work with them on this.

I can't wait to do APA citations the feature links to these sites.
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The time it takes the read the book and the time it takes to watch the film are far too close for comfort. I'd take the book, myself.

Ah, this should be good. At least it should give me some ideas.

The worst was when a professor was writing a book on something or other. Well, as an assignment for his class, he divided the class in groups and basically asked each group to write summaries of certain reports and part of the literature. Because I knew the "behind the scenes" goings on well, I knew that he was doing that as a way of getting someone else do the busy work for his book.

There was another one where the project itself wasn't bad, but the professor was an old bastard who would constantly hit on all the girls in class. He would say stuff like "I heard that the latest fashion is coming to school without a bra" or he would go on and on about how he hated his wife. He even asked a few girls for their phone numbers. Well, there was a group project in that class. My group was me and 2 girls. I did the bulk of the work, yet got a smaller grade than they did. Only girls got an A that class, and I ended up with an 89. As he was tenured and retiring anyways, the administration decided to just let it go and do nothing. It was a meaningless elective, so I didnt care too much either.

Now on the other side of the coin, asking students to do group projects always leads to surprising results. Some of the projects are really, really good and creative, much better than any individual paper could be. But then again, there are always situations like the one I experienced a couple of years ago. A group turned in this dreadful project. The only thing they ever cited was wikipedia (despite me telling them not to), and they didnt even format the paper. You could tell that each student wrote a section, which was loosely related to the others, and they just copied and pasted it without even formatting the whole thing. Of course, they got a bad grade, but that is not the interesting part. The interesting part is that one of the students came to complain to me about the grade. Not about the group grade, but his own. He talked about how he did not cite wikipedia (didnt cite anything else either) in the part he wrote, about how I could clearly tell which part was his because he used a different font, and then went on and on about how he didnt know his classmates' sections were oh so bad, and how he didnt even read their parts, blah blah blah. I had to remind him that throwing classmates under the bus was never good form, and if anything he had just given me all the more reason to reduce his grade, as admitting that not only he didnt have anything to do with what the rest of the group did, but that he didnt even read it was just really inappropriate.
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This just reminded me of something that might be worth its own thread elsewhere: firefox has an addon called zotero that automatically formats citations from any page you are browsing to most styles needed.

Nice! I'll have to check it out. That sounds really useful.

the most interesting project i did as a student was making a piano suite based on faulkner's novel "sanctuary."

when you're teaching, your perspective changes about what works and what doesn't...the most successful projects i've put into motion were and were not group undertakings---the project was pretty straightforward sounding: the students had to acquire cheap audio recording equipment and collect examples of "found" or "environmental" sound over the semester. i wouldn't tell them what i meant by "environment" as i wanted them to think about the category as they moved into the process. about 2 weeks before the end of the semester, i would point them at a range of free audio software packages that they could download---they had to use the sound materials that they had collected as the basis for an audio piece. which meant they had to learn enough about the software packages to be able to make something happen---so they ended up improvising with the platforms. the group aspect kicked in as a function of learning to use the platforms--some folk had used them before (but the constraint was that those students who had used audio platforms before had to download one that they had not used) and so knew how to make at least some things happen--so were able to help out others who did not find the basics to be intuitive.

they had to keep a process journal across the whole of the project and do a little presentation during the reading period that set up something of what they were doing or using and then they'd play the track they had made.

the results would astonish me every time.
so i figure it must have been a great class.

In 8th grade shop class—and I'll preface this by saying I detested middle school and had no friends—I was assigned to a group with two other girls to design and build CO2 cartridge-powered wooden cars. I was very excited about the project. To me, working with blocks of wood to create cars that would zip across the floor seemed like fun. The rest of my group wasn't into it at all.

I did pretty much all the work up until the day the cars were going to be painted, the day I'd been looking forward to most of all, when I came down with something and had to stay home sick. I came back the next day to find that the girls in my group had taken out their revenge on me by painting the car lime green and fuchsia, with thick, lumpy stripes and polka dots. I was furious.

I kept the car after the project concluded and sanded away their detestable pink and green paint. I still have plans to spray paint it with the sexy black and silver scheme I had my heart set on those many years ago.

I'm a much better "team player" now than I was back then.

Whenever I am assigned a group project I generally think of two things: the instructor is attempting to reduce his workload; or the instructor is attempting to teach us how to work in teams. Both are suspect purposes, at least at the post-secondary level. It is only because my program has low enrollment and a narrow focus, combined with well developed relationships with those peers in the same program, that I have had any success with group work. Other attempts at group work have always resulted in one under-performer.

I won't talk about my worst group project experience, there are too many to explain. My most successful was a recent project in urban forestry. We turned in a solid project, well written, and everyone pulled their weight. We had a lot of fun with it. It was not particularly interesting or ground breaking, but our friendship and work ethic made the project interesting, even fun.

When I request group projects, it is not to cut my work load or to teach working in teams. It is because with group work you can expect more in depth research than otherwise would be the case, and even if not all students in the group participate in every part of the task, at least they get exposed to it.

In an individual 15 page paper, for example, I can be sure that the average student will spend about 3 or 4 pages on an intro that doesnt really do anything other than take up space, another 2 in conclusion, about 2 or 3 in references, leaving the actual research, the actual work, to about 8 pages.

Meanwhile, if it's a group project, I can expect (and demand) 30 to 40 pages, with actual research, extra information, etc. Individual projects in undergraduate education, unless it is a part of a senior thesis requirement or writing requirement, inevitably ends up being some half-assed lit review. A group project often ends up with something new, at least.

I had fun (at first) with my big project for my Violence In America class because the professor was so delightfully and understatedly twisted with his funny littl voice, bowties and English accent. After delving deeply into the life and mind of John Wayne Gacy for our two-person group project, I got more weirded out than entertained. I did, however, get to utter the phrase "17-inch feces encrusted dildo" in front of the whole class and watch them get completely grossed out.

I hate giving speeches or talking in front of other people. And I intensely dislike group projects because someone always slacks and pisses me off. But that one was somewhat cool. And I was NOT the slacker. I got an "A", she got a "B-".

i would use group work in particular situations where the content of the course resonates with the fact of collective work--this is what enables me to play around with the rules of the game.

what i don't want is the sort of division of intellectual labor like what's been outlined above, in which someone gets assigned the role of being the Writer while others, usually exploiting one or another social advantage (assertiveness or whatever) gets to be the Idea Guy or whatever. i don't really care about the ability of students to replicate bureaucracies. so i'd use collective projects in upper-division courses, and would combine them with explorations of alternate formal possibilities that integrate analysis without themselves necessarily looking like analytic work in the conventional academic sense. this form of writing is severely limted and limiting, and once you know the game there's not alot of point in continually reinforcing it. do something else. think about form. think about graphics and text and how they'd interact, that sort of thing. make something.
so i would usually require intermedia projects which would vary in their format along with the contents--one sort of thing for, say, looking into social movements and another for working with sound and visuals.

it was endlessly surprising to me how conservative and plodding most undergraduates are with respect to form.
but that's another topic.

"Work in groups to design a new sexual position."

It was so hot on the fifth floor, we held class on the front steps of the building.

They were giving an Ohio State alumni campus tour at the same time.

OFF TOPIC:

I dont know if anyone has ever stated this. Call me simple but,

I love reading Roachboys threads,responses and such. He/she talks in a manner that makes me access the part of my brain that I don't use often. Using big words, and phrases as you do, I am not use to it, but in a nutshell I know what you are saying.

GOOD JOB. Below is an example.

Yea, I was just going to say inasmuch. As much as I sometimes loathe trying to decipher his responses, they're equally matched with ones that get value from the peculiar nature of his speech.

Likewise, as a (hopeful) educator, I got a little bit more out of that than I had hoped. :) Group projects FTW!

I took a transportation engineering course as part of my Civil/Systems Engineering class. The final project:
* Find a traffic intersection that doesn't work well
* Document the problems with it
* Redesign it

Presentations were done in front of the class, teacher, and a representative from the State Department of Transportation.

Group projects work well when everyone on the team is intelligent and committed to doing a good job. They don't work well when one or more people are slacking off, especially when everyone is going to get the same grade. I've had several projects where I've done the majority of the work to avoid getting a bad grade, and one where I couldn't do my share of the work because other group members constantly changed the time and place of group meetings without informing me.
I was amazed at how many people manage to get into college without being able to put together a grammatically correct sentence.

I had a teacher who based the groups on Grades. You were always grouped with people that had similar grades/gpa as you.

At least in my groups it seemed that we were all pretty equally motivated and got decent grades.

Im sure it made grading easier...