Setting it up
Most group failures trace to undiscussed assumptions. Spend the first meeting assigning concrete deliverables with names and dates, agreeing how to reach each other, and deciding what happens if someone goes dark. Put it in writing.
When a member isn't contributing
Raise it directly and early — ‘we agreed you'd have the draft Tuesday; where are we?’ If that doesn't work, email the instructor before the deadline with the charter and the record of who did what. Many instructors use a confidential peer-evaluation that adjusts individual grades, but they can only use it if they know there was a problem.
In and around Porter Falls
Support at Porter is deliberately clustered on the first two levels of Halvorsen Library so a student can move from one kind of help to another without leaving the building or re-explaining the situation. Walk-in hours run late Monday through Thursday during the semester, and everything can also be booked through MyPorter.
The practical details
Start with: A team charter: who does what, by when, how you'll communicate, and how you'll handle a missed deadline. Track it: A shared doc or board so contributions are visible, not just claimed. If it breaks down: Document it, talk to the group, then talk to the instructor before the due date, not after. Anything time-sensitive — an accommodation, a booking, a deadline — is worth confirming directly before you rely on it, because the specifics here can change from term to term.
If you have a question
The office behind this is Student Success Center (Halvorsen Library, Level 1). Call (715) 555–0170 or email success@uwporterfalls.edu during the fall and spring terms, or sign in to MyPorter to send a message or book a time. If it turns out another office owns the question, they will route it rather than send you back to the start.
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. Every office, person, building, phone number and statistic on this page is invented; nothing here describes a real institution or a service you can actually contact.