Wednesday, September 23, 2015

What to Do When "Kumar" Fails

In the comedy film, "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" (2004), Kumar is a team player. As in all "team" films, success is assured. But online group projects do not follow movie scripts. Trust us on this! It's not uncommon to have 50% of teams fail. Often, this is due the failure of one or more team members. In the real world, "Kumar" can fail.

Should you simply report "Kumar's" failure to your instructor and assume that will solve the problem? No. Don't be surprised if such a message to your instructor is simply ignored. The point of many team assignments is to see how YOU handle team dynamics. Be prepared to pick up the slack when team members fail. As for "Kumar," some institutions/instructors use the following rule: only those students whose names appear on the final submitted project will receive a grade and the TEAM decides which names appear and which do not.



(Apologies to all our fans named "Kumar." We know YOU can do it. It's just the other guy named "Kumar" you need to watch out for!)