Focus on groups is misplaced

Ben Franklin gets a lot of credit for being a "practical" person. When Penn's founder pushed for the idea of the University back in the 18th century, the idea of a practical education for the youth of Pennsylvania seemed like a good idea.

Today, that idea of practical education is exactly what drew me to Penn, and the Wharton School in particular. And after four years, I've got a pretty good idea what exactly they mean by practical.

The hundreds of students who, over the next few weeks, will huddle around computers in group study rooms at Huntsman Hall are getting a first-hand lesson in practicality. That is, if they can get past slide 42 of their slick PowerPoint presentations.

It's that time of year again --spring is in the air, birds are chirping and self-selected groups of four to five are ready to tear their hair out because they cannot decide between a green or blue background for the aforementioned PowerPoints. It's group project season here in the cradle of business education.

Sure, to those more accustomed to classes centered around lectures and exams, group projects may seem like a nice break. And that's all well and good until you end up working on four of them in one semester and you find yourself scheduling meetings with group after group into the wee hours of the morning.

Is this really all that practical after all?

The way most of these exercises in "collaborative learning" are engineered suggests the answer is no.

The average Wharton undergraduate will be a part of no fewer than five group projects, based on the core course requirements. That also includes the required "Management 100 -- Leadership and Communication in Groups." For those pursuing concentrations in fields that lend themselves to having "consulting" attached to the end -- say, management or marketing -- get ready to spend a lot of time in group study rooms.

Eleven of the Management Department's 18 courses this semester require group projects. In marketing, eight of 17 do. And in some cases these projects can account for well over half the class grade.

While all of this "hands-on" work might sound worthwhile to consulting firms who are looking for problem solvers, the truth is, that's just being naive. Few of these projects (eight, by my estimation) are really applications of the skills developed in class that might actually be useful in the workplace.

The rest are little more than exercises in presentation skills. I'll grant that using a laser pointer is a good skill to have, but it's not worth $40,000 in tuition.

Some of these projects are more valuable than others simply because they deal with work that is actually done in a group. Take for example Marketing professor Scott Armstrong's class in advertising management. The course centers around the work a real-world advertising agency would perform with a creative team. Groups are given assignments to find clients, identify their needs, create an ad campaign for them and then present their work in the same manner as any Madison Avenue firm would.

As a group project, this makes sense, and the day-to-day operation of the class is focused on the work being done for the project each step of the way. But this, unfortunately, is the exception, rather than the rule.

By contrast, the majority of group presentations are tangential to the classes for which they are assigned. They end up being little more than glorified research papers designed to be done by the requisite self-composed group of between three and six students. Most of this project work is done off to the side while the class continues on with concepts that usually involve some form of two-by-two matrices. The only time the project and class actually intersect is the day the research findings are presented, a process so exciting it rivals the consolidated stock tables in The Wall Street Journal.

There has to be a better way.

In advance of the fall term, professors from across the University should give their syllabi a good hard look. If their classes call for group projects that will do little more than take the place of an exam, throw them out. Students should focus on what teams really do in the corporate world.

Group work at Franklin's university ought to reflect the value of practicality he championed. Otherwise, we're all just wasting time, something Franklin always called "the greatest prodigality."

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