Group Uni Assignments

[Cermage]

So i have a Materials group assignment which is worth about 40% of my final mark. we have to find ways to improve a bike through what material it uses and how to reinforce those materials. we have to do a report, about 10k words, 5 people so it comes to about 2k words each (20%). we also have to do a presentation on it which has to run for about 1/2 hour (20%). we're in week 8, its due in week 12. we havent had a start on this at all. since week 3 i've been trying to get a group meeting together with no success. sent emails out, get emails back its all good. on actual days of the meetings, i get a call - "oh sorry mate, can't make it today" or "my bad, totally forgot about it" or something a long the lines of that. So sometime during week 5 to week 6 i set up a google docs page, got my ideas down and sent it out to the other members so they could put their idea's down as well. i got positive responses from everyone saying they'll add what they've come up with as soon as possible. checked a few days later, there's nothing new up on it. so i thought ok, they must have forgot about it or something. sent 3 emails over 5 days to everybody trying to get them to add their ideas. no responses.

This week, everyone actually agreed to be there and meet up. i found out this morning my parents had booked a doctors appointment, i'd recently got stitches for an fairly deep cut to my thigh. so i had to get the cut checked and the stitches out. i call one of the guys from my group, tell i wont be able to make it. The first thing i hear is "you too?" continued talking for a bit, turns out everyone else has bailed. he then goes a huge spiel about how im not committed to my course, how i should be putting more effort in e.t.c so practically he lectured me about not contributing to this assignment whatsoever. Jesus some people. this sounds like its going to be a very, very retarded group assignment.

 

[Nonuser]

Some professors tries to remedy this problem by allowing you to "grade" your group mates.

Though, in your situation, I guess the best thing to do is try to e-mail your professor about the current situation and try to gather up your team again.
If all fails, do your own work!

 

[FAST6191]

""grade" your group mates" I find works well until 3 of the group can effectively override the others.

Back on topic I find it is mainly all kicked off by someone doing some "seed" work, I know there have been a few court cases and/or failures due to bad welds, fatigue at welds (HAZ, weld (heat expansion) induced stress and sharp corners related), joining of titanium and aluminium (or worse steel) giving you a nice galvanic cell but I could not find anything you can reference in a quick search. Be careful when you do though as some cases are for "repaired" bikes which is not related to this (a design project).

Costing is also a good one; titanium alloys, aluminium alloys and fabrication with them is not cheap.

Foldable bikes also had some patent/copyright type rulings in Europe which can pad things out and show some you did something.

"reinforce those materials"
Are we talking mechanical design, manufacturing methods (see HAZ and welding as well as problems with bending pipes), alloying stuff, microstructure optimisation- a seam welded tube can have different grain orientation to an extruded one and different again if it is all normalised, is it all about mechanical loads or does corrosion appear, costing can also come into it.

Also although you have 10000 words doing an even split is not a good way of doing things; kick some to making diagrams and someone else to getting good references, someone else to proof reading, layout and maybe a section of their own, someone to do the introduction*, someone to do market research- minor improvements on what already exists makes an effectively new work.

*I am guessing there are around 15 groups each producing a 10000 word essay which compared to the level your teachers are playing at will be incredibly boring (how many times have you been bored out of your skull in lectures but when reading journals and the like on the same subject you find yourself immensely interested) to them. I will leave it to you to fill in the blanks on why a good introduction is necessary.

Good news is you can usually kill an an afternoon to do the basic research and an evening to nail most of the report (it most certainly does not have to be suitable for submission as you can give it to others to tidy up). The rest is tedious donkey work too (proof reading is my most hated part of essay/report writing) and unless you are with some truly horrific people nobody will say you have not done anything. Oh and bonus: most bike frames are built equally so grab a picture and do some rudimentary force and moment calculations based on angles and the like.

"how I'm not committed to my course...."
Would I be correct when I guess that this person is the kind of person who learns things for an exam (probably by rote learning and extensive knowledge of past papers) and forgets them on the way to the bar afterwards- if so you can safely ignore most of what they say about commitment and then watch them twist in the wind when it comes to the effectively synoptic papers and final modules which have relied on everything that comes before it.

 

[deathfisaro]

One of the better solutions is to talk to the professor.

Professors are well aware of the problems in group assignments and they can do various things to remedy the situation.

Some of the things they can do for you are:
extending the deadline for you or your group
lighten your or your group's workload
grading you based on your individual work more
and etc

Personally I believe that no more than 40% out of the group assignment grade should be group marks and the rest individual marks.


Because I'm in Computer Science, group assignments go fairly well.
Each member uploads one's part to the repository (not a final one time submission, I submitted like 2-3 days a week over the entire term) and the professor or TA can easily check who's doing how much work and how often.

Setting up a combined report and presentation, hard to tell who's put in how much work.

 

[Maktub]

I'd extensively comment on this but I'm on a hurry. All I can say is don't feel bad as your leg is more important than looking good in front of a square dorkass.

Also: it's "etc.", from Latin "et cetera", meaning "and the rest[of things]", it's not an acronym or anything like that

 

[Cermage]

we have an evaluation that we hand in ourselves so that parts all good. i'm just miffed that he went off at me.

@fast: i'm in an engineering course so we have to design with cost in mind, all the time.

this semester we were focusing on crystal structure of materials and were set individual projects on seperate topics. we can incorporate any methods we wish into strengthening the materials we are using. so its pretty across the board with what we can do with this.