Good practice guide - Groupwork

Group work is important, as it supports the development of a number of Flinders' graduate qualities as well as a range of other skills required by most employers. However, students often complain about group work, with common causes of their objections stemming from students not understanding its value, staff making assumptions about what students now about working in groups and/or asking students to undertake inappropriate or unfair assessment tasks. Addressing these areas should help increase students' satisfaction with group work.

Some basics

Group work serves a range of purposes including gaining key employability and professional skills, building key capabilities for study and helping to build student networks (particularly in first year).  However, it is important for students to understand why you are asking them to work in groups and to ensure that this work aligns with the topic learning outcomes and assessment task.

Students may have varying experiences of working in groups and some experiences may have left them thinking group work is problematic. Find out what they know about it, and if they have been taught to work as part of a group before. Having frank discussions with students about their experiences where you talk about what worked well and the challenges that were encountered can be very useful as you develop ways to support them.

Students often find it difficult to know what is expected of them, from you and from other members of the group, which may lead to confusion and discomfort. It is important to let them know what you expect from them, whether you expect everyone in the group to play an equal role and have equal input, what the consequences will be for those who do not do the work, and what group members should do if things go wrong (such as one group member failing to do the work required of them).. If your students are new to group work, you will need to be more 'hands on' and provide more support.

Stages of group work

There are four main stages to group work which are discussed slightly differently (depending on the discipline the literature is based in). Knowing about these stages, discussing them with students, and preparing strategies for managing them (such as doing icebreaker exercises) can help students through these stages. Different exercises (whether in-class or online) are appropriate to different stages of group work. The stages are linked to group dynamics and support the development of team building, trust building and conflict management skills.

Table 1 Adapted from Harris & Watson (1997, p. 405)

Tasks

Different group activities require students to participate in different types of tasks. For example, there may be information gathering tasks, such as searching online or conducting interviews/surveys, or tasks involving transcribing group discussions or presenting findings to the class. These tasks support students to develop particular skills, so you might want all members of the group to have the opportunity to undertake all set tasks at some point. You might assign tasks to the group, or encourage them to identify and assign them within the group so they have some say in decision making.

Group selection and roles

Once you have planned your group activities and considered how you might encourage and support all students to make the most of their experience of group work, its useful to think about how you intend putting the groups together. There are a number of ways of doing this, in FLO and Collaborate where you can create groups either manually or randomly. Considerations when allocating groups include students’ knowledge and skills, friendships and purpose of group work tasks. You can allow them to self-select into groups or allocate them randomly, according to their opinions on a topic (where appropriate) or ability. There are a range of pros and cons associated with how this is done.

Ideally, thought should also go into the roles within groups, and how these are decided and allocated. A range of roles may be undertaken, depending on the task/s you have set, these might include: a team leader, notes person, timekeeper and presenter. Also consider whether the roles should be consistent throughout the task or if they should rotate to achieve development in students.

Initially, students need to be given time to get to know each other and work together, understand what is required of them and what they might consider, and plan approaches to the task/s. Students require time to develop the skills to work together as well as identify a clear structure and decision-making process. All students in each group should be able to achieve the topic learning outcomes, and time needs to be allowed for it to happen.

Assessment

The assessment activities will also require careful thought to ensure they are appropriate for group work, as some assessments are better suited to groups than others (e.g. a small research study or Wiki development could more easily be managed by a group than a journal article review or single item blog post). Determining the most appropriate way of assessing who has contributed to the final product and identifying how you can set up the assessments so not all students are punished when one or two have not done their fair share also require careful consideration. One way to do this is to include individual contribution as well as the group ‘product’ in the assessment. You may also set a reflective piece where all students reflect on their behaviour and contribution to the group and have this included as part of the overall assessment.

Setting group assessments online (in FLO) allows you to monitor everyone’s contributions. It's important to let students know you are tracking the work they are doing and the processes you've set in place to monitor them.