Dear professors,
I want to begin by stating that I am not writing this to bash the teaching style which you are using in your classes, nor am I writing this to say that you are bad professors. I am simply writing this as a plea, one that has been long overdue. I am writing this on behalf of thousands of students across the country and asking for you all to remove in-class group papers from your syllabi.
Do not get me wrong, there is nothing bad about group work. In fact, I very much enjoy group projects because it is a way to interact with fellow classmates and learn how to tackle a given task with multiple minds involved. Group projects are great, and of course, it's always nice to have someone else to cry at the library with as you work on that project until the middle of the night. Yet, the line gets drawn when it is not a project that has to be created, but an essay. Not only that, but this collective paper needs to be written in class. I simply do not see the point of this torture. College is difficult enough, we're always either stressed, broke or hungry-sometimes all three at the same time-, without having to add working on group papers in class.
Not only are in-class, group essays, simply unnecessary, but they are a great way to ensure that the student has no control over their own grade. When so much of a students college education depends on GPA it is pretty unfair to have that GPA be affected by other peoples work. I have no problems with my fellow students, but I will not trust another student to write anything under my name. I have been personally victimized by these in-class group essays. There were six grades for the entire class, and four of them were these essays. It quickly became so frustrating knowing that if I was writing these papers by myself, in-class or out, I would be getting the A's I know I can get. Yet, I quickly found myself looking at horrible grades because this wasn't just my paper, it was the paper of three other individuals.
Why should my grade suffer because another student cannot write at a higher level?
To all professors... college is too expensive and too important to have my grade be dependent on other people in the way it is when you assign your students in-class group papers. Please stop.
Thank You.
