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How should our project group describe a teammate's contribution when her late slides aren't usable?

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At 10:46 last night Mia wrote, "Please put my name on the final version. I sent the slides." Our presentation is due tomorrow. Her file arrived as a PDF, and two charts use the figures we replaced on Monday.

There are four of us, and the project is worth 30% of the module. Mia missed two meetings after her supermarket shifts changed. She did suggest the comparison that became the main idea of our presentation, so saying she contributed nothing would be untrue. But the other three of us collected the new data and spent last night rebuilding the charts.

I removed her name from the title slide in our working copy. I haven't uploaded it. Another teammate noticed and said that was a decision for the lecturer, not me. Mia says nobody told her the older figures were unusable. They are marked as replaced in the shared folder, but I can't tell whether she saw that note.

We still need to rehearse. I don't want to spend our last evening having an argument about who deserves a grade, and I also don't want the final file to imply four equal contributions. What is a fair account of what happened that doesn't erase her original idea or leave the rest of us silently carrying the repair?

Discussion

2 community replies

Her comparison idea belongs in the account alongside the missed meetings and rebuilt charts. 'Mia proposed the comparison and supplied slides using the earlier data; the other members updated the analysis' is more useful than either 'equal work' or 'no work.' Let the lecturer apply whatever contribution rules the module actually has.

A note in a shared folder and a direct message saying 'we changed the figures; please use this file' aren't the same exchange. That doesn't make last night's repair your fault. It does leave a communication gap worth admitting before you frame her late slides as a deliberate refusal to help.

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