School projects or assignments often involve partner work, but I have always had an issue with this. Whenever you have to take on a larger load of work due to the person you are working with not doing the same amount of work or maybe not doing the work at all, it can be very stressful and overwhelming.
There have been too many times when I’m working on a partner project, and I set expectations for myself, express my expectations, and make an agreement with a partner. Then, the next time we meet up, they have done none of the work. In this article, we will conduct interviews to see whether students think that partner work should be more heavily monitored by teachers or not required.
The first interview we conducted was with Randall Hassinger, a student who had a lot to say about partner work in school. The first thing we asked him was, ‘do you ever feel like working with a partner in school slows you down?’ Randall replied, ‘it depends on the partner, but a lot of the time the person I’m working with won’t put in the effort to do their part.’
We then asked if he thinks there is pressure to do the other person’s workload if they don’t do it and if he thought there should be accountability held for the other partner. Randall said, ‘if I’m working with someone who won’t do the work and I care about the grade, I will usually do the work for them, but I definitely don’t want to and think they should be held responsible for their part.’
The second interview we conducted was with Lucas Bennett. We asked Lucas the same two questions, and the first thing he had to say about partners slowing him down was, ‘I find myself held back when my partner doesn’t contribute their fair share.’
The second thing he said was about whether he felt the pressure to do other people’s work for them. Lucas said, ‘if I really care about my grade, I’ll usually end up doing more work to make sure we get it done. But honestly, it’s not cool.’
In conclusion, hearing from these students makes it clear that partner work in school is an issue for the everyday student. Students want fairness and decency from others when being forced to rely on someone else’s work for their own grade. I think that from now on, students should be given the option to work on their own if they want to or have a split grade for individual work.
