Skip to main content

Strategies for Successful Group Work

Originally published in February 2025

Group work can be a powerful tool to foster community in the classroom. When well structured, group work assessments help reduce students' feelings of isolation by providing an opportunity to make valuable connections with their peers. Group work supports students in developing key professional and interpersonal work skills in collaboration, accountability, and ownership, along with other transferable social skills and experiences learned from navigating group dynamics (Chang and Brickman, 2018; Edmunds and Brown, 2010; Shaw et al., 2015; Wong, 2020).  

Though the benefits of assigning students group work are well documented, group work does have many moving pieces to consider, particularly in terms of how to address student concerns about fairness in evaluation (Hillyard et al., 2010; Liden, Nagao & Charles, 1986; Martinez-Romero et al. 2021; Pluut & Curşeu, 2013). Whether you are unsure of how to deal with group conflicts or how to assess group work accurately and fairly or are just looking for a few ideas to fold into your pedagogical practice, this week’s TEI newsletter has strategies to support successful group work from start to finish.  

 

Preparing for Group Dynamics

To maximize learning through group work, students need support with expected behaviours, purpose, and group formation, as well as managing roles, strengths, and conflicts that play out in any given group dynamic. Those students who are more introverted or those with neurodivergence, for example, can find interacting with others difficult, and benefit from structure and guidance to support group dynamics. 

To prepare students for their roles and relationships in group work, consider the following strategies: 

  • Discuss the importance of engagement, respect, accountability, and developing a supportive peer learning community.
  • Determine how groups will be formed, whether randomly, self-selected, or coordinated with a mix of abilities and backgrounds using a class survey. Consider providing your students with the opportunity to tell you if there is anyone in the class that they are unable to work with to diminish potential group dynamic issues later.  
  • Reinforce the expected outcomes from group work with explicit connections to your course-level learning outcomes and skill acquisition for future-readiness in their careers and civic engagement. This can spur internal motivation and develop shared goals among group members.  
  • Develop clear ground rules for how groups function and encourage students to negotiate group contracts that facilitate more productive group development with established norms and goals.
  • Discuss with your students how roles within the group will be assigned, and consider whether students will self-select tasks based on strengths or rotate roles among students at key points during the group work process. Considering approaches that clearly define roles and responsibilities such as leader, recorder, and presenter (for example, POGIL classrooms).
  • Provide and identify classroom time for groups to work on their assignment. This will allow you to observe group dynamics, answer any immediate questions that students might have, and diminish some of the challenges with coordinating student schedules outside of class time for collaboration.

 

Developing Evaluation Strategies

Typically, this is where students have the most questions and become the most anxious. As Wong, Kan & Chow, 2022 explain, some students resist group work out of concerns about uneven workload distribution and the related fairness in evaluation of the final project. They associate individual work and assessments with greater efficiency and better quality of outcomes (grades), as they don't have to rely on others’ abilities to succeed. Developing clear evaluation strategies can help mitigate “inequity-based motivation loss” or what the literature has called the problem of the "free-rider" and the related "sucker effect " (Hall & Buzwell, 2012; Kerr 1983; Lantane et al. 1979; Martin 2009; Mulvey & Klein 1998; Strong & Anderson 1990; Watkins 2004). This motivation loss can impact the distribution of work and group dynamics, and overall reduce learning mastery and outcomes (Hall & Buzwell, 2012; Wong, Kan & Chow 2022). 

Being explicit about how individual contributions will be assessed can support motivation and transparency in the learning process. Consider varying who is doing the evaluation and when the evaluation happens in the term and the group work process. Multiplying the points and people involved in the assessment process enhances student accountability by conveying a clear message that students will be evaluated for their contribution to the group and not just the final project. Some approaches include:

  • Self-evaluation – Provides students with reflective evaluation opportunities at key points in the group work process to thoughtfully analyze their personal contribution, strengths, and areas for improvement in the group work process. Self-evaluation can either be a graded component or simply a "completed" or "not complete".
  • Group Peer evaluation – Like self-evaluation, peer evaluation provides students agency in the group evaluation process. While this is commonly used to evaluate the distributed effort and roles of their peers when the deliverable is submitted, it can also be used as a formative feedback tool with which students also evaluate their group members’ contribution at a midpoint in the group work process. Further, group peer evaluation can help instructors detect and address group dynamic issues during the process, rather than only at the end of the assignment. Peer evaluations can be either narrative or quantitative in nature, but a mix of both can support the reflective process. (See the next section for platforms to support eliciting student data from and learn more about peer evaluation in TEI's recorded webinar, Peer Assessment to Promote Learning.)
  • Audience Peer evaluation – If your group work assignment has a deliverable at the end (presentation, learning material, visual aid, etc.) that is shared with the class, consider providing the audience with a simplified rubric to assess the work of other student groups. Providing classmates with the opportunity to watch group presentations or evaluate other group work deliverables as your students will all see and understand things differently. 
  • Instructor evaluation – Clarifying expectations and communicating intentions is key for instructor evaluation of group work. Consider dividing sections of the deliverables between individually graded and group graded components to balance expected group collaboration skills with accurate individual contributions to the final output. Providing students with a well-structured rubric prior to the beginning of group work provides transparency and helps with student success. Ensure you are aligning the rubric with your course-level learning outcomes and the purpose of the group work. Constructive alignment can support your evaluative process to keep the boundaries of assessing well denoted.

Find more information about peer or self-evaluation rubrics in this Guide.

 

Choosing Collaborative Technology for Group Work

Providing students with platforms to share collaborative documents in the group work process maximizes flexibility for students with their group workflow across time and space. Students can work in shared documents both inside and outside of class time with minimal coordination of schedules and locations. Using collaborative online spaces allows instructors and students to create additional evidence of individual group work contributions and opportunities to observe group dynamics.

  • Online collaborative documents or folders can be set up by the instructor through sharing a link on MyLS from Microsoft OneDrive (using Word, Excel, PPT slides, etc.) for each group prior to beginning the process.  
  • Turning on track changes and viewing version histories conveys individual contributions to the development of the group deliverable.  
  • Using the Comments function, students can annotate each other's work to add other resources, discuss links between sections, and ensure there are no gaps in their work. 

To learn more about collaborative tools, visit leverage group tools to support social iteration among students in the Guide to Teaching and Learning.  

 

Troubleshooting Group Challenges

Even when group work is well planned, unforeseen issues can occur. Creating structures for issues such as unforeseen absences, inequitable student contributions, and unreachable group members will help to mitigate student concerns in the group work process. Consider what your policies and processes are if:

  • There are already established conflicts between students in a group. 
    • Will you allow students to switch groups if the dynamic is fractured? Are you creating mechanisms to manage interpersonal dynamics prior to group creation? Can students inform you of interpersonal issues to ensure they are not placed in groups that could be problematic or unsafe?
  • There is an unexpected student absence. 
    • As we are all aware, students’ realities have greatly shifted since the pandemic and there could be multiple reasons for a student to be unexpectedly absent for extended periods. What processes do you have in place to mitigate illness issues in group work?
  • Students are concerned about equity in workloads. 
    • Is one of the outcomes of this assessment that all students contribute equally to the product? Or is it more important to practice equity in the group work process? Communicating this to your students, as well as how assignment evaluations will work (please see “Evaluation Strategies” section of this email for further information) will help to dispel any uncertainties students might have.
  • Students are engaging with generative AI without authorization.

Provide your students with information about how group conflicts will be managed, should they arise. What kind of processes (for example, Group Contracts) will you employ so that students have the tools to resolve some conflicts themselves, and also know when and how they can escalate issues to you? 

 

Curated Resources

 

Back to Top | Read more Teaching Together Bulletins

Unknown Spif - $key