Group projects in college tend to have a larger scale than those in high school settings. While I had a lot of fun in my high school group projects, my experiences in college have been far less pleasant. This is because most high school projects are at a level where one student can do, with moderate difficulty and a good amount of time, the work of three or four students. However, in college group projects riding solo is definitely not viable especially when the projects require multiple team meetings and input from all members to work on papers of over 10 pages and more work intensive items such as video essays. They are also more academically focused - no more drawing a picture of a character from a book on a sheet of butcher paper and writing down some character traits around them.

So far, I’ve figured out that one of the keys to success is meeting often in person. Statistically speaking (fake statistics), you will probably always get at least one person who is reluctant to do work. They may be satisfied with a "C" in their classes while the rest of the group are high achieving "A" students, and expect that the other students will pick up his/her share of the work. Communicating via the internet by group messaging applies almost no pressure, people simply claim they never saw it or actually never did see it until hours later, making real-time coordination difficult. Meeting in person passively pressures all the group members to do work and if necessary, pressure can be applied to a particular person by inviting them to contribute their thoughts or asking them what part they would like to do. In the worst case, at least assigning them a part of the project in person means that you know that you reached them, whereas they might simply ignore an email or text message.

Picking a group of people, if the instructor allows, is also important. With respect to the above point, it is impossible to meet if the members’ schedules do not match. The most important thing to consider is when people wake up and go to sleep. Nothing is worse than waking up at 8 AM in the morning refreshed and ready to do work, but when you try to contact the group they don't reply until three hours later saying they just woke up. Then they might contact you past midnight, buzzing your phone until you wake up and complaining how you aren’t attending their impromptu meeting at 2 AM in the CULC.

Another important thing is to have realistic expectations. Not everyone is available all the time. Not everyone will do work with the same quality, or the same amount of it. However, as long as everyone is willing to contribute and does what the group has assigned them to do, there are no problems. It is likely that you won’t be doing group projects with people you knew beforehand, because colleges have many more students in many different classes, unlike college where the entire school has only six or seven teachers for each subject, with only two teachers for the advanced placement level.

Also, set a plan for when the plan fails. And then another plan that plans for when the backup plan fails. The more people working on a project, the higher the chances that something will happen that results in a missing piece on presentation day or something that doesn’t quite agree with the rest of the project. One way of mitigating the problem is having the group finish the work a few days in advance and then going through and checking everything. This way, if one part is still unfinished all the group members can (grudgingly) do the work that someone else was supposed to do but didn’t.

Finally, if you are the highest achieving student in your group or think you are, take charge. No one else is responsible for your grade or success. Make your group rise up to your level, don’t stoop down to theirs. Even if you fail, you tried, and professors can sometimes be lenient in grading if you have proof.