Group work is awful in regular classrooms. In a specialized environment where everyone actually cares about the subject, group work can be fantastic. This is w

Group work is awful in regular classrooms. In a specialized environment where everyone actually cares about the subject, group work can be fantastic. This is why hackathons and similar settings are good things - everyone is there to learn, and you don't have demotivated people who are content to sit there and do diddly-shit. In contrast, in your standard class, where most people couldn't care less, the result is that the one motivated person in the group does the bulk of the work, everyone else gives a token effort, and then educators pat themselves on the back for "facilitating peer collaboration" or whatever the ed-speak buzzword is. Edit: The fun part is that teachers know that this is what happens, and the result is that group projects end up being hilariously easy if you get a group of kids who actually care. They're built for one person to do!