Designing Group Work
Students who work in groups, in addition to completing individual assignments, have the opportunity to learn a subject in greater depth, and with a greater likelihood that they will retain and later apply what they have learned. (For more information on collaborative learning, see the list of sources at the end of this article). However, merely asking your students to work in groups will not necessarily lead them to collaborate in ways that advance their learning.
Most students come to the university without substantial experience working in groups. They may have completed group assignments in high school, but in doing so they did not necessarily learn how to collaborate effectively. Therefore, you should devote time in class to teaching them how to work in groups.
It is essential to plan group work carefully so that it has a purpose that is clear to students and integral with the course as a whole. When designing a group assignment or activity, consider the pedagogical goals that the group work should fulfill. For example, do you want your students to be able to engage in, and mediate, intellectual dialogue among disparate points of view? Or to learn to solve problems by testing and evaluating multiple approaches?
Talk with your students about the types of collaboration that are important in your discipline and in the professional work you expect students to do after college. Design group assignments and activities that allow students to practice the skills necessary for these types of collaboration.
In-Class Group Work
The following suggestions apply to in-class, small-group work organized for the purposes of discussion or problem solving.
- If you plan to use group activities in class throughout the semester, plan a group activity for the first day of class. This strategy will get your students accustomed to working in groups from the very beginning and will communicate to them that collaborative learning will be a regular part of the course.
- Set up groups either informally by asking students to form the groups at the start of the activity or formally by assigning them to groups ahead of time. Groups of 3-4 students are ideal. If you assign students to groups yourself, take care to form groups that are diverse in terms of race, gender, ability, and personality (e.g. a mix of talkative and quiet students). Make sure that you do not, however, place in each group just one student from an underrepresented minority group or gender; this dynamic can encourage other students to see that student as a “spokesperson,” and may make the student feel like a "token" representative, rather than simply a member of the group like any other.
- No matter how the groups are formed, require students to take up specific roles within each group. For example, ask them to appoint a note-taker, a presenter (who will report the group's findings to the larger group), and a facilitator (who will direct the discussion or problem-solving session, making sure the group stays on task and completes all aspects of what you ask them to do). After the groups are formed, circulate around the room to ask students who is playing what role. Many groups will not assign roles (especially that of presenter) unless checked. The next time that you do a group activity, tell students that they must take up a different role than the one they performed previously. This strategy will prevent students from falling into familiar patterns of interaction; for example, quiet students typically volunteer to be note-takers and more talkative students typically volunteer to be facilitators or presenters.
- Give your students explicit directions on what they should accomplish in the group. Devise questions or problems to solve that are complex enough to sustain collaboration. If the questions or problems you assign to the groups are too simple or straightforward, students will complete them very quickly and move on to other topics (usually unrelated to the course). In addition, the students will not work together on determining the solution. The activity will therefore not only waste class time, but also leave your students with no appreciation for the purposes behind asking them to collaborate.
- Teach your students the skills involved in intellectual collaboration. When a student presents an idea or potential solution to a problem, for example, she or he should be prepared to present the rationale behind that idea or solution and to answer questions or counter-arguments presented by other members of the group. You should also provide students with a model of how to respond to the ideas of others in a way that combines mutual respect with a desire to challenge one another to think more deeply or to consider additional ideas and points of view.
- Limit the amount of time that students spend in groups and give them the time limit at the outset. Near the end of the time period, remind the students to wrap up their discussion. Then, at the end of the time period, allow time for the groups to share what they have accomplished with the entire class. For example, you might say, “I’d like each group to take 10 minutes to come up with a list of potential research questions. After 10 minutes, I will call on the presenter in each group to report to the class so that we can create a master list of questions; we will then decide which questions seem most productive and why.”
- Be mindful of the conversations in the room during group work. Walk around and listen to the discussions to make sure the groups are moving forward to a satisfactory conclusion. Listen to the rise and fall of the discussions; if group conversations start to "fall" before the end of the time period, stop early.
- When the groups present what they have accomplished to the entire class, have each group present only one idea at a time. After each group has presented one idea, go back to the group that presented first or open the floor up to any group to present additional ideas.
- During the class-wide discussion, write ideas or steps of student-generated solutions on the board for visual learners.
Group Projects (Primarily Completed Outside of Class)
When creating assignments that will require students to meet and work together in groups outside of class, keep in mind that your students will need guidance on how to conduct the assignments successfully.
- Form groups of between 3 and 5 students. Again, you can either ask students to form the groups themselves or assign them each to a group. If you create the groups yourself, follow the above suggestions to ensure diversity within groups.
- On a few occasions, schedule time for groups to meet in class. It is especially wise to schedule a group meeting early on, as soon as groups are formed, so that you can observe the groups and ensure that everyone has a firm grasp on the assignment and on their individual responsibilities within the groups.
- Provide guidance that will help each group organize subsequent, outside-of-class meetings. This guidance should help them ensure that all group members participate equally and that each group stays on task. Require each group to develop the guiding principles, or rules, that each group member is expected to follow. For example, each group member must 1) come prepared for each meeting, 2) actively participate during the meeting, and 3) take a turn at serving in a designated role--such as group leader or facilitator, note-taker, or scheduler (responsible for scheduling the next meeting). Provide groups with a sample agenda for the first meeting or two outside of class-time, then tell them to develop a similar agenda for each subsequent meeting.
- To facilitate regular meetings and continual forward progress, consider setting intermediate deadlines for specific parts of the project before the final deadline for the project's completion.
- Devise a clear grading strategy. The way in which you grade a group project should enable you to evaluate what students accomplish in collaboration, as well as what they each contribute as individuals. If a group project is worth 100 points, for instance, you might develop a grading system by which students earn a possible 75 points for the evidence and products of collaboration (e.g. meeting minutes and agendas, final reports or presentation) and 25 points for any work completed on an individual basis (e.g. a draft of a portion of the report, an annotated bibliography showing the research completed separately by each group member, etc.). When assigning a "collective" grade for collaborative work, provide students with explicit guidance on how they can report to you any problems with one student not fulfilling his or her responsibilities. You might, for instance, indicate that students can ask that a group member be assigned a failing grade for the project if they can offer documentation showing that the group member in question failed to fulfill obligations to the project. Such failures are rare, and providing such guidance is usually all that you will need to do to ensure that all students act responsibly.
- Provide students with tools that they can use to collaborate. For instance, technological tools such as Google Documents, wikis, and online discussion boards (such as those available on Telesis ) lend themselves very well to collaboration. For more information, click here.
When you create group assignments and activities, keep in mind that students will respond with varying degrees of enthusiasm. In fact, some high-achieving students are resistant to working in groups, in part because they have been so successful at working alone. Be sure, then, to explain to all of your students the purposes behind the group work and its potential to help them learn more deeply. Carefully designed group work can help you engage students who prefer to learn in groups as well as those who prefer to work alone. In either case, you can help students develop valuable collaborative skills that they might not otherwise acquire.
For Further Reading
Davis, Barbara Gross. "Collaborative Learning: Group Work and Study Teams." Tools for Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993.
"Cooperative Learning: Students Working in Small Groups." Speaking of Teaching. Stanford University Center for Teaching and Learning. 10.2 (1999)
Felder, Richard M. and Rebecca Brent. "Effective Strategies for Cooperative Learning." Journal of Cooperation & Collaboration in College Teaching. 10.2 (2002). 69-75.