Joel VannerIn this article:
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Introduction
Group assignments can help build relationships with peers and bring diverse skills to the task at hand. However, students may have concerns about group assignments such as grading method, scheduling times to meet or completing tasks fairly. In this post, are easy-to-use strategies and tools for designing successful group assignments that will help your groups function as teams.
Group Formation
Research by Hackman and Vidmar (1970) found that the optimal group size is close to five. An odd number such as five allows for majority rules decision making. Above five increases group management problems by raising the amount of social and logistical interactions. This doesn’t mean that every group has to have precisely five members. There are other factors to consider such as the size of the project and amount of tasks to complete. For example, a group of three could be appropriate for a medium-sized assignment such as a case study.
Instructors have multiple options for forming groups. One simple method is to randomly enroll students or ask them to self-enroll; however, this method may not result in the best learning experience. Instead, you may like to form groups using criteria such as expertise, leadership preferences, schedule, software skills, writing skills…Students could use the class discussion board for choosing team members followed by a team sign-up form or the instructor could collect information in a survey and then place students in groups.
Charters
Having students set ground rules through a contract or charter helps promote better collaboration. A charter prompts group members to set goals and agree on how they will work together. Charters may include:
- Contact information
- Meeting time availability and time zone
- Assignment goals
- Timelines and deliverables
- Strengths and weaknesses of the members
- Roles e.g. devil’s advocate, facilitator, leader, researcher, synthesizer…
- Ground rules
- How disputes will be handled
- How feedback will be handled
Using a charter should reduce your need to intervene and empower students to be in charge of their own learning.
Assessment
Whether to grade as a whole or individually is complicated (example Grading Methods for Group Work). Assigning a single grade to a group of students could result in rewarding underachieving students or disadvantaging stronger ones who tried their best throughout the process, but the final product did not meet expectations. Depending on the objectives of your assignment, both process and product can be assessed if they are important to you e.g. ability to collaborate, solve problems…One option is to ask students to assess their own contributions and their peers’ contributions from a process and product perspective (example Group and Self-assessment Instrument). Your grading criteria for the group assignment is best communicated to students in a rubric from the onset of the course and a reminder midway so that expectations are clear.
Tools
The simplest way to increase group interaction is to set up collaborative tools such as discussion forums. For example, each group might have a general discussion forum for the overall project. You could also encourage the use of synchronous tools such as Zoom as an easy way for students to meet online and share information. For group presentations, consider using VoiceThread as it is built into Blackboard and designed for ease of collaboration. OneDrive allows students to work collaboratively on documents such as Excel, PowerPoint and Word; the versioning history is also helpful for getting a sense of participation. In addition, OneDrive is a way for you to easily provide feedback via commenting in the formative stages of the project.
Reference
Hackman, J. R., & Vidmar, N. (1970). Effects of size and task type on group performance and member reactions. Sociometry, 33(1), 37-54. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2786271
