Grouping Problem

I’m working in University of Saint Joseph, base on the class experience, I found that grouping is always a problem for the teacher.

In group work, there are some ways to form the groups, for examples:

1.      Teacher will randomly form groups by using excel formulas or going to the internet to find out some websites which can help teacher to due with the grouping problem.

2.      Teacher just needs to give them a maximum numbers of group mates, and then let the students choose by themselves.

3.      Teacher just forms the group by choosing half male and female randomly.

Contradictions involved

The problem is this, after formed the groups, some of student will come to you and complain that someone in the group do even show up after grouping or couldn’t contact with that person, so that it’s hard for them to finish their assignment, they feel unfair with no enough people. Secondly, because of the culture differentiation, there have some conflicts between group mates, so that they want to change the group in order to avoid conflicts. Thirdly, student complains that some of their group mates always miss the group meeting or didn’t send any document to them to combine. It’s pretty hard for teacher to solve, teacher can’t leave any student in the class, but also can't just ignore those groups which have the problem I mentioned above.

Viewpoints of various stakeholders:

Teacher:

People complain because of just want to be fair, even though the assignment is not that hard for them, but in the point of view of the teacher, university is trying to help you to understand the realistic society beside professional knowledge before students go out to work. It’s no problem of grouping with different people, even they are lazy or irresponsible enough. It’s hard to avoid these kinds of people in the company, for a mature student, they must understand the situation of their communities and try to find out a better way to solve the problem rather than waste time to complain to the boss, because they still have to finish the work which is required from the boss.

Student:

In realistic, they are right if they don’t have enough people to reach the goal of assignment, It’s difficult to them to fulfill the requirement of the teacher, they complain because they expect to do better. There are many responsible classmates in other group, so that they are jealous of others, as the result, fair will be the most suitable word for them to complain to the teacher.

University:

Teacher has to follow the rule of university, manage the grouping very well, let student enjoy the class and willing to learn from you, also try his best to be fair for everyone in the class room.