It was a disappointing group effort. What else is new? My team was most definitely no team in Week 5 and although one team member provided the best content in contribution, she did so late and then disappeared for the day. Granted, she informed the team at the last minute that she would be available only until 5:00 PM, it was too little information too late, and her absence in the final hours was noticeable. Another member barely provided anything in contribution or review. He admitted to having connection issues as he was traveling internationally, but I do not consider that an acceptable excuse for not participating in the team effort--especially in the final week on the final project. The worst contributor (if one can refer to her as that) submitted input which, as usual, was quite inferior and full of errors. She posted it at the last minute and also disappeared, never to return to learn where she needed to fix mistakes and help the team polish the effort into something worthy of turning in. The remaining team member had considerable trouble bringing his content together but was the only member of the team who acted like a team member and although was unable to provide any useful help as the piece was being finalized, he stuck around--on no sleep, in a time zone three hours ahead of university deadlines...but he stuck with me.

While I normally do not whine to my instructors about these things (most of the time, such effort or lack thereof eventually balances out over the course of the class), I was compelled to tell my teacher that I feel as though I did most of the work on Week 5's team project. In prior weeks, I repeatedly had to do significant work on two out of four team members’ efforts and the other two team members typically produces work that I consider to be equal to or close to my own. I think that under the circumstances, grading every team member equally on this project is unfair. I busted my behind on this effort because they slacked. We barely made it on time because I had the bulk of the work at the last minute. Early in the week, the team was notified that their input was due no later than midnight on Friday in order to complete the assignment by syllabus deadline of Saturday. Our team charter dictates our projects are completed 1 day early, so by charter, my team should have had their input posted to the team forum no later than midnight on Thursday. As it turned out, only two team members posted by Friday leaving the entire work to be compiled, reviewed, proofread, edited, reviewed again, tweaked, submitted to the CWE, tweaked again, and polished before turning it in that night.

Except for one person...my team disappeared, and yet another posted after-the-fact that she felt her portion was just fine and that she had no need to check back in. Again...this is not teamwork...this is 'do my part and walk away'...