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  Home > Resources > Effective Assessment > Creating Successful Group Assignments > General Guidelines

General Guidelines

• Successful group assignments are fundamentally different than those designed to be completed by one person. Time constraints, increased task complexity and dispersing resources among group members are all ways to generate interdependent behavior within groups.
  
  
• The majority of group assignment work must be done in class. It is unreasonable to assume that students can and will find a time in their full schedules in which they can meet outside of class. Unless there are regular points at which they must turn something in, they will most likely wait until the deadline is looming, and then have a negative group experience. Furthermore, working together in class gives groups a chance to consult the teacher when they are confused, rather than risk reinforcing their own misperceptions.
  
  
• If groups are to complete several assignments together, they must be given the opportunity to reflect upon the quality of their interaction as a group. Though group-skills are among the most-demanded attributes of a college graduate today, students receive very little training in how to participate in a group. Self-evaluation, peer-evaluation and immediate evaluation of group outputs are all methods of providing feedback about group performance. For advice on how to successfully implement peer-evaluation, see Petting the Shark: Using Student Peer Evaluations.
  
  
• Groups should be strategically-organized and assigned by the teacher. When groups are allowed to choose their own members, friends choose each other and usually form destabilizing subgroups (coalitions) within their larger group. This guarantees a difficult experience for the group. Furthermore, there is almost always a group of "leftovers" that no other group "wanted." This is a terrible social experience for anyone, and the group of "leftovers" frequently underperform and have poor dynamics within their group.
  
  
• Consider using permanent groups. Groups develop through distinct phases, the first of which is very awkward and generally demands a great deal of attention to social concerns. As a result, continually mixed-and-matched groups spend most of their working through this social awkwardness. If your goal is for everyone in a smallish class to get to know one another, then this might be appropriate. However, the output from these groups will not be as strong as if each collection of people were allowed to develop norms of comfort through repeated interaction over time. (Furthermore, "real-world" office groups rarely get to mix and match.)

 

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