The Weakest Link Test!

[FutureDoctor06]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Basically, In class(high school or college), you choose your group of four. The Professor would
give you the test individually. The worst grade of the group applies for everyone implying the weakest link.

Has anyone taken this kind of test? Any experiences/thoughts?

 

[railgun]

Sounds kinda like the marines/army - where if one person screws up, the whole units gets screwed... it may motivate the students to 'convince' each other to do better

 

[JFK90787]

omg this happened to me once in high school. In my math (geometry I think?) class, the teacher randomly put us into groups of 5 for a week before a test to teach us about teamwork, and the lowest grade in the group was everyone's grade. This was a public school in the city, so there were a lot of people from crappy backgrounds who didn't care about their grades. We had one such guy in our group, and he just blew us off no matter how hard we tried to get him to care. He ended up with a 40% or something on the test. Every group in the class did bad, so the teacher just canceled the idea and gave us all individual tests.

 

[KnuxNole]

That sounds like a dumb idea entirely.

 

[Lollygag]

omg this happened to me once in high school. In my math (geometry I think?) class, the teacher randomly put us into groups of 5 for a week before a test to teach us about teamwork, and the lowest grade in the group was everyone's grade. This was a public school in the city, so there were a lot of people from crappy backgrounds who didn't care about their grades. We had one such guy in our group, and he just blew us off no matter how hard we tried to get him to care. He ended up with a 40% or something on the test. Every group in the class did bad, so the teacher just canceled the idea and gave us all individual tests.

I'm glad the teacher called it off, for reasons like this, I think its an extremely dumb idea. There are much more effective ways to teach teamwork in a classroom setting without screwing people over.

I also hate group projects, because I'm always the one that does all the work 🙁

 

[Lollygag]

Sounds kinda like the marines/army - where if one person screws up, the whole units gets screwed... it may motivate the students to 'convince' each other to do better

I think in the military though, its a little bit different because teamwork is so essential and people's lives can depend on it.

Not saying that learning teamwork in an everyday setting isn't important, I just think its more necessary in the military.

 

[pre med 2014]

That sounds like a dumb idea entirely.

+1

This reminds me of the buddy system from that one Sliders episode where they were in a prison. They each got paired up with a buddy, and the rule was if your buddy committed a crime YOU got punished.

 

[FutureDoctor06]

That sounds like a dumb idea entirely.

It may help the weaker students of the group as the strong students that want solid grades would be willing to help the weaker students.

 

[Sidereum]

I also hate group projects, because I'm always the one that does all the work 🙁

+1 🙁

This almost kept me from getting an A in one of my freshman classes.

 

[KnuxNole]

It may help the weaker students of the group as the strong students that want solid grades would be willing to help the weaker students.

But factor in all the people that don't care, have no problem failing, and would turn their nose up to people "helping" them. 🙁

 

[railgun]

I think in the military though, its a little bit different because teamwork is so essential and people's lives can depend on it.

Not saying that learning teamwork in an everyday setting isn't important, I just think its more necessary in the military.

Yeah I know what you mean. And yeah I agree with everyone above that it most likely wouldn't work in a school setting....

 

[TangoDown]

Lol mass punishment. Why should other students pay for the misgivings of another? Unlike the military where a group of people must function as a team or a unit, other students aren't obligated to assist the "weak link" in doing well to benefit the collective. A student can reach out to the failing student if he or she feels empathetic and a desire to assist, but that's a different story.

 

[MedPR]

Would this make nerds more popular? Or just make them easier to identify and more prone to bullying?

 

[Mehd School]

...not exactly.

When I was a freshman, I took a Psychology 101 class and on the day of the Final the instructor didn't print out enough exams for the entire class. He made us pair together, but the catch was that the first person did the first half of the final and the other student did the last half of the final. We wrote both of our names on the final, and weren't allowed to check on our partner's work.

I ended up with a 58% on that final (which was embarrassingly easy) and it dropped me to a B in the class. My partner just happened to be a drugged out stoner who confessed to not being in class "for the past two months". I raised hell, but it was all for naught. It's been a while, but if I remember right my partner scored 9% out of the possible 50% he could have contributed to the score. At least it wasn't a science course.

 

[TangoDown]

...not exactly.

When I was a freshman, I took a Psychology 101 class and on the day of the Final the instructor didn't print out enough exams for the entire class. He made us pair together, but the catch was that the first person did the first half of the final and the other student did the last half of the final. We wrote both of our names on the final, and weren't allowed to check on our partner's work.

I ended up with a 58% on that final (which was embarrassingly easy) and it dropped me to a B in the class. My partner just happened to be a drugged out stoner who confessed to not being in class "for the past two months". I raised hell, but it was all for naught. It's been a while, but if I remember right my partner scored 9% out of the possible 50% he could have contributed to the score. At least it wasn't a science course.

That's the stupidest **** ever. So essentially, the professor punishes the class for his error.

Did you complain to any higher ups?

 

[Mehd School]

That's the stupidest **** ever. So essentially, the professor punishes the class for his error.

Did you complain to any higher ups?

I complained directly to the department head. His rebuttal was that the rest of the class didn't have a hard time scoring well on the final (he was correct). I scored quite well on my section of the test, but it was pointless thanks to my partner, Doobie.

The guy has since been fired. I had trouble with him a couple times that semester. The best one was when I had a documented absence from a test which he tried his damn hardest to prevent me from making up. He even changed the make up policy in his syllabus because he was inconvenienced by my having to make up a test. He ended up losing this battle, though.

 

[TangoDown]

I complained directly to the department head. His rebuttal was that the rest of the class didn't have a hard time scoring well on the final (he was correct). I scored quite well on my section of the test, but it was pointless thanks to my partner, Doobie.

The guy has since been fired. I had trouble with him a couple times that semester. The best one was when I had a documented absence from a test which he tried his damn hardest to prevent me from making up. He even changed the make up policy in his syllabus because he was inconvenienced by my having to make up a test. He ended up losing this battle, though.

What a cock monger. And this guy was a psychologist? Talk about a walking contradiction.

 

[OCDOCDOCD]

That honestly sounds like the stupidest idea a teacher could come up with. I guarantee you that if you take four random people from a class and put them into a group that you're going to have the one **** who ruins it for everyone. This is especially true in lower level classes where the weeding-out process hasn't occurred yet.

The worst I ever had to deal with was a group project in a polisci class my first semester of college. It was 6 members to a group, and everyone had to write their own section with one person getting to avoid writing if they functioned as the editor instead. I volunteered to be the editor which everyone surprisingly was happy about (I guess they thought that was somehow more work than writing 5 pages of research?) I ended up having to hound all of my group members for their contributions for weeks until they finally turned their crap into me within the last few days (I had two give me their papers the day before). Some of the papers were so badly written that I had to spend a frightening amount of time just trying to figure out what the person had been trying to say, and all of the sections were flooded with inaccuracies and flat out wrong statements. I gave up trying to save people's grades when it became obvious they hadn't cared at all. Thankfully my professor informed me that as editor I was only responsible for the grammar, spelling, and coherency of the paper, not the actual content.

 

[Jas1360]

The way the OP describes self selecting groups is not so bad. If you can pick your group members you are more likely to pick people who will score in the same grade range. Then you will study together to try and balance each others weaknesses. In this case, students who don't care would end up grouped together and A students are not getting screwed over by being paired with D students.