Conducting Effective Group Work and Team Work | Ohio College Teaching Consortium

This resource on conducting effective group work and team work was written and compiled by Mandy Olejnik, Ph.D., Assistant Director of Howe Writing Across the Curriculum at Miami University (Ohio).

Table Of Contents

Introduction to Group Work and Team Work
Why Use Small Groups?
Informal Groups vs. Formal Teams
Strategies for Promoting Effective Small Group Work
Strategies for Promoting Effective Team Work
Conclusion
Further Reading

Conducting effective group work and team work

Introduction to Group Work and Team Work

Workplaces increasingly call for employees to collaborate on tasks together, be it brainstorming initial ideas, finding solutions to problems, or formally writing reports and recommendations. Writing and learning are inherently social, and students benefit from working together with their peers (Adler-Kassner & Wardle, 2015; Ambrose et al., 2011). Introducing group and team writing and work assignments can thus be an effective pedagogical intervention to incorporate into your courses.

In this resource, we offer guidance for how to implement group and team learning into your pedagogy, paying particular attention to team work vs. group work.

Why Use Small Groups?

Research demonstrates collaborative work is beneficial for students in helping them interact more deeply with course texts, share and broaden ideas, and engage with course content. Bruffee (1986) argues that collaborative learning is an effective way to improve student thinking and thus writing is to improve conversations with knowledgeable peers; Bean and Melzer (2021) likewise posit group work as a means to help students learn through a disciplinary perspective, ask questions, and create knowledge together as a class community. Put another way, small group work makes learning more active for students, and offers pathways for deeper connections to texts and course materials.

In addition, small group work decenters the instructor, allowing students to learn with and from each other and the instructor to play a guiding and supporting role. Inclusive teaching practices recommend advancing student agency in the classroom; small group work can be one way toward empowering students as learners and thinkers, and discourages the sort of top-down transmission model of learning where the instructor lectures all of the information.

Informal Groups vs. Formal Teams

While commonly conflated, there’s an important difference between students working together as a group and working together as a team. Instructors can use either or both effectively for different purposes in their course contexts. To distinguish between them, here are some important characteristics of both groups and teams:

Informal Groups

– Formed more casually for limited time period
– Focus on individual goals
– Lower-stakes, easier tasks

Formal Teams

– Formed more intentionally over a long period
– Focus on agreed-upon team goals
– Higher-stakes, more challenging tasks

An instructor might ask students to work together in groups, for example, during a low-stakes activity like class discussion where they have to choose a side on a debate topic relating to course material. Alternatively, an instruction might ask students to work together as a team if their task is to research solutions to a problem and provide an extensive recommendation. Oftentimes group work is used routinely in class sessions with groups that may change, while teamwork is sustained across time with the same members.

Students likely have a lot of experience with group work, while teamwork is more precise and requires a different mindset and approach. Writing as a team also requires specific skills and presents new challenges for students. Both configurations can be useful in the classroom, although careful instruction and scaffolding will lead to more effective results, as later sections will address.

Strategies for Promoting Effective Small Group Work

Set clear guidelines and criteria.

Small group work often flounders when students are left unsure of what they are supposed to do, or not having enough to talk about. Create and distribute clear guidelines and criteria for students, such as a list of specific, targeted questions for them to discuss, a prompt to respond to, and a set time.

Form groups purposely.

There are many ways to form small groups in class—randomly assigned, pre-planned by student interest or level, and so forth. Decide what would work best for your particular group of students. Would they benefit from working with someone across the room from them? Are there groups of like-minded students or similar majors who could offer an interesting perspective together? Whichever way you choose, try to keep groups no larger than 5 and at least 3. Research shows groups of 5 tend to be best, since students can’t split into pairs or leave one person out.

Vary the small group task.

While small group work can be effective, there can be too much of a good thing. Consider designing different kinds of small group tasks, such as some discussions, some solution-posing, and some reflection. Bean and Melzer (2021) offer ten different strategies for designing small group tasks: the thesis-posing strategy, the template strategy, the question-generating strategy, the believing and doubting strategy, the evidence-finding strategy, the case strategy, the norming session strategy, the peer review workshop strategy, the metacognitive reflection strategy, and the group paper strategy. Consider learning more and varying the strategies you implement in your course.

Teach your groups how to work together.

Students often need some guidance on how to work together for collaborative activities, especially in the beginning of the semester. Instructors can give students tips on group interactions, as well as open dialogues around discussion dynamics including introversion vs. extroversion, body language, cultural difference amongst students, etc. Explicit attention to these details can make for better group discussions and dynamics in your course.

Strategies for Promoting Effective Team Work

Have a direct conversation with students about what team writing and work is not.

Team writing, especially with longer-form reports or prose, is not piecing together individually-written sections. One person should not be writing the entire project, not nor should the final product be patched together at the last minute. The overall product should be written in a direction that all group members agree on and decide and should be worked on across time with ample opportunity to revise, change, and seek feedback.
Discussing these with students can be tremendously helpful. An instructor could even ask them to write on a whiteboard all the things they think team writing is/is not, and have students compare and synthesize what they find.

Break team projects into component parts.

Like with any learning, scaffolding is crucial for team work and writing contexts. Assign team writing assignments and deliverables one at a time, with teams having a chance to collaborate together on a proposal first before an outline before a first draft. Doing so gives students a chance to practice working together, as well as gives the instruction the opportunity to intervene sooner if there are any issues that arise. Breaking up components also makes the task feel less intimidating to students and can build their confidence in completing the assignment.

Have students complete skills inventory.

Each student brings with them their own unique set of skills and experiences into the course. Before assigning students into groups, distribute a skills inventory. This encourages strength-based learning dispositions and allows students to explore what they specifically can contribute, as well as helps them evaluate future learning contexts. Check out the skills inventory from San Jose State University as an example. An instructor could assign this as homework and then ask students to self-assess and share their strengths, and then use those results in the following step on forming teams.

Form teams intentionally.

Using feedback from those skill inventories, match students with a range of skills and strengths. For example, when creating groups for a team website project, the instructor might want to ensure that at least one member of the team has strengths in digital platforms and literacies, while other members have useful idea-generating strengths or task-organization. It can help students to “balance each other out” and work together to complement their strengths.

Assign team contracts.

In order to help ensure smooth operations, assign a team contract for members to complete and sign. A team contract helps students decide and declare expectations and agreements for the team, and holds them accountable to each other if one or more members do not meet the agreed-upon expectations. This document can be assigned as one of the first team assignments, and can be graded collectively but include an individual component/reflection that each student completes.

Build in progress reports and reflection.

Check in with students along the way as they work on their team projects. Assign individual bi-weekly “check ins” where students can share how everything is going. Set aside 5-10 mins of class time to have whole-class discussions about team management. Assign a longer, more formal progress report like students might complete in industry. Doing so will help you intervene sooner if a team has issues, as well as help students stay on track.

Include team evaluation.

Just as you assigned team contracts, assign individual team evaluations at the end of the semester after all team work is completed. You can provide students with the space to discuss team contributions prior to final grading (referring back to team contracts) and build into the project’s overall grade to show the value of this evaluation/reflection. This serves as another reflective and evaluation tool to grade along with the final product.

Conclusion

Overall, group and team work can be an effective and generative teaching strategy in many courses but should be designed, facilitated, and assessed intentionally. See below for further resources and recommendations related to team projects and team writing.