There is probably no greater gap in the world of education than the gap between students’ and pedagogical researchers’ attitudes toward group work. Ask a student if they like working in groups and you’ll likely get a strident “no!” But study after study confirms the valuable role group work can play in learning. In short, group work works!
Group work is a student-centered, active learning approach in which students are responsible for working together on shared tasks. This page shares strategies that help instructors design effective group work. The strategies can work in classes of any size and modality, and can be implemented with or without the help of teaching assistants.
Benefits of group work
Working together in groups to tackle a complex project or challenge gives students opportunities to:
- Actively engage with course concepts
- Encounter and learn from the diverse perspectives of other students
- Apply their knowledge in real world situations
- Hone valuable collaborative skills
- Develop a growth mindset
Working in groups is especially helpful for building students’ self-efficacy. Seeing other students wrestle with difficult tasks and concepts can help normalize struggle as a crucial part of learning and problem solving.
Group work also provides students with opportunities to build skills that will be relevant in many professional and social settings. Teamwork is one of the top skills employers seek in recent college graduates.
Designing effective group work
To be effective, group work needs to help students accomplish something important to the course. If your group work isn’t meaningfully connected to your course goals, students will have little motivation for engaging. The strategies below will help you be more intentional in designing group work activities – whether for spontaneous, one-time in-class collaborations, or for longer-term group projects.
- Align the activity to your learning outcomes. Explain to students why the group activity matters and how it will help them meet your goals for the course. Learn more about aligning your activities to your learning outcomes.
- Assign tasks that benefit from having multiple perspectives. For example, in a mathematical context, conceptual problems are better suited for collaboration than more mechanical problems.
- Address accessibility needs. Groups can only be successful when all students can access what they need to succeed. Make sure that course materials are accessible and engage students in discussions about accessibility before group work begins.
- Keep groups fairly small. Groups of 3-5 students typically allow each student to meaningfully contribute. It’s easier for students to hide or disengage in larger groups.
- Use your community agreements to guide collaboration. Create or revisit your course community agreements and discuss how they will apply to group work. Articulate what steps they should take when conflicts or roadblocks arise.
- Take advantage of UW-supported tools. UW provides access to tools that groups may need for collaboration: polling, surveys, communication, etc. Consult with UW Learning Technologies to learn more about what tools align with your course group activities. For example, you can create and manage Groups in Canvas.
- Scaffold more complex group assignments and include check-in points. Divide large projects into a series of logical steps with deadlines for each step. As much as possible, give the groups feedback on their progress for each step. Allocate time for students to complete each step, receive feedback, and act on it.
- Be intentional about the composition of the groups. Students often benefit from working with those who have backgrounds, skills, and experiences that differ from their own. In many cases, random group assignments or intentional grouping for diverse teams works well. With some topics or tasks, however, students may feel more comfortable working in self-selected or affinity groups. Consider which composition will most benefit your students given the goals of the class and the group activity.
- Structure groups with clearly-defined assigned roles. While this strategy can be useful in shorter, more informal group activities, it can be particularly useful in structuring more complex group activities. Either assign group members to assigned roles or ask them to choose their roles. Assigned roles foster focused, meaningful participation and hold each student accountable for contributing to the work. Common roles for group activities include: notetaker, timekeeper, facilitator (who manages participation); and reporter (who shares the group’s outcome with the full class).
- Develop and share clear assessment criteria. For longer-term group projects, use a rubric to articulate what you’ll be looking for when you grade the group’s work and share it with students before the group work begins. Consider assessing both the group’s collaboration (e.g., effectiveness of communication, fair work distribution, meeting deadlines, etc.) and the quality of their work. Assess each student’s contribution to the group work (e.g., through self or peer assessments), when possible. Clearly articulate if each individual in the group will receive their own grade or the group will be graded collectively.
- State your expectations. Develop clear instructions for groups and share a rubric at the beginning of the group work activity so that students understand how to succeed. Consider sharing examples of successful group projects from a previous class.
- Acknowledge students’ attitudes toward group work. Openly discuss why students typically don’t like group work and what the research says about the benefits of group work. Helping students understand that group work is challenging, but useful, may increase their motivation and commitment to the activity.
- Check in with groups. With larger projects or extended group work, create structures that allow students to report out on their progress. For example: use Canvas discussion board/survey to allow students to provide updates; set up meetings with groups or a group representative to assess their progress; save class time to check students’ work and listen to their questions. Address any obvious disengagement or dysfunction by returning to the community agreements and accountability measures.
- Give students an opportunity to self-assess. As often as possible, ask students to reflect on their contributions to the group: what they’ve contributed to the group, and where they have room for growth. You can also ask them to reflect on the strengths and limitations of their peers’ contributions. Consider building this self-assessment into the larger assessment of the group project.