Rules for Group Work

It is the policy of the College of Business to require group projects so that students are better prepared for social and team demands when they graduate. Therefore much of your work in Business 198 will be done as part of a group. Unfortunately, some students do not work well in groups, so we have established rules to protect other members of a group.

Process.

You will be assigned to a group of 5. This is the group that will write your business plan, and the group you will be with to take the group quizzes each day.

You will stay in that group at least until the first Friday of the course. Beginning Friday, separation rules apply.

At your first meeting exchange email addresses and decide if you will meet as a group before class or after class.

Rule 1- You can fire any member of your team. If the person does not do his/her fair share of the work, does not attend group meetings, or is not helpful on quizzes, fire them. To fire a person you need to take a majority vote of the team, and write a note to me signed by those members of the group, telling me who you are firing.

If you are fired, you will stop sitting with your group, and will move to an empty seat in the back of the room. You may form a new group with other people who have been fired, or you may do all the course work alone. But you are still required to submit a business plan and take all the quizzes.

Rule 2- You may quit your group. If it seems to you that the people in your group are not serious or are not helpful, you are free to quit. Give me the names of your old team members and a reason you are quitting the group.

If you quit, you will stop sitting with your group, and will move to an empty seat in the back of the room. You may form a new team with others who have quit, or you may do the coursework alone, but you are still required to submit a business plan and take all the quizzes.

Rule 3 – Protect yourself. About ten percent of the students in this class typically drop out, usually without telling anyone in their group that they intend to stop coming. If you have given them assignments to turn in for you, those assignments may disappear too. A good strategy is to ask all students to email all sections of a paper to all other members of the group, so you each have a copy. Also make sure you get everyone’s work at least a day before the assignment is due, so you aren’t stuck if they quit at the last minute. If students are unwilling to do the work as scheduled by your group, fire them before they leave you stranded.

Rule 4 – Identify responsibilities. At the start of each section of the business plan, identify who did which portions, or performed which functions. If someone does a really bad job with one section, you have two options: 1) fire the person and have some else do the section, 2) leave the person on the team, identify what part they did, include that part, and then include a revised version that is more acceptable. If a section is bad and is not improved, I will assume no one else on the team recognized the mistakes and so the whole team will have its grade reduced.