Why do we need to stop free riding in group work, and why is doing the right thing essential to individual and community success?

This article explores the problem of free-riding in university group work and suggests preventative and educational approaches to stop it. It also explains how doing the right thing contributes to the long-term interests of individuals and the success of communities.

 

Free-riding on college group projects has become a popular topic of discussion on the internet and social media. Most people have been victimized by free-riders and have expressed their dissatisfaction with it. People who have been victimized are talking to each other about how to effectively sanction such people, and they are thinking about appropriate ways to do so. Some have even come up with ways to make the free-riders pay for their trouble, and others have come up with ways to do the opposite. As you can see, we’re taking people who harm others seriously. Furthermore, these issues are not just conflicts between individuals, but also have a negative impact on the entire learning environment and community atmosphere. Not only can free-riding undermine trust among students, but it can also undermine the values of collaboration and mutual learning, which are essential goals of a university education.
In this group assignment, you’ll learn about behaviors that hurt others, including free riding, and think about how to prevent them. Furthermore, we’ll look for reasons to do the right thing.
There are many different kinds of people who free ride. So, who are the people who do it? There are two main categories. First, there are those who think that if they don’t do it, someone else will, because of the nature of group work. In a group, there’s naturally someone who leads the group, and they’re willing to sacrifice a little bit of themselves to make the group effective. But some people don’t want to participate because they think they’re going to do all the work, and that leads to free riding. The second is the person who doesn’t value the credit in the first place and thinks it’s just going to happen. They think they don’t have to participate in the assignment.
I don’t think there’s anything you can do to stop these types of people if they decide to do it. If you were to punish them for cheating on a group assignment, the punishment would be a low grade at best. You can’t punish them more than that for cheating. However, these students will have already placed a minimal value on the course and its credits, so punishing them with credits won’t work. In the end, the only way to stop free riding is to dissuade people from doing so.
In addition, an educational approach that promotes personal responsibility is also needed to solve the problem of free riding. As college students learning, self-directed learning and responsible behavior are essential. Programs should be introduced that emphasize these values in the curriculum and make students aware of their roles and responsibilities, not only in group work but also in various learning activities. It is also important for schools to demonstrate a proactive attitude towards tackling the problem of free riding. Faculty and school authorities should provide clear guidance on the issue of free-riding and provide an avenue for affected students to raise the issue formally.
One option is to give higher grades to those who did well in the group work and lower grades to those who did not. This might reward those who worked hard on the group assignments, but it would also mean more work for those who were already free-riding. But it wouldn’t solve the problem of free riding.
So why don’t you do the opposite? First of all, when the subject, the credit, is of great value to the person, they won’t free ride. But even when that’s not the case, people don’t free ride. Even when it saves them time and they don’t have much to lose, they don’t do it. This is because we’ve been taught that it’s not right. People who have been taught that it is important not to do something wrong will not think twice about doing it. The most fundamental solution is to give people who do it a good reason not to do it, so that they can change their minds and stop doing it. A good reason would be to show people who want to benefit themselves that doing the right thing is in their best interest.
It’s also worth emphasizing the various benefits of not taking a free ride. Diligently participating in group work isn’t just about credits, it’s about improving collaboration and communication skills. These skills can be a great asset in the workforce and will benefit you in the long run. In particular, the collaborative experience you gain in college will be invaluable in your social life. Society is not a place where you can solve everything on your own, and you can achieve more by working with others. Therefore, avoiding free rides and actively participating in assignments is like investing in your future self.
So, what are the reasons to avoid free riding, or in other words, to live right? First of all, living right means more than just obeying the law. It includes giving up your seat to the elderly on the subway, politely asking for forgiveness when you’ve done something wrong, and not saying offensive things to others. At the very least, it means not doing things that hurt others. However, even when you do the right thing, or do something that doesn’t hurt others, it can be to your own detriment. You could be better off, or it could cost you time or money. However, many people usually do the right thing.
The reason for this can be found in collective choice theory. The theory of group selection states that the group of people who do the most altruistic things will survive. Altruistic behavior is the right behavior. Here’s an example. In the past, there were many wars between tribes and tribes, countries and countries, so which groups survived? Obviously, the group with the most altruistic people survived. More altruistic behavior means more willingness to sacrifice oneself in war, which means that the group has more powerful and brave warriors. In today’s world, this is a bit of an extreme example. Let’s take a more realistic example. Let’s say a group of people get together to play soccer, and everyone has a tendency to be aggressive when playing soccer. Soccer is a team sport, and one team competes against the other. To win soccer, you need to score goals. Also, scoring a goal in soccer is the best feeling in the world for anyone. However, if everyone thinks they should be scoring goals, that team will lose. To win a game, someone has to play defense and someone has to play goalie. And even if you want to score a goal yourself, it’s important to pass to a teammate who is in a better position to score. The bottom line is that teams with more selfless people are more likely to win. Conversely, if you have a group with a lot of selfish people, the group will lose because there are a lot of selfish people acting selfishly, which means that the selfless people in the group will stop acting selflessly and the group will decline, collapse, and disappear.
As the group expands, it becomes the community of an entire university, the community of an entire country, and the community of humanity as a whole. It is an indisputable fact that the more selfless people there are in a community, the more likely it is that the community will survive and thrive. This is why it is important to educate and promote the importance of altruistic behavior at home, school, and elsewhere from a young age. The people who took free rides on the group task probably did so because they thought it was more beneficial to them. What they don’t realize is that it makes their group weaker and more vulnerable. They don’t realize that their behavior will end up costing them more. No one would act incorrectly even if they knew this. They all happen because they mistakenly believe that wrong behavior is more beneficial to them than right behavior. In the end, humans do what is good for them and find a way to be happy, and that is to live rightly.
In other words, doing the right thing benefits you. Of course, in the narrow sense of right behavior, there may be actions that benefit others but not yourself, but in the broader sense, right behavior benefits the society to which you belong, which in turn benefits you even more.
In the end, everyone has a reason to live right. This is because doing the right thing will make everyone happy. This is also why you shouldn’t take free rides. If you want to be happy, you shouldn’t take free rides. We’ve all been in situations where we’ve done the wrong thing to avoid an immediate gain or loss. In the future, we recommend that you do the right thing in such situations for your own ultimate happiness.