What is it?
Collaborative or group-based learning is a significant part of active or student-centred learning. Group-based learning can help students develop a host of skills that are increasingly important in the professional world (De Prada, 2022). It allows teachers to assign complex, authentic problems to groups of students rather than assigning tasks to individual students. Student collaboration can be facilitated in face- to-face contexts and in online environments using tools such as wikis.
Why use it?
- Collaboration and working in teams to accomplish specified goals is often the rule rather than the exception in professional contexts, so group learning can provide an authentic learning experience.
- Setting up an assessment activity as group work automatically expands the range of learning outcomes that can be developed and assessed to include areas such as communication, team-work, leadership, sensitivity to cultural diversity and awareness of social and ethical responsibilities.
- Peer and self-assessment techniques can be incorporated as part of the task design to enable students to develop their own voice and perspectives.
How do I do it?
- Provide students with context, clear instructions and connections to learning outcomes and assessment criteria for the group work task.
- Help students learn how to identify group issues, listen reflectively, give constructive feedback, structure discussions, manage their groups, give group presentations and compile reports, review individuals’ contributions and deal with common group work issues.
- Obtain feedback and monitor the progress of groups as they work through the process. Guidance may be required and it may take the form of general information for the whole class (strategies for group meetings, guidelines for preparing written reports etc.), or it may be specific to the needs of a particular group.
Considerations
- Clarify group purpose, ground rules, responsibilities and distribution of tasks/work, meeting guidelines and deadlines. A 2023 paper (McKay & Sridharan) echoes some of these considerations in addition to the importance of outlining the value of group work to students.
- Consider building group dynamics by facilitating ice breaker activities and discussing what makes an effective group.
- Address issues relating to fairness, where some students believe they have contributed more to a task than others. Build in requirements or related assessments such as an assessable presentation, peer review or an indication of the contribution of other team members.
- When incorporating reflective activities into group work, it is important that students have the opportunity to apply what they have learnt through their reflections and to relate this to future learning tasks. This will help to promote improvements in the learning practices of your students.
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For online group work a range of synchronous and asynchronous tools can be considered including the following.
- vUWS group tools (Wikis or discussion tools)
- Google docs
- Zoom
Resources
The University of New South Wales (Australia) has developed a useful set of resources to guide the design and assessment of group-based activities and assignments.
References
De Prada, E., Mareque, M. & Pino-Juste, M. Teamwork skills in higher education: is university training contributing to their mastery?. Psicol. Refl. Crít. 35 , 5 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41155-022-00207-1
McKay, J., & Sridharan, B. (2023). Student perceptions of collaborative group work (CGW) in higher education. Studies in Higher Education , 49 (2), 221–234. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2227677
