group work assignment roles

• Request a Consultation
• Workshops and Virtual Conversations
• Technical Support
• Course Design and Preparation
• Observation & Feedback

Teaching Resources

Using Roles in Group Work

Resource overview.

How using roles can improve group work in your class

While collaborative learning through group work has been proven to have the potential to produce stronger academic achievement than other kinds of learning environments (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 2006), it can be challenging to implement successfully because many students come to college without the tools they need to automatically succeed in collaborative learning contexts. One way of providing supportive structures to students in a collaborative learning environment is through assigning roles within group work.

Potential Benefits of Using Assigned Roles in Group Work

Assigning group roles can be a beneficial strategy for successful group work design for a number of reasons:

• Group roles offer an opportunity for high quality, focused interactions between group participants. Participants are more likely to stay on task and pay closer attention to the task at hand when their roles in the collaboration are clear and distinct.
• Group roles provide all students with a clear avenue for participation. Students are less likely to feel left out or unengaged when they have a particular duty that they are responsible for completing. Along the same lines, assigning group roles reduces the likelihood of one individual completing the task for the whole group, or “taking over,” to the detriment of others’ learning.
• Group roles encourage individual accountability. Group members are more likely to hold each other accountable for not completing work if a particular task is assigned to them.
• Group roles allow students to strengthen their communicative skills, especially in areas that they are less confident in volunteering for.
• Group roles can help disrupt stereotypical and gendered role assignments, which can be common in group learning. For example, Hirshfield and Chachra (2015) found that in first-year engineering courses, female students tended to undertake less technical roles and more communicative roles than their male colleagues. By assigning roles during group work, and by asking students to alternate these roles at different points in the semester, students can work past gendered assumptions about themselves and their groupmates.

POGIL: A Model for Role Assignments in Collaborative Learning

One small group learning methodology where the use of group roles is well-defined and researched is the  Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) method . The POGIL method calls for groups of three or four students who work in a team on process-oriented guided inquiry activities in which students construct their knowledge through interactions with others. Traditional POGIL roles for group members are provided below (POGIL, 2016).

• Manager  or  Facilitator : Manages the group by helping to ensure that the group stays on task, is focused, and that there is room for everyone in the conversation.
• Recorder : Keeps a record of those who were in the group, and the roles that they play in the group. The recorder also records critical points from the small group’s discussion along with findings or answers.
• Spokesperson  or  Presenter : Presents the group’s ideas to the rest of the class. The Spokesperson should rely on the recorder’s notes to guide their report.
• Reflector  or  Strategy Analyst : Observes team dynamics and guides the consensus-building process (helps group members come to a common conclusion).

Other Highly Adaptable Roles to Consider

You can adapt roles for different kinds of group tasks. While the POGIL model is a useful place to start, you may find that the tasks associated with your discipline require other kinds of roles for effective group learning. Adding to or reframing POGIL roles can be beneficial in these contexts. Below are some suggestions for additional roles that might be valuable to a variety of learning situations.

• Encourager : Encourages group members to continue to think through their approaches and ideas. The Encourager uses probing questions to help facilitate deeper thinking, and group-wide consideration of ideas.
• Questioner : Pushes back when the team comes to consensus too quickly, without considering a number of options or points of view. The questioner makes sure that the group hears varied points of view, and that the group is not avoiding potentially rich areas of disagreement.
• Checker : Checks over work in problem-solving contexts before the group members finalize their answers.

Strategies for Effective Facilitation of Group Roles

The following suggestions are strategies for effective facilitation of group roles. These strategies are helpful in a wide variety of group work situations, but are essential for group work that will last beyond a single class period, or constitute a significant portion of student grades.

• Be transparent about why you are assigning group roles. This kind of transparency can increase student buy-in by helping them recognize the value in establishing group roles
• Provide students with  a list of roles and brief definitions for each role  at the beginning of the group work activity. Make it clear which tasks are associated with which roles.
• Alternatively, you may find it helpful, especially in advanced-level classes, to encourage students to develop their own roles in groups based on the tasks that they feel will be critical to the group’s success. This strategy provides the students with a larger level of autonomy in their learning, while also encouraging them to use proven structures that will help them be successful.
• Roles can be assigned randomly through a variety of strategies, from who has the next birthday to color-coded post-it notes, or  a place card  that points out roles based on where everyone is sitting.
• Circulate early in the class period to be sure that everyone has been assigned a role, and that everyone is clear about what their responsibilities include.
• Be willing to reinforce the given roles throughout the activity. For roles to work, students have to feel as though they will be held accountable for fulfilling those roles. Therefore, it is critical for you to step in if you see someone taking over someone else’s role or not fulfilling their assigned role. Often gentle reminders about who is supposed to be doing what can be useful interventions. For example, if someone is talking over everyone and not listening to their other groupmates, you might say something like “Remember, as a spokesperson, your job is to represent the ideas of everyone in the group.”
• Talk with students individually if their speech or conduct could be silencing, denigrating, or excluding others. Remember: your silence on this issue may be read as endorsement.
• Changing things up regularly is imperative. If you use group roles frequently, mixing up roles throughout the semester can help students develop communication skills in a variety of areas rather than relying on a single personal strength.
• If this is a long-term group assignment, be sure to provide structures for individual feedback for the instructor and other group member on group dynamics. This could be a formal or informal check in, but it’s critical for students to have a space to voice concerns related to group dynamics—especially if this assignment counts for a large portion of their final grade. This feedback might be provided through an anonymous survey in paper form or through a web-based tool like Qualtrics or a Google form. These check-ins can reduce student anxiety about the potential for uneven group participation.

Overall, using assigned roles in group work provides students with a supportive structure that promotes meaningful collaborative learning. While group learning can be challenging to implement effectively, using roles can mitigate some of the challenges associated with learning in groups, while offering students the opportunity to develop a variety of communication skills that will be critical to their success in college and their future careers.

Burke, Alison. (2011). Group work: How to use groups effectively.  The Journal of Effective Teaching , 11(2), 87-95.

Beebe, S.A., & Masterson, J.T. (2003).  Communicating in small groups . Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

Cheng, W. Y., Lam, S. F., & Chan, C. Y. (2008). When high achievers and low achievers work in the same group: The roles of group heterogeneity and processes in project‐based learning.  British Journal of Educational Psychology ,  78 (2), 205-221.

Eberlein, T., Kampmeier, J., Minderhout, V., Moog, R.S., Platt, T., Varma-Nelson, P., White, H.B. (2008). Pedagogies of engagement in science: A comparison of PBL, POGIL and PLTL.  Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, 36 (4), 262-73.

Hale, D., & Mullen, L. G. (2009). Designing process-oriented guided-inquiry activities: A new innovation for marketing classes.  Marketing Education Review ,  19 (1), 73-80.

Hirshfield, L., & Chachra, D. (2015). Task choice, group dynamics and learning goals: Understanding student activities in teams.  2015 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference: Launching a New Vision in Engineering Education Proceedings, FIE 2015 , 1-5.

Johnson, C. (2011). Activities using process‐oriented guided inquiry learning (POGIL) in the foreign language classroom.  Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German ,  44 (1), 30-38.

Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., and Smith, K.A. (2006).  Active learning: Cooperation in the university classroom . Edina, MN: Interaction.

Moog, R.S. (2014). Process oriented guided inquiry learning. In M.A. McDaniel, R. F. Frey, S.M. Fitzpatrick, & Roediger, H.L. (Eds.).  Integrating cognitive science with innovative teaching in STEM disciplines  (147-166). St. Louis: Washington University in St. Louis Libraries.

The POGIL Project. (2017). https://pogil.org/

Springer, L., Stanne, M.E., & Donovan, S.S. (1999). Effects of small-group learning on undergraduates in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology: A meta-analysis.  Review of Educational Research, 96 (1), 21-51.

Have suggestions?

If you have suggestions of resources we might add to these pages, please contact us:

[email protected] (314) 935-6810 Mon - Fri, 8:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

21 Group Roles for Students (List of Examples)

Group roles help to distribute tasks fairly. They may also prevent duplication of work, achieve efficiency, and ensure group member accountability .

For students, group tasks are assigned to help students develop soft skills like teamwork and collaboration . These skills are important for workplace readiness.

Examples of group roles for students include: facilitator, arbitrator, monitor, note-taker, and timekeeper. Below, 21 different types of group roles are outlined for you to pick from for your own group tasks.

Group Roles for Students

1. Facilitator – The facilitator is a person who guides the group’s discussions. They may come to the group discussion with a set of discussion questions to ask, prompt quieter team members to see what their opinions are, and ask ‘devil’s advocate’ questions to help improve the group discussion and achieve a better outcome.

2. Arbitrator/Haromonizer – The arbitrator steps up to ensure the group achieves common consensus. Once group members have presented their ideas and opinions, the arbitrator will help the group to find shared consensus on a way forward. They might ask team members to come to compromise, find ways to include all viewpoints, or identify ways team members’ views are congruent. A good strategy for the arbitrator is to draw up a venn diagram to visualize points of overlap between team members’ views.

3. Monitor – The monitor keeps account of objects, supplies, and other items within the team. They will know who owns what items, and which items are shared team items. They may have a check-in/check-out sheet to ensure all items are accounted for. Because this is a mostly accounting role, the monitor may also have another group role at the same time.

4. Notetaker – The notetaker will take minutes in all meetings. They should be accountable for sharing those notes after the meeting and cleaning them up so they are easy for all team members to read. It’s a good idea for the notetaker to also write down what the outcome of the meeting was, what actions will take place after the meeting, and who is responsible for which action.

5. Time Keeper – The timekeeper ensures that everything in the meeting gets enough time to be discussed. This may mean that they encourage the team to get started instead of socializing at the start, or encourage the team to move on if one topic is being dwelled upon at the expense of others. The time keeper can also keep track of how long each task will take so the entire team project is completed in time. In other words, they will set milestones for different tasks to be completed.

6. Devil’s advocate – The devil’s advocate’s entire role is to pick holes in the current project and identify weaknesses. This is a hard role because you’re going to be being critical of others. Make sure you’re not too harsh, and let people know when you’re wearing your “devil’s advocate” hat so they know you’re playing a role and not just being snarky!

7. IT Guru – The IT guru is in charge of all things technology. They might make sure there is space booked in the library with the right IT equipment, organize the electronic equipment for a class presentation, and create the animations for the team’s slide deck.

8. Reporter – The reporter is the designated person who gives the final presentation to the teacher or class. They might be the best speaker or presentor of the group. However, they need to be a representative of the whole group and not just say what they want. Sometimes, every group member is expected to take this role in equal measure during a presentation.

9. Researcher – Sometimes, a group may decide to allocate one person the role of ‘researcher’. This person is tasked with going away and gathering further information on a topic that they team has identified as an area wher emore knowledge is required. They will come back to team meetings later on with what they found. To be good at this role, you need to have strong media literacy skills.

10. Mentor – The mentor is usually a team member who is more experienced and able to guide the team through their project. This mentor should be there to provide support but allow the team members to lead. Mentors encourage and help without being overly intrusive. They might know the right questions to ask or have great advice during times of adversity.

11. Leader – Some teams assign a leader who will be the designated ‘head’ of the task. There are many different types of leadership that the group will have to figure out. For example, can the leader overrule the group or would you prefer a democratic leadership style ? The leader might also be expected to delegate tasks to the rest of the team.

12. Servant Leader – Another type of leadership role in the group could be the ‘servant leader’. This is a hard-working leader whose every task is focused on serving the team and the group goals.

13. Autocratic Leader – The autocratic leader is a firm authority figure whose job is to make all the final decisions. The buck stops with them, but they might have to overrule their team members if they disagree with them.

14. Pacesetting Leader – The pacesetting leader is the type of leader whose role is to set high expectations for the team. Like the lead runner in a marathon, the pacesetting leader moves the fastest and works the hardest to show the team how it’s done.

15. Charismatic Leader (Motivator) – The charismatic leader is a motivator. Your group might assign a charismatic leader if there’s one person everyone respects for their ability to motivate a team and the whole group knows this leader will get the most out of the team.

16. Prioritizer – The prioritizer’s role is to make sure the group is focused on the things that matter and will achieve progress. In a meeting, the prioritizer will choose which tasks should be raised, and at the end of the meeting, they may create a hirearchy of to-do tasks so the group knows which tasks need to be done most urgency.

17. Diverger – The diverger’s role is to put on a ‘ divergent thinking ’ hat. Divergent thinking is all about thinking about multiple possible solutions to a single problem. If there’s a task that requires divergent thinking ( such as brainstorming ), the diverger will take the lead in the discussion.

18. Converger – The converger’s role is to put on a ‘convergent thinking’ hat. Once the team has gathered a bunch of data points, the converger tries to bring those data points together to find a single best solution to the problem.

19. Runner – The runner’s role is to run tasks for the team. This role is often given to the intern or assistant who works on the periphery of the group. They are not as required in group discussion and while their input is welcome, they can also leave the group to run tasks in the middle of sessions if needed.

20. Wildcard – The wildcard steps in when another group member is missing. One day they might be the note taker and the next they might be the IT Guru. While they don’t have one clear role, they need to be skilled enough to step into any role at short notice, so they’re a valuable asset.

21. Checker – The checker reviews everyone else’s work to make sure it meets a minimum standard. They might be the best at grammar and spelling, for example, or they might peer review others’ work to make sure it’s factually accurate and doesn’t have flaws in their arguments.

How to Assign Group Roles

The group dynamics of every group is different, so there is no best way to assign group roles. Negotiate with your team and solicit advice from your teacher.

Below are some suggested strategies for assigning roles:

• Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each group member: Simply assigning a title is not enough. List 5 to 10 responsibilities for each role and state when those responsibilities should be exercised. This gives group members clarity on what they need to do. It may also ensure transparency and performance standards.
• Assign roles based on group members’ strengths (and weaknesses): If you have a group member who is particularly good at computers, it makes sense to make them the IT guru. If there’s a group member with great organizational skills , they might be a natural fit for the timekeeper. If you’ve got a group member who is an excellent speaker, it makes sense to make them the ‘reporter’, and so on. Group members may also nominate roles that they know are their weaknesses to avoid being placed in positions where they may not be comfortable. 
• Allow all members to have input: Too often, a domineering group member will assign roles without fully consulting group members or asking for their input.
• Consider rotating roles: To prevent burnout and ensure group members get a chance at a variety of roles, you may want to rotate roles between group members. For example, if you have three projects to complete, rotate roles after each project. This can help resolve disputes if multiple members want the same roles.
• Be flexible: Be open to adjusting roles and even sharing roles between group members. Remember that you’ll never always get your own way. Furthermore, part-way through the tasks, you may find changes on-the-fly are necessary. Be open to this.

If there is one piece of advice I can give to my students, it’s to remind them that you’ll never get your own way when completing group tasks. In fact, you might need to put aside the idea of getting A+ grades and focus on the intrinsic value of the task: to learn the social skills of working with people who have different perspectives, skills, and motivations to you. Remember that this is practice for the workplace where you’ll be working in groups with interpersonal conflicts on a daily basis.

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ What is Educational Psychology?
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ What is IQ? (Intelligence Quotient)
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 5 Top Tips for Succeeding at University
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 50 Durable Goods Examples

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Purposefully pause.  Think critically. Reflect on your teaching and your students' learning.

Brought to you by

• Mar 25, 2021

Assigning Roles to Increase the Effectiveness of Group Work

Updated: May 17, 2023

Karen De Meyst , Miami University

Jonathan Grenier , Miami University

Although group assignments have many benefits, instructors may encounter a wide variety of problems. Common problems include students not contributing to the project, one student dominating the group, or students having different expectations about group performance and workload (Burke, 2011). In this article, we suggest assigning roles to group members to mitigate these problems, thereby increasing team effectiveness and efficiency.

Assigning Roles to Group Members

Most studies on the use of group roles focus on settings where students have to work together for in-class activities. The literature suggests multiple benefits of this practice for outside-of-class group work. Specifically, studies on in-class group activities find increased participation, less freeriding, increased knowledge acquisition, and reduced student distraction (Cohn, 1999; Coggeshall, 2010; Hirshfield & Chachra, 2015; Schellens et al. 2005; Shimazoe & Aldrich, 2010). To test the effectiveness of this approach for larger, outside-of-class group projects, we implemented it in an accounting course.

Implementation

Specifically, we tested this approach in an upper-level undergraduate accounting course at Miami University. For this course, students had to complete four group projects. The instructor assigned students to groups of five or six students at the start of the semester, and groups remained the same throughout the semester. In addition, the instructor explained that for each group project, students would have to assign roles among group members. The list of roles included a manager as the leader of the group, a planner responsible for planning meetings and sending reminders, an editing specialist, a technology specialist, a checker responsible for knowing and verifying compliance with the assignment requirements, and two questioners who were required to play the devil's advocate. Given that there were seven roles in total and that all roles had to be fulfilled for each project, if a group had less than seven members in the group, students would have to take on two roles.

Further, students had to take on a different role for each project. In this way, they developed multiple skills. This also reduced the risk that one student would dominate the group (Cottell & Millis, 1992; Rosser, 1998). As students assigned roles among themselves, students could start in roles they found most comfortable and maximize group members' strengths (Andrist, 2015). It was also important to hold students accountable for the roles they fulfilled (TTC, 2018). Thus, students had to communicate to the instructor the roles assigned for each project. Although all group members received the same grade for the group projects, the instructor knew who was responsible if the group failed to meet a requirement. Overall, the instructor emphasized that all group members remained responsible for the submission content and group roles related to the coordination of the work.

Student Reactions

To examine the effectiveness of assigning roles to group members, we compared students' survey responses, peer evaluations, and the quality of students' submissions in the section of the course in which this approach was implemented to two other sections of the same course without assigned roles. Overall, the survey measured students' perceptions of group dynamics and team performance. Although perceptions of group dynamics did not seem to be affected by assigning roles, results indicated that perceptions of team performance were higher when students assigned roles. Specifically, students perceived the group as better organized, and team members were better at following through on decisions and action items. These differences were statistically significant.

Students were also asked to describe in the survey what they enjoyed and what they did not enjoy about the group work in the course. Although not asked for it specifically, different students shared their opinions about the requirement to assign group roles. One student who appreciated this intervention formulated it as follows: "It allowed us to distribute work according to our strengths and helps build communications skills". Other students enjoyed that the roles changed from one project to another, noticed more effective communication and cooperation, and argued that it helped them to hold themselves accountable for their decisions as a group.

Interestingly, a few students were less positive. For example, one student argued that the requirement to assign roles in an upper-level undergraduate course felt immature and unnecessary. Another student suggested that it would be better if roles did not have to change for every project so that students could stay with roles they were good at.

Further, students had to complete peer evaluations for each of their group members. The peer evaluation questionnaires contained three items related to team effectiveness. Averages on these items were consistently higher in the section where students had to assign group roles, but not always significantly higher. The instructor also subjectively assessed the quality of the submissions.

Although there did not seem to be any differences between the quality of the content of the group projects, it was clear that students worked better together as groups as (a) formal requirements were better met, (b) there was increased consistency between the different parts of the group work, and (c) the writing was better.

Considerations

Overall, we found assigning roles to group members can be a good way to improve group work and team effectiveness. However, there is no one-size-fits-all approach, and different adaptations are possible, depending on the specific characteristics and learning objectives of your group project.

Here are some final considerations to keep in mind when implementing this approach:

Before implementing this approach, it is important to reflect on how beneficial this approach could be for your specific course. What are the problems you are currently experiencing? How could this approach increase the effectiveness of your group projects?

Instructors may want to consider their students and the level of their course in the curriculum. Some students may appreciate that assigning group roles helps coordinate the work. In contrast, students with a more independent attitude – especially at higher levels in the curriculum – may experience this additional formal requirement as unnecessary.

It is important to craft your list of roles carefully based on your group projects' specific characteristics and learning objectives. Some roles discussed above may not be relevant for your projects, while you may think of other roles that could make a difference in your course.

Will the instructor assign roles to group members, or should group members assign roles among themselves? While there are benefits to each approach, this decision should depend on the approach that best fits the learning objectives.

Should roles change during the semester, or can students stay with the same role for different projects? Although the requirement to rotate roles, as discussed above, has its own benefits, it may be a good idea to allow students to stay with the same role such that the group optimally benefits from students' strengths.

How will you hold students accountable for the roles fulfilled? Will there be a grade component related to role fulfillment, or will all group members receive the same grade?

Discussion Questions

What are some problems you are experiencing when assigning group work? How could the practice of assigning group roles mitigate these problems?

What are specific roles that students need to fulfill when completing group projects for your course? Which roles are most important?

How could assigning roles to group members help students meet the learning objectives of your group projects? Which modifications would you have to make for this approach to best fulfill your needs?

Andrist, P. (2015). Team roles and responsibilities. Green River College: Campus Reflection Field Guide – Reflective Techniques to Encourage Student Learning: Background and Examples. https://depts.washington.edu/cpreeuw/wordpress/wp content/uploads/2015/10/GR-FG02.pdf

Burke, A. (2011). Group work: How to use groups effectively. The Journal of Effective Teaching, 11 (2), 87–95. https://uncw.edu/jet/articles/vol11_2/burke.pdf

Coggeshall, B. (2010). Assigning individual roles and its effect on the cooperative learning setting . St. John Fisher College. https://fisherpub.sjf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgiarticle=1098&context=mathcs_etd_masters

Cohn, C. (1999). Cooperative learning in a macroeconomics course. College Teaching, 47 (2), 51–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/87567559909595784

Cottell, P., & Millis, B. (1992). Cooperative learning in accounting . Journal of Accounting Education, 10, 95–111. https://doi.org/10.1016/0748-5751(92)90019-2

Hirshfield, L., & Chachra, D. (2015). Task choice, group dynamics and learning goals: Understanding student activities in teams. 2015 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference: Launching a New Vision in Engineering Education Proceedings , 1–5. https://doi.org/ 10.1109/FIE.2015.7344043

Rosser, S. (1998). Group work in science, engineering, and mathematics: Consequences of ignoring gender and race. College Teaching, 46 (3), 82–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/87567559809596243

Schellens, T, Van Keer, H., & Valcke, M. (2005). The impact of role assignment on knowledge construction in asynchronous discussion groups: A multilevel analysis. Small Group Research, 36 (6), 704–745. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/1046496405281771

Shimazoe, J., & Aldrich, H. (2010). Group work can be gratifying: Understanding and overcoming resistance to cooperative learning. College Teaching, 58 , 52–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/87567550903418594

TTC (The Teaching Center Washington University in Saint Louis). (2018). Using roles in group work . https://ctl.wustl.edu/resources/using-roles-in-group-work/

About the Author

• Active Learning
• Engaging Students

Recent Posts

Inclusive Active Participation Through Non-Oral Methods

Faculty-Student Partnerships in Curriculum Design and Review

Fostering Connectedness in the Asynchronous Online Environment

Commentaires

Center for Teaching

Group work: using cooperative learning groups effectively.

Many instructors from disciplines across the university use group work to enhance their students’ learning. Whether the goal is to increase student understanding of content, to build particular transferable skills, or some combination of the two, instructors often turn to small group work to capitalize on the benefits of peer-to-peer instruction. This type of group work is formally termed cooperative learning, and is defined as the instructional use of small groups to promote students working together to maximize their own and each other’s learning (Johnson, et al., 2008).

Cooperative learning is characterized by positive interdependence, where students perceive that better performance by individuals produces better performance by the entire group (Johnson, et al., 2014). It can be formal or informal, but often involves specific instructor intervention to maximize student interaction and learning. It is infinitely adaptable, working in small and large classes and across disciplines, and can be one of the most effective teaching approaches available to college instructors.

What can it look like?

What’s the theoretical underpinning, is there evidence that it works.

• What are approaches that can help make it effective?

Informal cooperative learning groups In informal cooperative learning, small, temporary, ad-hoc groups of two to four students work together for brief periods in a class, typically up to one class period, to answer questions or respond to prompts posed by the instructor.

Additional examples of ways to structure informal group work

Think-pair-share

The instructor asks a discussion question. Students are instructed to think or write about an answer to the question before turning to a peer to discuss their responses. Groups then share their responses with the class.

Peer Instruction

This modification of the think-pair-share involves personal responses devices (e.g. clickers). The question posted is typically a conceptually based multiple-choice question. Students think about their answer and vote on a response before turning to a neighbor to discuss. Students can change their answers after discussion, and “sharing” is accomplished by the instructor revealing the graph of student response and using this as a stimulus for large class discussion. This approach is particularly well-adapted for large classes.

In this approach, groups of students work in a team of four to become experts on one segment of new material, while other “expert teams” in the class work on other segments of new material. The class then rearranges, forming new groups that have one member from each expert team. The members of the new team then take turns teaching each other the material on which they are experts.

Formal cooperative learning groups

In formal cooperative learning students work together for one or more class periods to complete a joint task or assignment (Johnson et al., 2014). There are several features that can help these groups work well:

• The instructor defines the learning objectives for the activity and assigns students to groups.
• The groups are typically heterogeneous, with particular attention to the skills that are needed for success in the task.
• Within the groups, students may be assigned specific roles, with the instructor communicating the criteria for success and the types of social skills that will be needed.
• Importantly, the instructor continues to play an active role during the groups’ work, monitoring the work and evaluating group and individual performance.
• Instructors also encourage groups to reflect on their interactions to identify potential improvements for future group work.

This video shows an example of formal cooperative learning groups in David Matthes’ class at the University of Minnesota:

There are many more specific types of group work that fall under the general descriptions given here, including team-based learning , problem-based learning , and process-oriented guided inquiry learning .

The use of cooperative learning groups in instruction is based on the principle of constructivism, with particular attention to the contribution that social interaction can make. In essence, constructivism rests on the idea that individuals learn through building their own knowledge, connecting new ideas and experiences to existing knowledge and experiences to form new or enhanced understanding (Bransford, et al., 1999). The consideration of the role that groups can play in this process is based in social interdependence theory, which grew out of Kurt Koffka’s and Kurt Lewin’s identification of groups as dynamic entities that could exhibit varied interdependence among members, with group members motivated to achieve common goals. Morton Deutsch conceptualized varied types of interdependence, with positive correlation among group members’ goal achievements promoting cooperation.

Lev Vygotsky extended this work by examining the relationship between cognitive processes and social activities, developing the sociocultural theory of development. The sociocultural theory of development suggests that learning takes place when students solve problems beyond their current developmental level with the support of their instructor or their peers. Thus both the idea of a zone of proximal development, supported by positive group interdependence, is the basis of cooperative learning (Davidson and Major, 2014; Johnson, et al., 2014).

Cooperative learning follows this idea as groups work together to learn or solve a problem, with each individual responsible for understanding all aspects. The small groups are essential to this process because students are able to both be heard and to hear their peers, while in a traditional classroom setting students may spend more time listening to what the instructor says.

Cooperative learning uses both goal interdependence and resource interdependence to ensure interaction and communication among group members. Changing the role of the instructor from lecturing to facilitating the groups helps foster this social environment for students to learn through interaction.

David Johnson, Roger Johnson, and Karl Smith performed a meta-analysis of 168 studies comparing cooperative learning to competitive learning and individualistic learning in college students (Johnson et al., 2006). They found that cooperative learning produced greater academic achievement than both competitive learning and individualistic learning across the studies, exhibiting a mean weighted effect size of 0.54 when comparing cooperation and competition and 0.51 when comparing cooperation and individualistic learning. In essence, these results indicate that cooperative learning increases student academic performance by approximately one-half of a standard deviation when compared to non-cooperative learning models, an effect that is considered moderate. Importantly, the academic achievement measures were defined in each study, and ranged from lower-level cognitive tasks (e.g., knowledge acquisition and retention) to higher level cognitive activity (e.g., creative problem solving), and from verbal tasks to mathematical tasks to procedural tasks. The meta-analysis also showed substantial effects on other metrics, including self-esteem and positive attitudes about learning. George Kuh and colleagues also conclude that cooperative group learning promotes student engagement and academic performance (Kuh et al., 2007).

Springer, Stanne, and Donovan (1999) confirmed these results in their meta-analysis of 39 studies in university STEM classrooms. They found that students who participated in various types of small-group learning, ranging from extended formal interactions to brief informal interactions, had greater academic achievement, exhibited more favorable attitudes towards learning, and had increased persistence through STEM courses than students who did not participate in STEM small-group learning.

The box below summarizes three individual studies examining the effects of cooperative learning groups.

What are approaches that can help make group work effective?

Preparation

Articulate your goals for the group work, including both the academic objectives you want the students to achieve and the social skills you want them to develop.

Determine the group conformation that will help meet your goals.

• In informal group learning, groups often form ad hoc from near neighbors in a class.
• In formal group learning, it is helpful for the instructor to form groups that are heterogeneous with regard to particular skills or abilities relevant to group tasks. For example, groups may be heterogeneous with regard to academic skill in the discipline or with regard to other skills related to the group task (e.g., design capabilities, programming skills, writing skills, organizational skills) (Johnson et al, 2006).
• Groups from 2-6 are generally recommended, with groups that consist of three members exhibiting the best performance in some problem-solving tasks (Johnson et al., 2006; Heller and Hollabaugh, 1992).
• To avoid common problems in group work, such as dominance by a single student or conflict avoidance, it can be useful to assign roles to group members (e.g., manager, skeptic, educator, conciliator) and to rotate them on a regular basis (Heller and Hollabaugh, 1992). Assigning these roles is not necessary in well-functioning groups, but can be useful for students who are unfamiliar with or unskilled at group work.

Choose an assessment method that will promote positive group interdependence as well as individual accountability.

• In team-based learning, two approaches promote positive interdependence and individual accountability. First, students take an individual readiness assessment test, and then immediately take the same test again as a group. Their grade is a composite of the two scores. Second, students complete a group project together, and receive a group score on the project. They also, however, distribute points among their group partners, allowing student assessment of members’ contributions to contribute to the final score.
• Heller and Hollabaugh (1992) describe an approach in which they incorporated group problem-solving into a class. Students regularly solved problems in small groups, turning in a single solution. In addition, tests were structured such that 25% of the points derived from a group problem, where only those individuals who attended the group problem-solving sessions could participate in the group test problem.  This approach can help prevent the “free rider” problem that can plague group work.
• The University of New South Wales describes a variety of ways to assess group work , ranging from shared group grades, to grades that are averages of individual grades, to strictly individual grades, to a combination of these. They also suggest ways to assess not only the product of the group work but also the process.  Again, having a portion of a grade that derives from individual contribution helps combat the free rider problem.

Helping groups get started

Explain the group’s task, including your goals for their academic achievement and social interaction.

Explain how the task involves both positive interdependence and individual accountability, and how you will be assessing each.

Assign group roles or give groups prompts to help them articulate effective ways for interaction. The University of New South Wales provides a valuable set of tools to help groups establish good practices when first meeting. The site also provides some exercises for building group dynamics; these may be particularly valuable for groups that will be working on larger projects.

Monitoring group work

Regularly observe group interactions and progress , either by circulating during group work, collecting in-process documents, or both. When you observe problems, intervene to help students move forward on the task and work together effectively. The University of New South Wales provides handouts that instructors can use to promote effective group interactions, such as a handout to help students listen reflectively or give constructive feedback , or to help groups identify particular problems that they may be encountering.

Assessing and reflecting

In addition to providing feedback on group and individual performance (link to preparation section above), it is also useful to provide a structure for groups to reflect on what worked well in their group and what could be improved. Graham Gibbs (1994) suggests using the checklists shown below.

The University of New South Wales provides other reflective activities that may help students identify effective group practices and avoid ineffective practices in future cooperative learning experiences.

Bransford, J.D., Brown, A.L., and Cocking, R.R. (Eds.) (1999). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school . Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Bruffee, K. A. (1993). Collaborative learning: Higher education, interdependence, and the authority of knowledge. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Cabrera, A. F., Crissman, J. L., Bernal, E. M., Nora, A., Terenzini, P. T., & Pascarella, E. T. (2002). Collaborative learning: Its impact on college students’ development and diversity. Journal of College Student Development, 43 (1), 20-34.

Davidson, N., & Major, C. H. (2014). Boundary crossing: Cooperative learning, collaborative learning, and problem-based learning. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 25 (3&4), 7-55.

Dees, R. L. (1991). The role of cooperative leaning in increasing problem-solving ability in a college remedial course. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 22 (5), 409-21.

Gokhale, A. A. (1995). Collaborative Learning enhances critical thinking. Journal of Technology Education, 7 (1).

Heller, P., and Hollabaugh, M. (1992) Teaching problem solving through cooperative grouping. Part 2: Designing problems and structuring groups. American Journal of Physics 60, 637-644.

Johnson, D.W., Johnson, R.T., and Smith, K.A. (2006). Active learning: Cooperation in the university classroom (3 rd edition). Edina, MN: Interaction.

Johnson, D.W., Johnson, R.T., and Holubec, E.J. (2008). Cooperation in the classroom (8 th edition). Edina, MN: Interaction.

Johnson, D.W., Johnson, R.T., and Smith, K.A. (2014). Cooperative learning: Improving university instruction by basing practice on validated theory. Journl on Excellence in College Teaching 25, 85-118.

Jones, D. J., & Brickner, D. (1996). Implementation of cooperative learning in a large-enrollment basic mechanics course. American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference Proceedings.

Kuh, G.D., Kinzie, J., Buckley, J., Bridges, B., and Hayek, J.C. (2007). Piecing together the student success puzzle: Research, propositions, and recommendations (ASHE Higher Education Report, No. 32). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Love, A. G., Dietrich, A., Fitzgerald, J., & Gordon, D. (2014). Integrating collaborative learning inside and outside the classroom. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 25 (3&4), 177-196.

Smith, M. E., Hinckley, C. C., & Volk, G. L. (1991). Cooperative learning in the undergraduate laboratory. Journal of Chemical Education 68 (5), 413-415.

Springer, L., Stanne, M. E., & Donovan, S. S. (1999). Effects of small-group learning on undergraduates in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 96 (1), 21-51.

Uribe, D., Klein, J. D., & Sullivan, H. (2003). The effect of computer-mediated collaborative learning on solving ill-defined problems. Educational Technology Research and Development, 51 (1), 5-19.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Teaching Guides

• Online Course Development Resources
• Principles & Frameworks
• Pedagogies & Strategies
• Reflecting & Assessing
• Challenges & Opportunities
• Populations & Contexts

Quick Links

• Services for Departments and Schools
• Examples of Online Instructional Modules

• Utility Menu

GA4 Tracking Code

fa51e2b1dc8cca8f7467da564e77b5ea

• Make a Gift
• Join Our Email List

Many students have had little experience working in groups in an academic setting. While there are many excellent books and articles describing group processes, this guide is intended to be short and simply written for students who are working in groups, but who may not be very interested in too much detail. It also provides teachers (and students) with tips on assigning group projects, ways to organize groups, and what to do when the process goes awry.

Some reasons to ask students to work in groups

Asking students to work in small groups allows students to learn interactively. Small groups are good for:

• generating a broad array of possible alternative points of view or solutions to a problem
• giving students a chance to work on a project that is too large or complex for an individual
• allowing students with different backgrounds to bring their special knowledge, experience, or skills to a project, and to explain their orientation to others
• giving students a chance to teach each other
• giving students a structured experience so they can practice skills applicable to professional situations

Some benefits of working in groups (even for short periods of time in class)

• Students who have difficulty talking in class may speak in a small group.
• More students, overall, have a chance to participate in class.
• Talking in groups can help overcome the anonymity and passivity of a large class or a class meeting in a poorly designed room.
• Students who expect to participate actively prepare better for class.

Caveat: If you ask students to work in groups, be clear about your purpose, and communicate it to them. Students who fear that group work is a potential waste of valuable time may benefit from considering the reasons and benefits above.

Large projects over a period of time

Faculty asking students to work in groups over a long period of time can do a few things to make it easy for the students to work:

• The biggest student complaint about group work is that it takes a lot of time and planning. Let students know about the project at the beginning of the term, so they can plan their time.
• At the outset, provide group guidelines and your expectations.
• Monitor the groups periodically to make sure they are functioning effectively.
• If the project is to be completed outside of class, it can be difficult to find common times to meet and to find a room. Some faculty members provide in-class time for groups to meet. Others help students find rooms to meet in.

Forming the group

• Forming the group. Should students form their own groups or should they be assigned? Most people prefer to choose whom they work with. However, many students say they welcome both kinds of group experiences, appreciating the value of hearing the perspective of another discipline, or another background.
• Size. Appropriate group size depends on the nature of the project.  If the group is small and one person drops out, can the remaining people do the work? If the group is large, will more time be spent on organizing themselves and trying to make decisions than on productive work?
• Resources for students. Provide a complete class list, with current email addresses. (Students like having this anyway so they can work together even if group projects are not assigned.)
• Students that don't fit. You might anticipate your response to the one or two exceptions of a person who really has difficulty in the group. After trying various remedies, is there an out—can this person join another group? work on an independent project?

Organizing the work

Unless part of the goal is to give people experience in the process of goal-setting, assigning tasks, and so forth, the group will be able to work more efficiently if they are provided with some of the following:

• Clear goals. Why are they working together? What are they expected to accomplish?
• Ways to break down the task into smaller units
• Ways to allocate responsibility for different aspects of the work
• Ways to allocate organizational responsibility
• A sample time line with suggested check points for stages of work to be completed

Caveat: Setting up effective small group assignments can take a lot of faculty time and organization.

Getting Started

• Groups work best if people know each others' names and a bit of their background and experience, especially those parts that are related to the task at hand. Take time to introduce yourselves.
• Be sure to include everyone when considering ideas about how to proceed as a group. Some may never have participated in a small group in an academic setting. Others may have ideas about what works well. Allow time for people to express their inexperience and hesitations as well as their experience with group projects.
• Most groups select a leader early on, especially if the work is a long-term project. Other options for leadership in long-term projects include taking turns for different works or different phases of the work.
• Everyone needs to discuss and clarify the goals of the group's work. Go around the group and hear everyone's ideas (before discussing them) or encourage divergent thinking by brainstorming. If you miss this step, trouble may develop part way through the project. Even though time is scarce and you may have a big project ahead of you, groups may take some time to settle in to work. If you anticipate this, you may not be too impatient with the time it takes to get started.

Organizing the Work

• Break up big jobs into smaller pieces. Allocate responsibility for different parts of the group project to different individuals or teams. Do not forget to account for assembling pieces into final form.
• Develop a timeline, including who will do what, in what format, by when. Include time at the end for assembling pieces into final form. (This may take longer than you anticipate.) At the end of each meeting, individuals should review what work they expect to complete by the following session.

Understanding and Managing Group Processes

• Groups work best if everyone has a chance to make strong contributions to the discussion at meetings and to the work of the group project.
• At the beginning of each meeting, decide what you expect to have accomplished by the end of the meeting.
• Someone (probably not the leader) should write all ideas, as they are suggested, on the board, a collaborative document, or on large sheets of paper. Designate a recorder of the group's decisions. Allocate responsibility for group process (especially if you do not have a fixed leader) such as a time manager for meetings and someone who periodically says that it is time to see how things are going (see below).
• What leadership structure does the group want? One designated leader? rotating leaders? separately assigned roles?
• Are any more ground rules needed, such as starting meetings on time, kinds of interruptions allowed, and so forth?
• Is everyone contributing to discussions? Can discussions be managed differently so all can participate? Are people listening to each other and allowing for different kinds of contributions?
• Are all members accomplishing the work expected of them? Is there anything group members can do to help those experiencing difficulty?
• Are there disagreements or difficulties within the group that need to be addressed? (Is someone dominating? Is someone left out?)
• Is outside help needed to solve any problems?
• Is everyone enjoying the work?

Including Everyone and Their Ideas

Groups work best if everyone is included and everyone has a chance to contribute ideas. The group's task may seem overwhelming to some people, and they may have no idea how to go about accomplishing it. To others, the direction the project should take may seem obvious. The job of the group is to break down the work into chunks, and to allow everyone to contribute. The direction that seems obvious to some may turn out not to be so obvious after all. In any event, it will surely be improved as a result of some creative modification.

Encouraging Ideas

The goal is to produce as many ideas as possible in a short time without evaluating them. All ideas are carefully listened to but not commented on and are usually written on the board or large sheets of paper so everyone can see them, and so they don't get forgotten or lost. Take turns by going around the group—hear from everyone, one by one.

One specific method is to generate ideas through brainstorming. People mention ideas in any order (without others' commenting, disagreeing or asking too many questions). The advantage of brainstorming is that ideas do not become closely associated with the individuals who suggested them. This process encourages creative thinking, if it is not rushed and if all ideas are written down (and therefore, for the time-being, accepted). A disadvantage: when ideas are suggested quickly, it is more difficult for shy participants or for those who are not speaking their native language. One approach is to begin by brainstorming and then go around the group in a more structured way asking each person to add to the list.

Examples of what to say:

• Why don't we take a minute or two for each of us to present our views?
• Let's get all our ideas out before evaluating them. We'll clarify them before we organize or evaluate them.
• We'll discuss all these ideas after we hear what everyone thinks.
• You don't have to agree with her, but let her finish.
• Let's spend a few more minutes to see if there are any possibilities we haven't thought of, no matter how unlikely they seem.

Group Leadership

• The leader is responsible for seeing that the work is organized so that it will get done. The leader is also responsible for understanding and managing group interactions so that the atmosphere is positive.
• The leader must encourage everyone's contributions with an eye to accomplishing the work. To do this, the leader must observe how the group's process is working. (Is the group moving too quickly, leaving some people behind? Is it time to shift the focus to another aspect of the task?)
• The leader must encourage group interactions and maintain a positive atmosphere. To do this the leader must observe the way people are participating as well as be aware of feelings communicated non-verbally. (Are individuals' contributions listened to and appreciated by others? Are people arguing with other people, rather than disagreeing with their ideas? Are some people withdrawn or annoyed?)
• The leader must anticipate what information, materials or other resources the group needs as it works.
• The leader is responsible for beginning and ending on time. The leader must also organize practical support, such as the room, chalk, markers, food, breaks.

(Note: In addition to all this, the leader must take part in thc discussion and participate otherwise as a group member. At these times, the leader must be careful to step aside from the role of leader and signal participation as an equal, not a dominant voice.)

Concerns of Individuals That May Affect Their Participation

• How do I fit in? Will others listen to me? Am I the only one who doesn't know everyone else? How can I work with people with such different backgrounds and expericnce?
• Who will make the decisions? How much influence can I have?
• What do I have to offer to the group? Does everyone know more than I do? Does anyone know anything, or will I have to do most of the work myself?

Characteristics of a Group that is Performing Effectively

• All members have a chance to express themselves and to influence the group's decisions. All contributions are listened to carefully, and strong points acknowledged. Everyone realizes that the job could not be done without the cooperation and contribution of everyone else.
• Differences are dealt with directly with the person or people involved. The group identifies all disagreements, hears everyone's views and tries to come to an agreement that makes sense to everyone. Even when a group decision is not liked by someone, that person will follow through on it with the group.
• The group encourages everyone to take responsibility, and hard work is recognized. When things are not going well, everyone makes an effort to help each other. There is a shared sense of pride and accomplishment.

Focusing on a Direction

After a large number of ideas have been generated and listed (e.g. on the board), the group can categorize and examine them. Then the group should agree on a process for choosing from among the ideas. Advantages and disadvantages of different plans can be listed and then voted on. Some possibilities can be eliminated through a straw vote (each group member could have 2 or 3 votes). Or all group members could vote for their first, second, and third choices. Alternatively, criteria for a successful plan can be listed, and different alternatives can be voted on based on the criteria, one by one.

Categorizing and evaluating ideas

• We have about 20 ideas here. Can we sort them into a few general categories?
• When we evaluate each others' ideas, can we mention some positive aspects before expressing concerns?
• Could you give us an example of what you mean?
• Who has dealt with this kind of problem before?
• What are the pluses of that approach? The minuses?
• We have two basic choices. Let's brainstorm. First let's look at the advantages of the first choice, then the disadvantages.
• Let's try ranking these ideas in priority order. The group should try to come to an agreement that makes sense to everyone.

Making a decision

After everyone's views are heard and all points of agreement and disagreement are identified, the group should try to arrive at an agreement that makes sense to everyone.

• There seems to be some agreement here. Is there anyone who couldn't live with solution #2?
• Are there any objections to going that way?
• You still seem to have worries about this solution. Is there anything that could be added or taken away to make it more acceptable? We're doing fine. We've agreed on a great deal. Let's stay with this and see if we can work this last issue through.
• It looks as if there are still some major points of disagreement. Can we go back and define what those issues are and work on them rather than forcing a decision now.

How People Function in Groups

If a group is functioning well, work is getting done and constructive group processes are creating a positive atmosphere. In good groups the individuals may contribute differently at different times. They cooperate and human relationships are respected. This may happen automatically or individuals, at different times, can make it their job to maintain the atmospbere and human aspects of the group.

Roles That Contribute to the Work

Initiating —taking the initiative, at any time; for example, convening the group, suggesting procedures, changing direction, providing new energy and ideas. (How about if we.... What would happen if... ?)

Seeking information or opinions —requesting facts, preferences, suggestions and ideas. (Could you say a little more about... Would you say this is a more workable idea than that?)

Giving information or opinions —providing facts, data, information from research or experience. (ln my experience I have seen... May I tell you what I found out about...? )

Questioning —stepping back from what is happening and challenging the group or asking other specific questions about the task. (Are we assuming that... ? Would the consequence of this be... ?)

Clarifying —interpreting ideas or suggestions, clearing up confusions, defining terms or asking others to clarify. This role can relate different contributions from different people, and link up ideas that seem unconnected. (lt seems that you are saying... Doesn't this relate to what [name] was saying earlier?)

Summarizing —putting contributions into a pattern, while adding no new information. This role is important if a group gets stuck. Some groups officially appoint a summarizer for this potentially powerful and influential role. (If we take all these pieces and put them together... Here's what I think we have agreed upon so far... Here are our areas of disagreement...)

Roles That Contribute to the Atmosphere

Supporting —remembering others' remarks, being encouraging and responsive to others. Creating a warm, encouraging atmosphere, and making people feel they belong helps the group handle stresses and strains. People can gesture, smile, and make eye-contact without saying a word. Some silence can be supportive for people who are not native speakers of English by allowing them a chance to get into discussion. (I understand what you are getting at...As [name] was just saying...)

Observing —noticing the dynamics of the group and commenting. Asking if others agree or if they see things differently can be an effective way to identify problems as they arise. (We seem to be stuck... Maybe we are done for now, we are all worn out... As I see it, what happened just a minute ago.. Do you agree?)

Mediating —recognizing disagreements and figuring out what is behind the differences. When people focus on real differences, that may lead to striking a balance or devising ways to accommodate different values, views, and approaches. (I think the two of you are coming at this from completely different points of view... Wait a minute. This is how [name/ sees the problem. Can you see why she may see it differently?)

Reconciling —reconciling disagreements. Emphasizing shared views among members can reduce tension. (The goal of these two strategies is the same, only the means are different… Is there anything that these positions have in common?)

Compromising —yielding a position or modifying opinions. This can help move the group forward. (Everyone else seems to agree on this, so I'll go along with... I think if I give in on this, we could reach a decision.)

Making a personal comment —occasional personal comments, especially as they relate to the work. Statements about one's life are often discouraged in professional settings; this may be a mistake since personal comments can strengthen a group by making people feel human with a lot in common.

Humor —funny remarks or good-natured comments. Humor, if it is genuinely good-natured and not cutting, can be very effective in relieving tension or dealing with participants who dominate or put down others. Humor can be used constructively to make the work more acceptable by providing a welcome break from concentration. It may also bring people closer together, and make the work more fun.

All the positive roles turn the group into an energetic, productive enterprise. People who have not reflected on these roles may misunderstand the motives and actions of people working in a group. If someone other than the leader initiates ideas, some may view it as an attempt to take power from the leader. Asking questions may similarly be seen as defying authority or slowing down the work of the group. Personal anecdotes may be thought of as trivializing the discussion. Leaders who understand the importance of these many roles can allow and encourage them as positive contributions to group dynamics. Roles that contribute to the work give the group a sense of direction and achievement. Roles contributing to the human atmosphere give the group a sense of cooperation and goodwill.

Some Common Problems (and Some Solutions)

Floundering —While people are still figuring out the work and their role in the group, the group may experience false starts and circular discussions, and decisions may be postponed.

• Here's my understanding of what we are trying to accomplish... Do we all agree?
• What would help us move forward: data? resources?
• Let's take a few minutes to hear everyone's suggestions about how this process might work better and what we should do next.

Dominating or reluctant participants —Some people might take more than their share of the discussion by talking too often, asserting superiority, telling lengthy stories, or not letting others finish. Sometimes humor can be used to discourage people from dominating. Others may rarely speak because they have difficulty getting in the conversation. Sometimes looking at people who don't speak can be a non-verbal way to include them. Asking quiet participants for their thoughts outside the group may lead to their participation within the group.

• How would we state the general problem? Could we leave out the details for a moment? Could we structure this part of the discussion by taking turns and hearing what everyone has to say?
• Let's check in with each other about how the process is working: Is everyone contributing to discussions? Can discussions be managed differently so we can all participate? Are we all listening to each other?

Digressions and tangents —Too many interesting side stories can be obstacles to group progress. It may be time to take another look at the agenda and assign time estimates to items. Try to summarize where the discussion was before the digression. Or, consider whether there is something making the topic easy to avoid.

• Can we go back to where we were a few minutes ago and see what we were trying to do ?
• Is there something about the topic itself that makes it difficult to stick to?

Getting Stuck —Too little progress can get a group down. It may be time for a short break or a change in focus. However, occasionally when a group feels that it is not making progress, a solution emerges if people simply stay with the issue.

• What are the things that are helping us solve this problem? What's preventing us from solving this problem?
• I understand that some of you doubt whether anything new will happen if we work on this problem. Are we willing to give it a try for the next fifteen minutes?

Rush to work —Usually one person in the group is less patient and more action-oriented than the others. This person may reach a decision more quickly than the others and then pressure the group to move on before others are ready.

• Are we all ready-to make a decision on this?
• What needs to be done before we can move ahead?
• Let's go around and see where everyone stands on this.

Feuds —Occasionally a conflict (having nothing to do with the subject of the group) carries over into the group and impedes its work. It may be that feuding parties will not be able to focus until the viewpoint of each is heard. Then they must be encouraged to lay the issue aside.

• So, what you are saying is... And what you are saying is... How is that related to the work here?
• If we continue too long on this, we won't be able to get our work done. Can we agree on a time limit and then go on?

For more information...

James Lang, " Why Students Hate Group Projects (and How to Change That) ," The Chronicle of Higher Education (17 June 2022).

Hodges, Linda C. " Contemporary Issues in Group Learning in Undergraduate Science Classrooms: A Perspective from Student Engagement ,"  CBE—Life Sciences Education  17.2 (2018): es3.

• Designing Your Course
• A Teaching Timeline: From Pre-Term Planning to the Final Exam
• The First Day of Class
• Group Agreements
• Classroom Debate
• Flipped Classrooms
• Leading Discussions
• Polling & Clickers
• Problem Solving in STEM
• Teaching with Cases
• Engaged Scholarship
• Devices in the Classroom
• Beyond the Classroom
• On Professionalism
• Getting Feedback
• Equitable & Inclusive Teaching
• Advising and Mentoring
• Teaching and Your Career
• Teaching Remotely
• Tools and Platforms
• The Science of Learning
• Bok Publications
• Other Resources Around Campus

Center for Teaching Innovation

Resource library.

• Examples of Collaborative Learning or Group Work Activities

Getting Started with Designing Group Work Assignments

• Getting Started with Evaluating Group Work
• Team-Based Learning Collaborative

First, think about the course learning outcomes  and how group work might address them. Then consider how groups will be organized, how student learning and group processes will be supported, and how students will be evaluated, if at all.    Short in-class activities may take less planning, but it is still important to consider how the process will play out in a classroom situation.    How will you introduce the activity? How much time is required? How will you debrief as a group? For in-class collaborative activities, focus on  asking effective questions  that engage students in the types of learning you are trying to encourage.    For more involved projects that take place over a longer period of time and for which students will be graded, plan each stage of the group work. 

How Will Groups be Formed?

Allowing students to form their own groups will likely result in uneven groupings. If possible, arrange groups by skills and/or backgrounds. For example, ask students to rate their comfort/ability-level on a number of skills (research, background knowledge of course topics, work experience, etc.) and try to arrange groups that include “experts” in different areas. Another possibility is to do a preliminary assessment and then based on the results, purposefully create groups that blend abilities. 

How Will you Ensure that Students are Productive?

Set aside time early in the semester to allow for icebreakers and team-building activities. Consider using class time for group work to eliminate students having to coordinate meeting times outside of class. Much of the group work can be done collaboratively online, again, lessening the difficulty of coordination. See more on how to manage groups in the next question. 

What Technology Might Assist the Group Work?

If technology use is required, you will need to incorporate learning activities around the use of the technology. At the beginning, do a low stakes activity that helps students become familiar with the technology. If other types of technology can facilitate the group work processes, guide students in its use. 

What can the Students do?

Choose assignment topics or tasks that are related to the real-world and can be connected to students’ lives. For example, have students try to analyze and solve a current local or international problem. Or have students complete tasks that involve using and developing skills that they will likely use in their future professional lives, such as writing a proposal or collaborating online. Here are some other considerations for creating effective group work activities: 

• Break a larger assignment into smaller pieces and set multiple deadlines to ensure that students work toward reaching milestones throughout the process rather than pulling it all together at the last minute.
• Incorporate  peer assessments  at each milestone to encourage self-awareness and to ensure ongoing feedback.
• Tie in-class activities and lectures to the group assignment. For example, during class sessions, provide clues that will assist students in their group projects.
• Be sure to explain how students will be evaluated and  use a rubric  to communicate these expectations. See more on how to evaluate group work in Getting Started with Evaluating Group Work .

• A-Z Directory
• Campus Maps
• Faculties and Schools
• International
• People and Departments
• Become A Student
• Give to Memorial
• Faculty & Staff
• Online Learning
• Self Service
• Other MUN Login Services
• Academic Success Centre
• Learning skills resources
• Group work: Goals, roles, and ground rules

Group work: Goals, roles, & ground rules

You've been given your assignment and have your group members in place. Your next step is to set up your group's goals, roles, and ground rules to make the most of your time working together. Taking a few minutes at the start of your assignment to cover this will often proactively address any issues that may arise during group projects. 

Let's look into each of these a bit more:

Ground Rules

Use our downloadable Group Work Roadmap [ .doc / .pdf ]  to take the guesswork out of this process.

Group Goals

In this first step, you are ensuring everyone is on the same page regarding what mark you want for your project, what date you will submit your project, and determining your specific project topic or focus if given choice in your assignment.

Know from day one if your group is aiming for a final grade in the 70s, 80s, or 90s. Also, discuss if this mark is one you can comfortably achieve or if it is one you will strive for. This will help set both the tone for the group and the expectation for submissions.

As a group, collectively decide on a date for final review and submission. As you will have many people working on many parts try to build in time for group reviews of the final draft of a project well ahead of the required due date. This will allow time for additions or upgraded work ahead of the due date.

As a group, discuss the project's outline and be sure to come to a consensus about what is expected. Brainstorm and discuss topics if your professor allows self-selection. This will set your group up for drafting task assignments and ensuring everyone is working toward a common goal.

Group Roles

Now that your group has established the "what" of the project, you need to consider the "who" and the "when".

Each member should have an equal amount of tasks they will carry from the group's workload. This does not necessarily mean an equal number of tasks across all members as some tasks may be very large and others very small. As a group, look at your assignment and begin to break down the project into various tasks.

Once all tasks are written out, have each member indicate if there are any particular tasks they are best equipped for or are interested in doing. For tasks which remain after this initial selection process begin to delegate these out in an equitable fashion. This can be done through another round of self-selection, random draw, or any number of processes. Review again the overall workload being tasked to each member - does the amount of time and effort seem equal? Finally, collectively create a schedule of mini-deadlines each task must be drafted, reviewed, and submitted within the overall timeline of the project. 

Another role to be considered is that of the draft reviewer. Each member's tasks should be shared with another member once a final draft has been created. This review period should allow time for feedback and for the draft creator to be able to implement any changes agreed upon.

Ground rules for groups cover the details which push your progress along and create fair communication & conflict expectations. Again, using our Group Work Roadmap resource will help navigate many of the ground rules needed to be covered. Considerations include meetings, attendance, communication, and conflict.

• Revisit the date chosen for the final draft submission review by the group and set a tentative date to all meet and discuss.
• Reviewing the mini-deadlines, or your own class schedules, establish meeting dates throughout the project's timeline to meet together as a group. This could be weekly, biweekly, or staggered dates throughout.
• Determine how long these meetings will be scheduled to last.
• Determine where meetings will take place; it doesn't have to be the same place every time.  If meeting online, determine what tool you will use and try to pick one that everyone is comfortable with using.
• Determine the proper process for notifying the group if you will miss a meeting.
• Determine the plan of action if there is a member who continues to miss or be late for meetings.
• Determine how an emergency meeting will be requested/announced.
• Communication
• What will be the primary platform for asynchronous group communication? (e.g. email? an instant messaging system?)
• What will be the primary platform for asynchronous individual communication (e.g. sending drafts or reviews of drafts)?
• Review and agree to use  healthy communication dynamics .
• Determine how information from meetings will be shared with members who were unavoidably absent.
• Discuss how the group will provide constructive feedback to members for absent, subpar, or low-effort submissions.
• Discuss the escalation process that will be followed in determining when to alert your instructor of a failing group member.
• Discuss how the group will respectfully get back on task when a group member(s) are off-topic, coopting too much time/energy of a meeting, or have become too fixated on an individual issue that is not impacting the group.

"Setting Expectations & Ground Rules" [Algonquin College Library; YouTube]

Whether big or small, using our Group Work Roadmap  can help give a physical space for your group to document many of the choices made concerning goals, roles, and ground rules. Taking a couple of minutes to complete this at the start of your project will give everyone a clear path to navigate and clear expectations of them by the group. The more transparent these factors are, the less likely you are to encounter misunderstanding-based conflicts.

Algonquin College of Applied Arts & Technologies. (2021, June 3). Essential study skills: Group work . Algonquin College of Applied Arts & Technologies: Student Support Services. https://algonquincollege.libguides.com/studyskills/group-work

Carnegie Mellon University. (n.d.). Sample group project tools: team contract template . Carnegie Mellon University: Eberly Center. Retrieved March 9, 2022 from https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/teach/instructionalstrategies/groupprojects/tools/TeamContracts/teamcontracttemplate.docx

Carnegie Mellon University. (n.d.). What are the challenges of group work and how can I address them ? Carnegie Mellon University: Eberly Center. Retrieved March 9, 2022 from https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/teach/instructionalstrategies/groupprojects/challenges.html

Indeed Editorial Team. (2021, June 9). Four common types of team conflict and how to resolve them . Indeed. https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/types-of-team-conflict

La Trobe University. (2020, September 18). Common types of group conflicts and how to resolve them . La Trobe University. https://www.latrobe.edu.au/mylatrobe/common-types-of-group-conflicts-and-how-to-resolve-them/

Levin, P., and Kent, I. (2001). Draft manual on teamwork tutoring: 28 questions and answers for academics on teamwork in universities .

Oregon State University. (n.d.). Team work makes the dream work: make your group project awesome like a blessing of unicorns. Oregon State University: Academic Success Center. Retrieved March 9, 2022 from https://success.oregonstate.edu/sites/success.oregonstate.edu/files/LearningCorner/Tools/4-page_twdw_-_fill_-_20.pdf

University of British Columbia. (n.d.). Resolving conflict. University of British Columbia: Chapman Learning Commons. Retrieved March 11, 2022 from https://learningcommons.ubc.ca/student-toolkits/working-in-groups/resolving-conflict/.

University of Waterloo. (n.d.). Teamwork skills: Being an effective group member . University of Waterloo: Centre for Teaching Excellence. Retrieved March 9, 2022 from https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/teaching-resources/teaching-tips/tips-students/being-part-team/teamwork-skills-being-effective-group-member

• Learning supports
• Peer-Assisted Learning
• Help centres
• Study spaces
• Graduate student supports
• Events and workshops
• Faculty & staff resources

Related Content

• Skip to Content
• Skip to Main Navigation
• Skip to Search

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington IU Bloomington

• Course Development Institute
• Programmatic Assessment
• Instructional Technology
• Class Observations and Feedback
• Online Course Review and Feedback
• New Faculty Programs
• History of SoTL
• SOTL Resources
• IUB Database
• Featured SoTL Activity
• Intensive Writing
• Faculty Liaison
• Incorporating and Grading Writing
• Writing Tutorial Services
• Cel Conference
• CEL Course Development Institute
• ACE Program
• Community Partners
• CEL Course Designation
• CEL during COVID-19
• Annual AI Orientation
• Annual Classroom Climate Workshop
• GTAP Awardees
• Graduate Student Learning Communities
• Pedagogy Courses for Credit
• Diversity Statements
• Learning Communities
• Active Learning
• Frequent and Targeted Feedback
• Spaced Practice
• Transparency in Learning and Teaching
• Faculty Spotlights
• Preparing to Teach
• Decoding the Disciplines
• Backward Course Design
• Developing Learning Outcomes
• Syllabus Construction
• How to Productively Address AI-Generated Text in Your Classroom 
• Accurate Attendance & Participation with Tophat
• Designing Assignments to Encourage Integrity
• DEI and Student Evals
• Engaging Students with Mental Health Issues
• Inclusive and Equitable Syllabi
• Creating Accessible Classrooms
• Proctoring and Equity
• Equitable Assignment Design
• Making Teaching Transparent
• DEIJ Institute
• Sense of Belonging
• Trauma-Informed Teaching
• Managing Difficult Classroom Discussions
• Technology to Support Equitable and Inclusive Teaching
• Teaching during a Crisis
• Teaching for Equity
• Supporting Religious Observances
• DEIJ Resources
• Test Construction
• Summative and Formative Assessment
• Classroom Assessment Techniques
• Authentic Assessment
• Alternatives to Traditional Exams and Papers
• Assessment for General Education and Programmatic Review
• Rubric Creation and Use
• Google Suite
• Third Party Services: Legal, Privacy, and Instructional Concerns
• eTexts and Unizin Engage
• Next@IU Pilot Projects
• Web Conferencing
• Student Response Systems
• Mid-Semester Evaluations
• Teaching Statements & Philosophies
• Peer Review of Teaching
• Teaching Portfolios
• Administering and Interpreting Course Evaluations
• Temporary Online Teaching
• Attendance Policies and Student Engagement
• Teaching in the Face of Tragedy
• Application for an Active Learning Classroom
• Cedar Hall Classrooms
• Reflection in Service Learning
• Discussions
• Incorporating Writing

Team-Based Learning

• First Day Strategies
• Flipping the Class
• Holding Students Accountable
• Producing Video for Courses
• Effective Classroom Management
• Games for Learning
• Quick Guides
• Mosaic Initiative
• Kelley Office of Instructional Consulting and Assessment

Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning

• Teaching Resources
• Teaching Strategies

Organizing the Groups

Designating roles in groups, sharing group results.

Having students work in groups lets them practice the skills they are learning. Speaking in front of the whole class can be scary, and combined with the tension of speaking to the teacher, the situation can be downright terrifying to students. Breaking them up into groups not only develops social skills useful in the professional environment for which they are training, but gives them a chance to perform in a supportive environment before a test or even before having to do homework on the topic on their own.

Keep in mind the following elements of group work when selecting the appropriate type of group work for your class.

• Size : Two to six people in a group is ideal. The smaller the group, the more likely each student will be to contribute to the discussion. Groups of two or three students are sufficient for simple tasks for which consensus should be reached quickly. Groups of four to six are better for more complex tasks in which a greater number of ideas may improve the final results.
• Selection : You should either assign students randomly to groups or select students so that each group has an equal distribution of talents. Do not let students choose their own teams, for they may team up with friends or form cliques that can get off topic.  Video on group formation  (running time 4:57).
• Duration : Use the groups for a brief discussion in class or for all semester. Long-term groups work more substantively and less superficially.

To derive the greatest benefit from the group interaction, you should spend a few minutes clarifying the students’ roles and the expectations for the group’s work.

Groups that are created for in-class discussion can be easily organized around a four-person model based on roles. Each member of the group plays a specific role that supports the team’s collaborative effort. These roles include:

• Leader : Responsible for keeping the group on task, maintaining the schedule (meetings, deadlines), and maintaining contact information (phone numbers, emails).
• Encourager : Encourages conversation and inclusion of all opinions, and guides the discussion toward consensus.
• Prober : Ensures that the assumptions are correct and that there is sufficient evidence for the solution.
• Recorder : Writes down the group’s solution that will be submitted for the group grade.

While some people will tend to lead and some will tend to follow, everyone should be willing to compromise and modify their ideas in the interest of group unity. If the groups are going to be working together on a long-term project or multiple tasks, you may wish to modify these roles to emulate roles that one might encounter in your discipline. Ensure that the students rotate through these positions. Try to break a long project into at least as many tasks as there are people in each group and have the students rotate through the roles each time they start a new task.

Students should share the results of their group with the class at large. This holds them accountable to show their work. Having to show the other groups what they did can increase their motivation to produce higher level work. While in the past, instructors were used to having groups report out their work either verbally or on newsprint posted on walls along with a walk-around format, for long-term projects, many social pedagogies now exist that can be employed, such as Prezi presentations or having students create a Public Service Announcement (PSA), blog, or a web page of their results. Do not forget to debrief students about the lessons they might have learned from the group work.

Designing for Difficulty: Social Pedagogies as a Framework for Course Design

Discussion can motivate students, especially when the activity involves authentic learning—that is, real world and messy—allowing students to collaborate, reflect on, and synthesize their learning. When planning the structure for a discussion, look for one that will hold students accountable to their peers, not just the instructor, in a public way (Bass & Elmendorf, 2011).

IDEA Paper #49 Effective Classroom Discussion

This paper sets out basic principles to create the expectation for student discussion, as well as the role of the instructor in fostering discussion in class. 

Team-Based Learning is an advanced form of group work in which content coverage is pushed outside of the class, with students using precious in-class time to take quizzes to show they have mastered the content and then practice the application of critical disciplinary skills such as problem-solving and argumentation. For more information, go the TBL website, which has many videos, including ones on forming groups, the difference between groups and teams, and peer evaluation of team members. 

Who Is Doing This at IUB?

The National Study of Student Engagement data show that 68% of IUB seniors engage in class discussion. Many IUB professors commonly use various discussion techniques. Some specific examples are listed below:

Prof. Jill Robinson (Chemistry) uses small groups for problem solving and “clickers” to collect student responses to get students to think deeply about fundamental chemical principles that can influence our climate. She does so even though she is teaching a large class (140-student C118: Principles of Chemistry and Biochemistry) and often teaching in a challenging classroom space.

Biology Professor and Carnegie Scholar Whitney Schlegel leads students to learn with their peers by engaging in discussion, problem-solving, and inquiry by using team members as a resource in classes of over 100. She utilizes a high-tech classroom so that students can show the products of their group work during class.

For More Information or Help

To meet with a CITL consultant,  contact us .

Center for Innovative Teaching & Learning social media channels

Useful indiana university information.

• Campus Policies
• Knowledge Base
• University Information Technology Services
• Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education
• Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs
• Faculty Academy on Excellence in Teaching
• Wells Library, 2nd Floor, East Tower 1320 East Tenth Street Bloomington, IN 47405
• Phone: 812-855-9023

• Jump to menu
• Student Home
• Accept your offer
• How to enrol
• Student ID card
• Set up your IT
• Orientation Week
• Fees & payment
• Academic calendar
• Special consideration
• Transcripts
• The Nucleus: Student Hub
• Referencing
• Essay writing
• Learning abroad & exchange
• Professional development & UNSW Advantage
• Employability
• Financial assistance
• International students
• Equitable learning
• Postgraduate research
• Health Service
• Events & activities
• Emergencies
• Volunteering
• Clubs and societies
• Accommodation
• Health services
• Sport and gym
• Arc student organisation
• Security on campus
• Maps of campus
• Careers portal
• Change password

Guide to Group Work

This page will inform you about the nature of group work, about what you should expect and the expectations teachers have of you in group learning situations.

Learning and working effectively as part of a team or group is an extremely important skill, and one that you will refine and use throughout your working life. Group projects should be among the most valuable and rewarding learning experiences. For many students, however, they are also among the most frustrating.

Here are some pointers to help you work effectively on your group tasks and assignments. These are mostly general principles that you should apply to group work here, in other courses and in the workplace.

Why we use group learning tasks

Learning in groups means that you need to share your knowledge and ideas with other students. There are two principal ways that you benefit from doing this:

• you need to think carefully about your own ideas in order to explain them to others
• you expand your own awareness by taking account of the knowledge and ideas of others.

When you work as a group on a project or assignment, then you have the opportunity to draw on the different strengths of group members, to produce a more extensive and higher quality project or assignment than you could complete on your own.

To do this effectively you need to learn group work skills, which are an extremely important part of your professional development. In most professions people are required to work in multidisciplinary project teams or teams with a responsibility for a specific task. Many professional organisations and employer groups stress the importance of interpersonal and group skills, such as communication, negotiation, problem solving, and teamwork. These skills can be as important as your subject knowledge in enabling you to be an effective professional.

This kind of group work is actually an ongoing process of generating ideas and planning as a group, working as an individual to carry out parts of that plan and then communicating as a group to draw the individual components together and plan the next step.

Skills in group work

Group work requires both interpersonal and process management skills. Group work is included in a course to provide a safe environment in which you can try out new ideas and practices and learn some group skills. Some of the skills you need to develop are outlined here, you will discover some others for yourself.

Interpersonal skills

• Building positive working relationships
• Communicating effectively in meetings
• Negotiating to agree on tasks and resolve conflicts
• Accommodating people with different cultural orientations and work habits

Process management skills

• Identifying group goals and dividing work
• Planning and complying with meeting schedules and deadlines
• Managing time to meet group expectations
• Monitoring group processes and intervening to correct problems

Interpersonal skills and considerations

• Take some time early on to chat with and get to know each of your group mates. The better you know one another and the more comfortable you are communicating with one another, the more effectively you will be able to work together. The online discussion set up for your group can be used to exchange information about backgrounds and interests as an icebreaker that elicits information that may not normally be available. The online discussion often helps people who are shy or reluctant to speak in a conversational way.
• feel comfortable voicing their opinions, and feel that these opinions will be listened to.
• feel that all group members are contributing positively to the tasks by keeping to agreed procedures and plans and producing good quality work, on time.
• feel that their feelings are being considered by team members, yet the goals and objectives of the group are not being compromised to accommodate the whim or the wants of a few members.

Make sure that you both express your views and listen to others. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing with your group mates, no matter how confident they may seem to be about what they are saying. When you disagree, be constructive and focus on the issue rather than the person. Likewise when someone disagrees with you, respect what they are saying and the risk that they took in expressing their opinion. Try to find a way forward that everybody can agree to and that isn't the opinion of just one confident or outspoken member.

Managing the process

Effective group work does not happen by accident. It involves deliberate effort, and because there are many people involved it must not be left up to memory; good note taking is essential. Following these steps will help you and your group to work effectively together.

• Have clear objectives . At each stage you should try to agree on goals. These include a timetable for progress on the project as well as more immediate goals (e.g. to agree on an approach to the assignment by Friday). Each meeting or discussion should also begin with a goal in mind (e.g. to come up with a list of tasks that need to be done).
• Set ground rules . Discussions can become disorderly and can discourage shyer group members from participating if you don't have procedures in place for encouraging discussion, coming to resolution without becoming repetitive, and resolving differences of opinion. Set rules at the outset and modify them as necessary along the way. An interesting rule that one group made was that anybody who missed a meeting would buy the rest of the group a cup of coffee from the coffee shop. Nobody ever missed a meeting after that.
• Communicate efficiently . Make sure you communicate regularly with group members. Try to be clear and positive in what you say without going on or being repetitive.
• Build consensus . People work together most effectively when they are working toward a goal that they have agreed to. Ensure that everyone has a say, even if you have to take time to get more withdrawn members to say something. Make sure you listen to everyone's ideas and then try to come to an agreement that everyone shares and has contributed to.
• Define roles . Split the work to be done into different tasks that make use of individual strengths. Having roles both in the execution of your tasks and in meetings / discussions (e.g. Arani is responsible for summarising discussions, Joseph for ensuring everybody has a say and accepts resolutions etc.) can help to make a happy, effective team. See Sharing and organising work for more information.
• Clarify . When a decision is made, this must be clarified in such a way that everyone is absolutely clear on what has been agreed, including deadlines.
• Keep good records . Communicating on the online discussion for your group provides a good record of discussion. Try to summarise face-to-face discussions and especially decisions, and post them to the online discussion so that you can refer back to them. This includes lists of who has agreed to do what.
• Stick to the plan . If you agreed to do something as part of the plan, then do it. Your group are relying on you to do what you said you would do not what you felt like doing. If you think the plan should be revised, then discuss this.
• Monitor progress and stick to deadlines . As a group, discuss progress in relation to your timetable and deadlines. Make sure that you personally meet deadlines to avoid letting your group down.

Set up a contract

A useful tool to help with the steps above is a contract. Within the first week of each group task you and your group will need to negotiate and agree to a contract. In this signed agreement, you will outline what you are going to do, who is going to do what, and by when. As a guide to negotiating your group contracts a contract proforma is reproduced at the end of this document.

Sharing and organising work online

Two kinds of work must be shared: to make the team function and the task to be performed.

Making the team function

An effective team requires the following roles to work efficiently. It is useful to explicitly allocate these functions.

• Facilitator or leader (depending on context) for making sure the aims of the meeting are clarified and for summarising discussions and decisions; to ensure the meeting keeps on track and ground rules are followed.
• Note taker to keep a record of ideas that are discussed and decisions that are made and who is doing what.
• Time keeper to make sure that you discuss everything you need to in the time available for the meeting.
• Progress chaser to chase people up and make sure that the jobs get done by the time agreed and sort out problems if they are not.
• Process watcher someone who has an eye on process rather than content and can bring problems to the attention of the team. It is important to be positive in this role and not judgemental.
• Editor to compile contributions, identify gaps or overlaps, and ensure consistency in the final submission.

Sharing the task

Tasks need to be broken down into smaller parts and scheduled. Sometimes one part cannot be started until another part is finished so it may be worth drawing a simple time line.

• Consider the resources that you have and those that you will need to find.
• Define the outcome required.
• Consider how will you know when you have done it well enough?
• Divide the tasks among the team and
• Set the deadlines for the sub-tasks and times for future meetings.

Team writing

Three methods are possible (and acceptable).

• One person writes the lot -this tends to mean a narrow range of idea are used and the rest of the team don’t learn from the activity of preparing the report.
• Each person writes one bit - it is then hard to make a single coherent report and you don’t learn about much except your own section.
• Joint writing. This is the most productive way of approaching group tasks, and ensures the greatest benefits from collaboration. Eg: Each section has a writer and at least one reviewer with each team member being both a writer and a reviewer of some section. The final product should be reviewed by all team members prior to finalisation by the editor. Alternatively you can have a single writer with others editing, adding and proof reading and someone tidying up the finished report.

Check the following:

• Is the objective of the exercise clear from the report?
• Are the conclusions or recommendations clear?
• Do conclusions follow from the body of the report?
• Do the sections fit together well?
• Does the report achieve the objectives (and the assessment criteria)?
• Are the required components adequately covered?

Whichever method you use, all group members should agree on the process, and how they are going to maximise the collaborative approach to writing.

Collaborative writing

Writing collaboratively is one of the trickiest parts of group work. There are many ways to do this, and your group will have to resolve how to divide the work of writing, collating, editing and putting the final touches on your work. Writing by committee (six people crowded around a keyboard) is a recipe for conflict and lack of progress. The other extreme, where one person takes the most responsibility and ends up doing most of the work, is also unproductive and promotes resentment.

Try to divide the initial writing into tasks, and tackle these individually or in pairs. Once the first drafts of the components have been written, circulate all the components and read them. You will probably need to get together to discuss how to marry them together so that they are consistent with one another. Any members who were not involved in the initial writing can do some of this work. Then edit, improve and polish the manuscript.

Circulate the files as online discussion attachments, or set up a Google doc or Wiki for everyone to add to. If using attachments, ensure that everybody knows who has and is working on the current version; otherwise it becomes

Monitoring group effectives and overcoming problems

The checklist at the end of this document provides a list of common issues that emerge in group work. Use it regularly to identify problems before they get out of hand. If major problems and tensions do arise, use it to identify where things may be going wrong. First answer each question about yourself, then answer it about the group as a whole. Then get together as a group and discuss where each of you think there may be problems and consider how you might overcome these problems.

Group tasks and assignments may mean that marks are assigned to everybody in the group based on the result for the whole group. It is in everybody's interest to ensure an effective contribution from all group members, to make sure that the finished assignment is of high quality. Sometimes a system of peer assessment will be used to determine the relative contributions of everyone to the group process. This could be used to moderate the marks for the assignment, or simply as a way to provide feedback on your group work skills.

Teamwork checklist

Each member should complete this checklist. You will need time to reflect in order to make this a worthwhile exercise. You should complete this exercise reasonably regularly in order to monitor and improve how effectively your group is working.

• Answer each question regarding your own performance in the group.
• Answer each question regarding the rest of the group.
• Get together with your whole group and discuss where you think any problems are arising.

Discuss what you are going to do to overcome these problems.

Adapted from Scoufis (2000).

Teamwork contract

Here's an example of how you might format a group contract.

We, the members of .....(group name)..... agree to the following plan of action regarding our work toward the group assignment tasks:

(The following is a list of items you may wish to include in your contract).

Meetings and communication

• Times and places for in person meetings.
• Frequency of checks to WebCT discussion area.
• Rules and procedures during face-to-face meetings.
• Who will summarise decisions, when will he/she post them on the discussion area.

Work and deadlines

• How will the group come to agreement on a topic (what research are members expected to do before you meet / go online to discuss the topic)?
• When will you make a final decision on a topic?
• Who will write the first draft of and who will first edit each component? Deadlines.
• Who will collate the whole submission and then circulate it for the group to comment on? Deadline.
• Who will prepare and submit the final submission? Deadline.
• What happens if members don’t meet agreed-to deadlines?
• What happens if members do not contribute / come to meetings?

The agreement should be finalised within the first week. It must be signed and dated by the group members. Each member should get a copy, a copy should be posted on the discussion area and the original should be submitted to your tutor.

Acknowledgement

This document (version: BA300112) was developed by staff at the Learning and Teaching Unit at UNSW, and includes material adapted from handouts developed by faculty teaching staff at UNSW.

• Gibbs, G. (1994). Learning in Teams: A student Manual. Oxford: The Oxford Centre for Staff Development.
• Scoufis, M. (2000). Integrating Graduate Attributes into the Undergraduate Curricula. University of Western Sydney. (ISBN 1863418725).

Lectures, tutorials, group work

• Discussion skills
• ^ More support

Scholarly Resources 4 Students | scite.ai 21 May 2024

Discover your Library: Main Library 21 May 2024

Ideas for Great Group Work

Many students, particularly if they are new to college, don’t like group assignments and projects. They might say they “work better by themselves” and be wary of irresponsible members of their group dragging down their grade. Or they may feel group projects take too much time and slow down the progression of the class. This blog post by a student— 5 Reasons I Hate Group Projects —might sound familiar to many faculty assigning in-class group work and longer-term projects in their courses.

We all recognize that learning how to work effectively in groups is an essential skill that will be used by students in practically every career in the private sector or academia. But, with the hesitancy of students towards group work and how it might impact their grade, how do we make group in-class work, assignments, or long-term projects beneficial and even exciting to students?

The methods and ideas in this post have been compiled from Duke faculty who we have consulted with as part of our work in Learning Innovation or have participated in one of our programs. Also included are ideas from colleagues at other universities with whom we have talked at conferences and other venues about group work practices in their own classrooms.

Have clear goals and purpose

Students want to know why they are being assigned certain kinds of work – how it fits into the larger goals of the class and the overall assessment of their performance in the course. Make sure you explain your goals for assigning in-class group work or projects in the course. You may wish to share:

• Information on the importance of developing skills in group work and how this benefits the students in the topics presented in the course.
• Examples of how this type of group work will be used in the discipline outside of the classroom.
• How the assignment or project benefits from multiple perspectives or dividing the work among more than one person.

Some faculty give students the option to come to a consensus on the specifics of how group work will count in the course, within certain parameters. This can help students feel they have some control over their own learning process and and can put less emphasis on grades and more on the importance of learning the skills of working in groups.

Choose the right assignment

Some in-class activities, short assignments or projects are not suitable for working in groups. To ensure student success, choose the right class activity or assignment for groups.

• Would the workload of the project or activity require more than one person to finish it properly?
• Is this something where multiple perspectives create a greater whole?
• Does this draw on knowledge and skills that are spread out among the students?
• Will the group process used in the activity or project give students a tangible benefit to learning in and engagement with the course?

Help students learn the skills of working in groups

Students in your course may have never been asked to work in groups before. If they have worked in groups in previous courses, they may have had bad experiences that color their reaction to group work in your course. They may have never had the resources and support to make group assignments and projects a compelling experience.

One of the most important things you can do as an instructor is to consider all of the skills that go into working in groups and to design your activities and assignments with an eye towards developing those skills.

In a group assignment, students may be asked to break down a project into steps, plan strategy, organize their time, and coordinate efforts in the context of a group of people they may have never met before.

Consider these ideas to help your students learn group work skills in your course.

• Give a short survey to your class about their previous work in groups to gauge areas where they might need help: ask about what they liked best and least about group work, dynamics of groups they have worked in, time management, communication skills or other areas important in the assignment you are designing.
• Allow time in class for students in groups to get to know each other. This can be a simple as brief introductions, an in-class active learning activity or the drafting of a team charter.
• Based on the activity you are designing and the skills that would be involved in working as a group, assemble some links to web resources that students can draw on for more information, such as sites that explain how to delegate and share responsibilities, conflict resolution, or planning a project and time management. You can also address these issues in class with the students.
• Have a plan for clarifying questions or possible problems that may emerge with an assignment or project.   Are there ways you can ask questions or get draft material to spot areas where students are having difficulty understanding the assignment or having difficulty with group dynamics that might impact the work later?

Designing the assignment or project

The actual design of the class activity or project can help the students transition into group work processes and gain confidence with the skills involved in group dynamics.   When designing your assignment, consider these ideas.

• Break the assignment down into steps or stages to help students become familiar with the process of planning the project as a group.
• Suggest roles for participants in each group to encourage building expertise and expertise and to illustrate ways to divide responsibility for the work.
• Use interim drafts for longer projects to help students manage their time and goals and spot early problems with group projects.
• Limit their resources (such as giving them material to work with or certain subsets of information) to encourage more close cooperation.
• Encourage diversity in groups to spread experience and skill levels and to get students to work with colleagues in the course who they may not know.

Promote individual responsibility

Students always worry about how the performance of other students in a group project might impact their grade. A way to allay those fears is to build individual responsibility into both the course grade and the logistics of group work.

• Build “slack days” into the course. Allow a prearranged number of days when individuals can step away from group work to focus on other classes or campus events. Individual students claim “slack days” in advance, informing both the members of their group and the instructor. Encourage students to work out how the group members will deal with conflicting dates if more than one student in a group wants to claim the same dates.
• Combine a group grade with an individual grade for independent write-ups, journal entries, and reflections.
• Have students assess their fellow group members. Teammates is an online application that can automate this process.
• If you are having students assume roles in group class activities and projects, have them change roles in different parts of the class or project so that one student isn’t “stuck” doing one task for the group.

Gather feedback

To improve your group class activities and assignments, gather reflective feedback from students on what is and isn’t working. You can also share good feedback with future classes to help them understand the value of the activities they’re working on in groups.

• For in-class activities, have students jot down thoughts at the end of class on a notecard for you to review.
• At the end of a larger project, or at key points when you have them submit drafts, ask the students for an “assignment wrapper”—a short reflection on the assignment or short answers to a series of questions.

Further resources

Information for faculty

Best practices for designing group projects (Eberly Center, Carnegie Mellon)

Building Teamwork Process Skills in Students (Shannon Ciston, UC Berkeley)

Working with Student Teams   (Bart Pursel, Penn State)

Barkley, E.F., Cross, K.P., and Major, C.H. (2005). Collaborative learning techniques: A handbook for college faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Johnson, D.W., Johnson, R., & Smith, K. (1998). Active learning: Cooperation in the college classroom. Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company.

Thompson, L.L. (2004). Making the team: A guide for managers. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc.

Information for students

10 tips for working effectively in groups (Vancouver Island University Learning Matters)

Teamwork skills: being an effective group member (University of Waterloo Centre for Teaching Excellence)

5 ways to survive a group project in college (HBCU Lifestyle)

Group project tips for online courses (Drexel Online)

Group Writing (Writing Center at UNC-Chapel Hill)

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

2 Understanding Group Formation and roles

Learning Objectives

• Explain the reasons why people join groups
• Identify what makes groups most effective
• Discuss the utility of descriptive models of group development
• Identify and discuss task-related group roles and behaviors
• Identify and discuss maintenance group roles and behaviors
• Identify and discuss negative group roles and behaviors

This chapter assumes that a thorough understanding of people requires a thorough understanding of groups. Each of us is an autonomous individual seeking our own objectives, yet we are also members of groups—groups that constrain us, guide us, and sustain us. Just as each of us influences the group and the people in the group, so, too, do groups change each one of us. Joining groups satisfies our need to belong, gain information and understanding through social comparison, define our sense of self and social identity, and achieve goals that might elude us if we worked alone. Groups are also practically significant, for much of the world’s work is done by groups rather than by individuals. Success sometimes eludes our groups, but when group members learn to work together as a cohesive team their success becomes more certain.

Psychologists study groups because nearly all human activities—working, learning, worshiping, relaxing, playing, and even sleeping—occur in groups. The lone individual who is cut off from all groups is a rarity. Most of us live out our lives in groups, and these groups have a profound impact on our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Many psychologists focus their attention on single individuals, but social psychologists expand their analysis to include groups, organizations, communities, and even cultures.

This chapter examines the psychology of groups and group membership. It begins with a basic question: What is the psychological significance of groups? This chapter then reviews some of the key findings from studies of groups. Researchers have asked many questions about people and groups: Do people work as hard as they can when they are in groups? Are groups more cautious than individuals? Do groups make wiser decisions than single individuals? In many cases, the answers are not what common sense and folk wisdom might suggest. Finally, we will explore the three categories of common group roles that were identified by early group communication scholars. These role categories include task-related roles, maintenance roles, and negative roles that are considered to be self-centered or unproductive for the group (Benne & Sheats, 1948).

The Psychological Significance of Groups

The need to belong.

Across individuals, societies, and even eras, humans consistently seek inclusion over exclusion, membership over isolation, and acceptance over rejection. As Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary (1995) conclude, humans have a need to belong: “a pervasive drive to form and maintain at least a minimum quantity of lasting, positive, and impactful interpersonal relationships” (p. 497). And most of us satisfy this need by joining groups. When surveyed, 87.3% of Americans reported that they lived with other people, including family members, partners, and roommates (Davis & Smith, 2007). The majority, ranging from 50% to 80%, reported regularly doing things in groups, such as attending a sports event together, visiting one another for the evening, sharing a meal together, or going out as a group to see a movie (Putnam, 2000).

People respond negatively when their need to belong is unfulfilled. People who are accepted members of a group tend to feel happier and more satisfied. But should they be rejected by a group, they feel unhappy, helpless, and depressed. Studies of  ostracism —the deliberate exclusion from groups—indicate this experience is highly stressful and can lead to depression, confused thinking, and even aggression (Williams, 2007). When researchers used a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner to track neural responses to exclusion, they found that people who were left out of a group activity displayed heightened cortical activity in two specific areas of the brain—the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insula. These areas of the brain are associated with the experience of physical pain sensations (Eisenberger et al., 2003). It hurts, quite literally, to be left out of a group.

Affiliation in Groups

Groups not only satisfy the need to belong, but they also provide members with information, assistance, and social support. Leon Festinger’s theory of social comparison   (1950, 1954) suggested that in many cases people join with others to evaluate the accuracy of their personal beliefs and attitudes. Stanley Schachter (1959) explored this process by putting individuals in ambiguous, stressful situations and asking them if they wished to wait alone or with others. He found that people  affiliate  in such situations—they seek the company of others.

Although any kind of companionship is appreciated, we prefer those who provide us with reassurance and support as well as accurate information. In some cases, we also prefer to join with others who are even worse off than we are. Imagine, for example, how you would respond when the teacher hands back the test and yours is marked 85%. Do you want to affiliate with a friend who got a 95% or a friend who got a 78%? To maintain a sense of self-worth, people seek out and compare themselves to the less fortunate. This process is known as  downward social comparison .

Identity and Membership

Groups are not only founts of information during times of ambiguity, they also help us answer the existentially significant question, “Who am I?” People are defined not only by their traits, preferences, interests, likes, and dislikes, but also by their friendships, social roles, family connections, and group memberships. The self is not just a “me,” but also a “we.”

Even demographic qualities such as sex or age can influence us if we categorize ourselves based on these qualities. Social identity theory, for example, assumes that we don’t just classify  other people into such social categories as man, woman, White, Black, Latinx, elderly, or college student, but we also categorize ourselves. According to Tajfel and Turner (1986), social identities are directed by our memberships in particular groups. or social categories. If we strongly identify with these categories, then we will ascribe the characteristics of the typical member of these groups to ourselves, and so stereotype ourselves. If, for example, we believe that college students are intellectual, then we will assume we, too, are intellectual if we identify with that group (Hogg, 2001).

Groups also provide a variety of means for maintaining and enhancing a sense of self-worth, as our assessment of the quality of groups we belong to influences our  collective self-esteem  (Crocker & Luhtanen, 1990). If our self-esteem is shaken by a personal setback, we can focus on our group’s success and prestige. In addition, by comparing our group to other groups, we frequently discover that we are members of the better group, and so can take pride in our superiority. By denigrating other groups, we elevate both our personal and our collective self-esteem (Crocker & Major, 1989).

Mark Leary’s (2007) sociometer model   goes so far as to suggest that “self-esteem is part of a sociometer that monitors peoples’ relational value in other people’s eyes” (p. 328). He maintains self-esteem is not just an index of one’s sense of personal value, but also an indicator of acceptance into groups. Like a gauge that indicates how much fuel is left in the tank, a dip in self-esteem indicates exclusion from our group is likely. Disquieting feelings of self-worth, then, prompt us to search for and correct characteristics and qualities that put us at risk of social exclusion. Self-esteem is not just high self-regard, but the self-approbation that we feel when included in groups (Leary & Baumeister, 2000).

Evolutionary Advantages of Group Living

Groups may be humans’ most useful invention, for they provide us with the means to reach goals that would elude us if we remained alone. Individuals in groups can secure advantages and avoid disadvantages that would plague the lone individuals. In his theory of social integration, Moreland (1987) concludes that groups tend to form whenever “people become dependent on one another for the satisfaction of their needs” (p. 104). The advantages of group life may be so great that humans are biologically prepared to seek membership and avoid isolation. From an evolutionary psychology perspective, because groups have increased humans’ overall fitness for countless generations, individuals who carried genes that promoted solitude-seeking were less likely to survive and procreate compared to those with genes that prompted them to join groups (Darwin, 1859/1963). This process of natural selection culminated in the creation of a modern human who seeks out membership in groups instinctively, for most of us are descendants of “joiners” rather than “loners.”

Motivation and Performance

Social facilitation in groups.

Do people perform more effectively when alone or when part of a group? Norman Triplett (1898) examined this issue in one of the first empirical studies in psychology. While watching bicycle races, Triplett noticed that cyclists were faster when they competed against other racers than when they raced alone against the clock. To determine if the presence of others leads to the psychological stimulation that enhances performance, he arranged for 40 children to play a game that involved turning a small reel as quickly as possible (see Figure 1). When he measured how quickly they turned the reel, he confirmed that children performed slightly better when they played the game in pairs compared to when they played alone (see Stroebe, 2012; Strube, 2005).

Triplett succeeded in sparking interest in a phenomenon now known as  social facilitation: the enhancement of an individual’s performance when that person works in the presence of other people. However, it remained for Robert Zajonc (1965) to specify when social facilitation does and does not occur. After reviewing prior research, Zajonc noted that the facilitating effects of an audience usually only occur when the task requires the person to perform dominant responses (i.e., ones that are well-learned or based on instinctive behaviors). If the task requires nondominant responses (i.e., novel, complicated, or untried behaviors that the organism has never performed before or has performed only infrequently) then the presence of others inhibits performance. Hence, students write poorer quality essays on complex philosophical questions when they labor in a group rather than alone (Allport, 1924), but they make fewer mistakes in solving simple, low-level multiplication problems with an audience or a co-actor than when they work in isolation (Dashiell, 1930).

Social facilitation, then, depends on the task: other people facilitate performance when the task is so simple that it requires only dominant responses, but others interfere when the task requires nondominant responses. However, a number of psychological processes combine to influence when social facilitation, not social interference, occurs. Studies of the challenge-threat response and brain imaging, for example, confirm that we respond physiologically and neurologically to the presence of others (Blascovich et al., 1999). Other people also can trigger evaluation apprehension,  particularly when we feel that our individual performance will be known to others, and those others might judge it negatively (Bond et al., 1996). The presence of other people can also cause perturbations in our capacity to concentrate on and process information (Harkins, 2006). Distractions due to the presence of other people have been shown to improve performance on certain tasks, such as the Stroop task , but undermine performance on more cognitively demanding tasks (Huguet et al., 1999).

Social Loafing

Groups usually outperform individuals. A single student, working alone on a paper, will get less done in an hour than will four students working on a group project. One person playing a tug-of-war game against a group will lose. A crew of movers can pack up and transport your household belongings faster than you can by yourself. As the saying goes, “Many hands make light the work” (Littlepage, 1991; Steiner, 1972).

Groups, though, tend to be underachievers. Studies of social facilitation confirmed the positive motivational benefits of working with other people on well-practiced tasks in which each member’s contribution to the collective enterprise can be identified and evaluated. But what happens when tasks require a truly collective effort? First, when people work together they must coordinate their individual activities and contributions to reach the maximum level of efficiency—but they rarely do (Diehl & Stroebe, 1987). Three people in a tug-of-war competition, for example, invariably pull and pause at slightly different times, so their efforts are uncoordinated. The result is  coordination loss : the three-person group is stronger than a single person, but not three times as strong . Second, people just don’t exert as much effort when working on a collective endeavor, nor do they expend as much cognitive effort trying to solve problems, as they do when working alone. They display  social loafing (Latané, 1981).

Bibb Latané, Kip Williams, and Stephen Harkins (1979) examined both coordination losses and social loafing by arranging for students to cheer or clap either alone or in groups of varying sizes. The students cheered alone or in 2- or 6-person groups, or they were lead to believe they were in 2- or 6-person groups (those in the “pseudo-groups” wore blindfolds and headsets that played masking sound). Groups generated more noise than solitary subjects, but the productivity dropped as the groups became larger in size. In dyads, each subject worked at only 66% of capacity, and in 6-person groups at 36%. Productivity also dropped when subjects merely believed they were in groups. If subjects thought that one other person was shouting with them, they shouted 82% as intensely, and if they thought five other people were shouting, they reached only 74% of their capacity. These losses in productivity were not due to coordination problems; this decline in production could be attributed only to a reduction in effort—to social loafing (Latané et al., 1979, Experiment 2).

Social loafing is not a rare phenomenon. When sales personnel work in groups with shared goals, they tend to “take it easy” if another salesperson is nearby who can do their work (George, 1992). People who are trying to generate new, creative ideas in group brainstorming sessions usually put in less effort and are thus less productive than people who are generating new ideas individually (Paulus & Brown, 2007). Students assigned group projects often complain of inequity in the quality and quantity of each member’s contributions: Some people just don’t work as much as they should to help the group reach its learning goals (Neu, 2012). People carrying out all sorts of physical and mental tasks expend less effort when working in groups, and the larger the group, the more they loaf (Karau & Williams, 1993).

Groups can, however, overcome this impediment to performance through  teamwork . A group may include many talented individuals, but they must learn how to pool their individual abilities and energies to maximize the team’s performance. Team goals must be set, work patterns structured, and a sense of group identity developed. Individual members must learn how to coordinate their actions, and any strains and stresses in interpersonal relations need to be identified and resolved (Salas et al., 2009).

Researchers have identified three key ingredients to effective teamwork: a shared mental representation of the task and group cohesion. Teams improve their performance over time as they develop a shared understanding of the team and the tasks they are attempting. Some semblance of this shared mental model , is present nearly from its inception, but as the team practices, differences among the members in terms of their understanding of their situation and their team diminish as a consensus becomes implicitly accepted (Tindale et al., 2008). Effective teams are also, in most cases, cohesive groups (Dion, 2000). Group cohesion is the integrity, solidarity, social integration, or unity of a group. In most cases, members of cohesive groups like each other and the group and they also are united in their pursuit of collective, group-level goals. Members tend to enjoy their groups more when they are cohesive, and cohesive groups usually outperform ones that lack cohesion. This cohesion-performance relationship, however, is a complex one. Meta-analytic studies suggest that cohesion improves teamwork among members, but that performance quality influences cohesion more than cohesion influences performance (Mullen & Copper, 1994; Mullen et al., 1998). Cohesive groups also can be spectacularly unproductive if the group’s norms stress low productivity rather than high productivity (Seashore, 1954). Group cohesion will be discussed in more detail in a later chapter. Mutuality of Concern   is when group members develop a strong concern for one another and the success of the group.

GROUP DEVELOPMENT

From the time they are formed, groups evolve and can go through a variety of changes over the course of their life cycles. Researchers have sought to identify common patterns in group development. These are referred to as descriptive models (Beebe & Masterson, 2015). Descriptive models can help us make sense of our group experiences by describing what might be ‘normal’ or ‘typical’ group processes. In the following sections, we will discuss two examples of descriptive models of group development — Tuckman’s model and punctuated equilibrium.

TUCKMAN MODEL OF Group Development

American organizational psychologist Bruce Tuckman presented a robust model in 1965 that is still widely used today. Based on his observations of group behavior in a variety of settings, he proposed a four-stage map of group evolution, also known as Tuckman's model of group development (Tuckman, 1965). Later he enhanced the model by adding a fifth and final stage, the adjourning phase. Interestingly enough, just as an individual moves through developmental stages such as childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, so does a group, although in a much shorter period of time. According to this theory, in order to successfully facilitate a group, the leader needs to move through various leadership styles over time. Generally, this is accomplished by first being more directive, eventually serving as a coach, and later, once the group is able to assume more power and responsibility for itself, shifting to a delegator. While research has not confirmed that this is descriptive of how groups progress, knowing and following these steps can help groups be more effective. For example, groups that do not go through the storming phase early on will often return to this stage toward the end of the group process to address unresolved issues. Another example of the validity of the group development model involves groups that take the time to get to know each other socially in the forming stage. When this occurs, groups tend to handle future challenges better because the individuals have an understanding of each other’s needs.

In the forming stage , the group comes together for the first time. The members may already know each other or they may be total strangers. In either case, there is a level of formality, some anxiety, and a degree of guardedness as group members are not sure what is going to happen next. “Will I be accepted? What will my role be? Who has the power here?” These are some of the questions participants think about during this stage of group formation. Because of the large amount of uncertainty, members tend to be polite, conflict avoidant, and observant. They are trying to figure out the “rules of the game” without being too vulnerable. At this point, they may also be quite excited and optimistic about the task at hand, perhaps experiencing a level of pride at being chosen to join a particular group. Group members are trying to achieve several goals at this stage, although this may not necessarily be done consciously. First, they are trying to get to know each other. Often this can be accomplished by finding some common ground. Members also begin to explore group boundaries to determine what will be considered acceptable behavior. “Can I interrupt? Can I leave when I feel like it?” This trial phase may also involve testing the appointed leader or seeing if a leader emerges from the group. At this point, group members are also discovering how the group will work in terms of what needs to be done and who will be responsible for each task. This stage is often characterized by abstract discussions about issues to be addressed by the group; those who like to get moving can become impatient with this part of the process. This phase is usually short in duration, perhaps a meeting or two.

Once group members feel sufficiently safe and included, they tend to enter the storming phase . Participants focus less on keeping their guard up as they shed social facades, becoming more authentic and more argumentative. Group members begin to explore their power and influence, and they often stake out their territory by differentiating themselves from the other group members rather than seeking common ground. Discussions can become heated as participants raise contending points of view and values, or argue over how tasks should be done and who is assigned to them. It is not unusual for group members to become defensive, competitive, or jealous. They may even take sides or begin to form cliques within the group. Questioning and resisting direction from the leader is also quite common. “Why should I have to do this? Who designed this project in the first place? Why do I have to listen to you?” Although little seems to get accomplished at this stage, group members are becoming more authentic as they express their deeper thoughts and feelings. What they are really exploring is “Can I truly be me, have power, and be accepted?” During this chaotic stage, a great deal of creative energy that was previously buried is released and available for use, but it takes skill to move the group from storming to norming. In many cases, the group gets stuck in the storming phase.

Avoid Getting Stuck in the Storming Phase

There are several steps you can take to avoid getting stuck in the storming phase of group development. Try the following if you feel the group process you are involved in is not progressing:

• Normalize conflict . Let members know this is a natural phase in the group-formation process.
• Be inclusive . Continue to make all members feel included and invite all views into the room. Mention how diverse ideas and opinions help foster creativity and innovation.
• Make sure everyone is heard . Facilitate heated discussions and help participants understand each other.
• Support all group members . This is especially important for those who feel more insecure.
• Remain positive . This is a key point to remember about the group’s ability to accomplish its goal.
• Don’t rush the group’s development . Remember that working through the storming stage can take several meetings.

Once group members discover that they can be authentic and that the group is capable of handling differences without dissolving, they are ready to enter the next stage, norming.

“We survived!” is the common sentiment at the norming stage . Group members often feel elated at this point, and they are much more committed to each other and the group’s goal. Feeling energized by knowing they can handle the “tough stuff,” group members are now ready to get to work. Finding themselves more cohesive and cooperative, participants find it easy to establish their own ground rules (or norms ) and define their operating procedures and goals. The group tends to make big decisions, while subgroups or individuals handle the smaller decisions. Hopefully, at this point, the group is more open and respectful toward each other, and members ask each other for both help and feedback. They may even begin to form friendships and share more personal information with each other. At this point, the leader should become more of a facilitator by stepping back and letting the group assume more responsibility for its goal. Since the group’s energy is running high, this is an ideal time to host a social or team-building event.

Galvanized by a sense of shared vision and a feeling of unity, the group is ready to go into high gear. Members are more interdependent, individuality and differences are respected, and group members feel themselves to be part of a greater entity. At the performing stage , participants are not only getting the work done, but they also pay greater attention to how they are doing it. They ask questions like, “Do our operating procedures best support productivity and quality assurance? Do we have suitable means for addressing differences that arise so we can preempt destructive conflicts? Are we relating to and communicating with each other in ways that enhance group dynamics and help us achieve our goals? How can I further develop as a person to become more effective?” By now, the group has matured, becoming more competent, autonomous, and insightful. Group leaders can finally move into coaching roles and help members grow in skill and leadership.

Just as groups form, so do they end. For example, many groups or teams formed in a business context are project-oriented and therefore are temporary in nature. Alternatively, a working group may dissolve due to organizational restructuring. Just as when we graduate from school or leave home for the first time, these endings can be bittersweet, with group members feeling a combination of victory, grief, and insecurity about what is coming next. For those who like routine and bond closely with fellow group members, this transition can be particularly challenging. Group leaders and members alike should be sensitive to handling these endings respectfully and compassionately. An ideal way to close a group is to set aside time to debrief (“How did it all go? What did we learn?”), acknowledge each other, and celebrate a job well done.

The Punctuated-Equilibrium Model

As you may have noted, the five-stage model we have just reviewed is a linear process. According to the model, a group progresses to the performing stage, at which point it finds itself in an ongoing, smooth-sailing situation until the group dissolves. In reality, subsequent researchers, most notably Joy H. Karriker, have found that the life of a group is much more dynamic and cyclical in nature (Karriker, 2005). For example, a group may operate in the performing stage for several months. Then, because of a disruption, such as a competing emerging technology that changes the rules of the game or the introduction of a new CEO, the group may move back into the storming phase before returning to performing. Ideally, any regression in the linear group progression will ultimately result in a higher level of functioning. Proponents of this cyclical model draw from behavioral scientist Connie Gersick’s study of punctuated equilibrium (Gersick, 1991).

The concept of punctuated equilibrium was first proposed in 1972 by paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould, who both believed that evolution occurred in rapid, radical spurts rather than gradually over time. Identifying numerous examples of this pattern in social behavior, Gersick found that the concept applied to organizational change. She proposed that groups remain fairly static, maintaining a certain equilibrium for long periods of time. Change during these periods is incremental, largely due to the resistance to change that arises when systems take root and processes become institutionalized. In this model, revolutionary change occurs in brief, punctuated bursts, generally catalyzed by a crisis or problem that breaks through the systemic inertia and shakes up the deep organizational structures in place. At this point, the organization or group has the opportunity to learn and create new structures that are better aligned with current realities. Whether the group does this is not guaranteed. In sum, in Gersick’s model, groups can repeatedly cycle through the storming and performing stages, with revolutionary change taking place during short transitional windows. For organizations and groups who understand that disruption, conflict, and chaos are inevitable in the life of a social system, these disruptions represent opportunities for innovation and creativity.

Review & Reflection Questions

• Why do people often join groups? What are some reasons you have joined groups in the past?
• Do people perform more effectively when alone or when part of a group? Under what conditions?
• If you were a college professor, what would you do to increase the success of in-class groups and teams?
• What do descriptive models do for us? How might they be useful to groups?
• Have you observed a group going through these phases in the past? What can you learn from those experiences?

Task-Related Roles and Behaviors

Task roles and their related behaviors contribute directly to the group’s completion of a task or achievement of its goal or purpose. Task-related roles typically serve leadership, informational, or procedural functions. In this section, we will discuss the following roles and behaviors: task leader, expediter, information provider, information seeker, gatekeeper, and recorder.

Task Leader

Within any group, there may be a task leader who has a high group status because of his or her maturity, problem-solving abilities, knowledge, and/or leadership experience and skills and functions primarily to help the group complete its task (Cragan & Wright, 1991). This person may be a designated or emergent leader, but in either case, task leaders tend to talk more during group interactions than other group members and also tend to do more work in the group. Depending on the number of tasks a group has, there may be more than one task leader, especially if the tasks require different sets of skills or knowledge. Because of the added responsibilities of being a task leader, people in these roles may experience higher levels of stress. A task leader’s stresses, however, may be lessened through some of the maintenance role behaviors that we will discuss later.

Task-leader behaviors can be further divided into two types: substantive and procedural (Pavitt, 1999). The substantive leader is the “idea person” who communicates “big picture” thoughts and suggestions that feed group discussion. The procedural leader is the person who gives the most guidance, perhaps following up on the ideas generated by the substantive leader. A skilled and experienced task leader may be able to perform both of these roles, but when the roles are filled by two different people, the person considered the procedural leader is more likely than the substantive leader to be viewed by members as the overall group leader. This indicates that task-focused groups assign more status to the person who actually guides the group toward the completion of the task (a “doer”) than the person who comes up with ideas (the “thinker”).

The expediter is a task-related role that functions to keep the group on track toward completing its task by managing the agenda and setting and assessing goals to monitor the group’s progress. An expediter doesn’t push group members mindlessly along toward the completion of their task; an expediter must have a good sense of when a topic has been sufficiently discussed or when a group’s extended focus on one area has led to diminishing returns. In such cases, the expediter may say, “Now that we’ve had a thorough discussion of the pros and cons of switching the office from PCs to Macs, which side do you think has more support?” or “We’ve spent half of this meeting looking for examples of what other libraries have done and haven’t found anything useful. Maybe we should switch gears so we can get something concrete done tonight.”

If you’ve ever worked in a restaurant, you’re probably familiar with an expediter’s role in the kitchen. The person working “expo” helps make sure that the timing on all the dishes for a meal works out and that each plate is correct before it goes out to the table. This is by no means an easy job since some entrées cook quicker than others and not everyone orders their burger the same way. So the expediter helps make order out of chaos by calling the food out to the kitchen in a particular order that logically works so that all the food will come up at the same time. Once the food is up, he or she also checks what’s on the plate against what’s on the ticket to make sure it matches. Expediting in a restaurant and a small group is like a dance that requires some flexible and creative thinking and an ability to stick to a time frame and assess progress. To avoid the perception that group members are being rushed, a skilled expediter can demonstrate good active-listening skills by paraphrasing what has been discussed and summarizing what has been accomplished in such a way that makes it easier for group members to see the need to move on.

Information Provider

The role of information provider includes behaviors that are more evenly shared than in other roles, as ideally, all group members present new ideas, initiate discussions of new topics, and contribute their own relevant knowledge and experiences. When group members are brought together because they each have different types of information, early group meetings may consist of group members taking turns briefing each other on their area of expertise. In other situations, only one person in the group may be chosen because of his or her specialized knowledge and this person may be expected to be the primary information provider for all other group members. For example, I was asked to serve on a university committee that is reviewing our undergraduate learning goals. Since my official role is to serve as the “faculty expert” on the subcommittee related to speaking, I played a more central information-provider function for our group during most of our initial meetings. Since other people on the subcommittee weren’t as familiar with speaking and its place within higher education curriculum, it made sense that information-providing behaviors were not as evenly distributed in this case.

Information Seeker

The information seeker asks for more information, elaboration, or clarification on items relevant to the group’s task. The information sought may include factual information or group member opinions. In general, information seekers ask questions for clarification, but they can also ask questions that help provide an important evaluative function. Most groups could benefit from more critically oriented information-seeking behaviors. Critical questioning helps increase the quality of ideas and group outcomes and helps avoid groupthink. By asking for more information, people have to defend (in a nonadversarial way) and/or support their claims, which can help ensure that the information being discussed is credible, relevant, and thoroughly considered. When information seeking or questioning occurs as a result of poor listening skills, it risks negatively impacting the group. Skilled information providers and seekers are also good active listeners. They increase all group members’ knowledge when they paraphrase and ask clarifying questions about the information presented.

The gatekeeper manages the flow of conversation in a group to achieve an appropriate balance so that all group members get to participate in a meaningful way. The gatekeeper may prompt others to provide information by saying something like “Let’s each share one idea we have for a movie to show during Black History Month.” He or she may also help correct an imbalance between members who have provided much information already and members who have been quiet by saying something like “Aretha, we’ve heard a lot from you today. Let’s hear from someone else. Beau, what are your thoughts on Aretha’s suggestion?” Gatekeepers should be cautious about “calling people out” or at least making them feel that way. Instead of scolding someone for not participating, they should be invitational and ask a member to contribute to something specific instead of just asking if they have anything to add. Since gatekeepers make group members feel included, they also service the relational aspects of the group.

The recorder takes notes on the discussion and activities that occur during a group meeting. The recorder is the only role that is essentially limited to one person at a time since in most cases it wouldn’t be necessary or beneficial to have more than one person recording. At less formal meetings there may be no recorder, while at formal meetings there is almost always a person who records meeting minutes, which are an overview of what occurred at the meeting. Each committee will have different rules or norms regarding the level of detail within and availability of the minutes. While some group’s minutes are required by law to be public, others may be strictly confidential. Even though a record of a group meeting may be valuable, the role of the recorder is often regarded as a low-status position, since the person in the role may feel or be viewed as subservient to the other members who can more actively contribute to the group’s functioning. Because of this, it may be desirable to have the role of the recorder rotate among members (Cragan & Wright, 1991).

Maintenance Roles and Behaviors

Maintenance roles and their corresponding behaviors function to create and maintain social cohesion and fulfill the interpersonal needs of group members. All these role behaviors require strong and sensitive interpersonal skills. The maintenance roles we will discuss in this section include social-emotional leader, supporter, tension releaser, harmonizer, and interpreter.

Social-Emotional Leader

The social-emotional leader within a group may perform a variety of maintenance roles and is generally someone who is well-liked by the other group members and whose role behaviors complement but don’t compete with the task leader. The social-emotional leader may also reassure and support the task leader when he or she becomes stressed. In general, the social-emotional leader is a reflective thinker who has good perception skills that he or she uses to analyze the group dynamics and climate and then initiate the appropriate role behaviors to maintain a positive climate. Unlike the role of task leader, this isn’t a role that typically shifts from one person to another. While all members of the group perform some maintenance role behaviors at various times, the social-emotional leader reliably functions to support group members and maintain a positive relational climate. Social-emotional leadership functions can actually become detrimental to the group and lead to less satisfaction among members when the maintenance behaviors being performed are seen as redundant or as too distracting from the task (Pavitt, 1999).

The role of supporter is characterized by communication behaviors that encourage other group members and provide emotional support as needed. The supporter’s work primarily occurs in one-on-one exchanges that are more intimate and in-depth than the exchanges that take place during full group meetings. While many group members may make supporting comments publicly at group meetings, these comments are typically superficial and/or brief. A supporter uses active empathetic listening skills to connect with group members who may seem down or frustrated by saying something like “Tayesha, you seemed kind of down today. Is there anything you’d like to talk about?” Supporters also follow up on previous conversations with group members to maintain the connections they’ve already established by saying things like “Alan, I remember you said your mom is having surgery this weekend. I hope it goes well. Let me know if you need anything.” The supporter’s communication behaviors are probably the least noticeable of any of the other maintenance roles, which may make this group member’s efforts seem overlooked. Leaders and other group members can help support the supporter by acknowledging his or her contributions.

Tension Releaser

Th e tension releaser is someone who is naturally funny and sensitive to the personalities of the group and the dynamics of any given situation and who uses these qualities to manage the frustration level of the group. Being funny is not enough to fulfill this role, as jokes or comments could indeed be humorous to other group members but be delivered at an inopportune time, which ultimately creates rather than releases tension. The healthy use of humor by the tension releaser performs the same maintenance function as the empathy employed by the harmonizer or the social-emotional leader, but it is less intimate and is typically directed toward the whole group instead of just one person. The tension releaser may start serving his or her function during the forming stage of group development when primary tensions are present due to the typical uncertainties present during initial interactions. The tension releaser may help “break the ice” or make others feel at ease during the group’s more socially awkward first meetings. When people make a failed attempt to release tension, they may be viewed as a joker, which is a self-interested role we will learn more about later.

The harmonizer role is played by group members who help manage the various types of group conflict that emerge during group communication. They keep their eyes and ears open for signs of conflict among group members and ideally intervene before it escalates. For example, the harmonizer may sense that one group member’s critique of another member’s idea wasn’t received positively, and he or she may be able to rephrase the critique in a more constructive way, which can help diminish the other group member’s defensiveness. Harmonizers also deescalate conflict once it has already started—for example, by suggesting that the group take a break and then mediating between group members in a side conversation. These actions can help prevent conflict from spilling over into other group interactions. In cases where the whole group experiences conflict, the harmonizer may help lead the group in perception-checking discussions that help members see an issue from multiple perspectives. For harmonizers to be effective, it’s important that they be viewed as impartial and committed to the group as a whole rather than to one side of an issue or one person or faction within the larger group. A special kind of harmonizer that helps manage cultural differences within the group is the interpreter.

Interpreter

An interpreter helps manage the diversity within a group by mediating intercultural conflict, articulating common ground between different people, and generally creating a climate where difference is seen as an opportunity rather than as something to be feared. Just as an interpreter at the United Nations acts as a bridge between two different languages, the interpreter can bridge identity differences between group members. Interpreters can help perform the other maintenance roles discussed with a special awareness of and sensitivity toward cultural differences. While a literal interpreter would serve a task-related function within a group, this type of interpreter may help support a person who feels left out of the group because he or she has a different cultural identity than the majority of the group. Interpreters often act as allies to people who are different even though the interpreter doesn’t share the specific cultural identity. The interpreter may help manage conflict that arises as a result of diversity, in this case, acting as an ambassador or mediator. Interpreters, because of their cultural sensitivity, may also take a proactive role to help address conflict before it emerges—for example, by taking a group member aside and explaining why his or her behavior or comments may be perceived as offensive.

Negative Roles and Behaviors

Group communication scholars began exploring the negative side of group member roles more than sixty years ago (Benne & Sheats, 1948). Studying these negative roles can help us analyze group interactions and potentially better understand why some groups are more successful than others. It’s important to acknowledge that we all perform some negative behaviors within groups but that those behaviors do not necessarily constitute a role. A person may temporarily monopolize a discussion to bring attention to his or her idea. If that behavior gets the attention of the group members and makes them realize they were misinformed or headed in a negative direction, then that behavior may have been warranted. Negative behaviors can be enacted with varying degrees of intensity and regularity, and their effects may range from mild annoyance to group failure. In general, the effects grow increasingly negative as they increase in intensity and frequency. While a single enactment of a negative role behavior may still harm the group, regular enactment of such behaviors would constitute a role, and playing that role is guaranteed to negatively impact the group. We will divide our discussion of negative roles into self-centered and unproductive roles.

Self-Centered Roles

The behaviors associated with all the self-centered roles divert attention from the task to the group member exhibiting the behavior. Although all these roles share in their quest to divert attention, they do it in different ways and for different reasons. The self-centered roles we will discuss are the central negative, monopolizer, self-confessor, insecure compliment seeker, and joker (Cragan & Wright, 1991).

Central Negative

The central negative argues against most of the ideas and proposals discussed in the group and often emerges as a result of a leadership challenge during group formation. The failed attempt to lead the group can lead to feelings of resentment toward the leader and/or the purpose of the group, which then manifest in negative behaviors that delay, divert, or block the group’s progress toward achieving its goal. This scenario is unfortunate because the central negative is typically a motivated and intelligent group member who can benefit the group if properly handled by the group leader or other members. Group communication scholars suggest that the group leader or leaders actively incorporate central negatives into group tasks and responsibilities to make them feel valued and to help diminish any residual anger, disappointment, or hurt feelings from the leadership conflict (Bormann & Bormann, 1988). Otherwise the central negative will continue to argue against the proposals and decisions of the group, even when they may be in agreement. In some cases, the central negative may unintentionally serve a beneficial function if his or her criticisms prevent groupthink.

Monopolizer

The monopolizer is a group member who makes excessive verbal contributions, preventing equal participation by other group members. In short, monopolizers like to hear the sound of their own voice and do not follow typical norms for conversational turn-taking. Some people are well-informed, charismatic, and competent communicators who can get away with impromptu lectures and long stories, but monopolizers do not possess the magnetic qualities of such people. A group member’s excessive verbal contributions are more likely to be labeled as monopolizing when they are not related to the task or when they provide unnecessary or redundant elaboration. Some monopolizers do not intentionally speak for longer than they should. Instead, they think they are making a genuine contribution to the group. These folks likely lack sensitivity to nonverbal cues, or they would see that other group members are tired of listening or annoyed. Other monopolizers just like to talk and don’t care what others think. Some may be trying to make up for a lack of knowledge or experience. This type of monopolizer is best described as a dilettante, or an amateur who tries to pass himself or herself off as an expert.

There are some subgroups of behaviors that fall under the monopolizer’s role. The “stage hog” monopolizes discussion with excessive verbal contributions and engages in one-upping and narcissistic listening. One-upping is a spotlight-stealing strategy in which people try to verbally “out-do” others by saying something like “You think that’s bad? Listen to what happened to me!” They also listen to others to find something they can connect back to themselves, not to understand the message. The stage hog is like the diva that refuses to leave the stage to let the next performer begin. Unlike a monopolizer, who may engage in his or her behaviors unknowingly, stage hogs are usually aware of what they’re doing.

The “egghead” monopolizes the discussion with excessive contributions that are based in actual knowledge but that exceed the level of understanding of other group members or the needs of the group (Cragan & Wright, 1999). The egghead is different from the dilettante monopolizer discussed earlier because this person has genuine knowledge and expertise on a subject, which may be useful to the group. But like the monopolizer and stage hog, the egghead’s excessive contributions draw attention away from the task, slow the group down, and may contribute to a negative group climate. The egghead may be like an absentminded professor who is smart but lacks the social sensitivity to tell when he or she has said enough and is now starting to annoy other group members. This type of egghead naively believes that other group members care as much about the subject as he or she does. The second type of egghead is more pompous and monopolizes the discussion to flaunt his or her intellectual superiority. While the first type of egghead may be tolerated to a point by the group and seen as eccentric but valuable, the second type of egghead is perceived more negatively and more quickly hurts the group. In general, the egghead’s advanced knowledge of a subject and excessive contributions can hurt the group’s potential for synergy, since other group members may defer to the egghead expert, which can diminish the creativity that comes from outside and non-expert perspectives.

Self-Confessor

The self-confessor is a group member who tries to use group meetings as therapy sessions for issues not related to the group’s task. Self-confessors tend to make personal self-disclosures that are unnecessarily intimate. While it is reasonable to expect that someone experiencing a personal problem may want to consult with the group, especially if that person has formed close relationships with other group members, a self-confessor consistently comes to meetings with drama or a personal problem. A supporter or gatekeeper may be able to manage some degree of self-confessor behavior, but a chronic self-confessor is likely to build frustration among other group members that can lead to interpersonal conflict and a lack of cohesion and productivity. Most groups develop a norm regarding how much personal information is discussed during group meetings, and some limit such disclosures to the time before or after the meeting, which may help deter the self-confessor.

Insecure Compliment Seeker

The insecure compliment seeker wants to know that he or she is valued by the group and seeks recognition that is often not task related. For example, they don’t want to be told they did a good job compiling a report; they want to know that they’re a good person or attractive or smart—even though they might not be any of those things. In short, they try to get validation from their relationships with group members—validation that they may be lacking in relationships outside the group. Or they may be someone who continually seeks the approval of others or tries to overcompensate for insecurity through excessive behaviors aimed at eliciting compliments. For example, if a group member wears a tight-fitting t-shirt in hopes of drawing attention to his physique but doesn’t receive any compliments from the group, he may say, “My girlfriend said she could tell I’ve been working out. What do you think?”

The joker is a person who consistently uses sarcasm, plays pranks, or tells jokes, which distracts from the overall functioning of the group. In short, the joker is an incompetent tension releaser. Rather than being seen as the witty group member with good timing, the joker is seen as the “class clown.” Like the insecure compliment seeker, the joker usually seeks attention and approval because of an underlying insecurity. A group’s leader may have to intervene and privately meet with a person engaging in joker behavior to help prevent a toxic or unsafe climate from forming. This may be ineffective, though, if a joker’s behaviors are targeted toward the group leader, which could indicate that the joker has a general problem with authority. In the worst-case scenario, a joker may have to be expelled from the group if his or her behavior becomes violent, offensive, illegal, or otherwise unethical.

Unproductive Roles

There are some negative roles in group communication that do not primarily function to divert attention away from the group’s task to a specific group member. Instead, these unproductive roles just prevent or make it more difficult for the group to make progress. These roles include the blocker, withdrawer, aggressor, and doormat.

The blocker intentionally or unintentionally keeps things from getting done in the group. Intentionally, a person may suggest that the group look into a matter further or explore another option before making a final decision even though the group has already thoroughly considered the matter. They may cite a procedural rule or suggest that input be sought from additional people to delay progress. Behaviors that lead to more information gathering can be good for the group, but when they are unnecessary they are blocking behaviors. Unintentionally, a group member may set blocking behaviors into motion by missing a meeting or not getting his or her work done on time. People can also block progress by playing the ‘airhead’ role, which is the opposite of the egghead role discussed earlier. An ‘airhead’ skirts his or her responsibilities by claiming ignorance when he or she actually understands or intentionally performs poorly on a task so the other group members question his or her intellectual abilities to handle other tasks (Cragan & Wright, 1999). Since exhibiting airhead behaviors gets a person out of performing tasks, they can also be a tactic of a withdrawer, which we will discuss next.

Social Loafer

A social loafer , also known as a withdrawer, mentally and/or physically removes herself or himself from group activities and only participates when forced to. When groups exceed five members, the likelihood of having a member exhibit social loafing behaviors increases. For example, a member may attend meetings and seemingly pay attention but not contribute to discussions or not volunteer to take on tasks, instead waiting on other members to volunteer first. Social loafers often make other group members dread group work. A member may also avoid eye contact with other group members, sit apart from the group, or orient his or her body away from the group to avoid participation. Social loafers generally do not exhibit active listening behaviors. At the extreme, a group member may stop attending group meetings completely. Adopting a problem-solving model that requires equal participation, starting to build social cohesion early, and choosing a meeting space and seating arrangement that encourages interactivity can help minimize withdrawing behaviors. Gatekeepers, supporters, and group leaders can also intervene after early signs of withdrawing to try to reengage the group member.

An aggressor exhibits negative behaviors such as putting others’ ideas down, attacking others personally when they feel confronted or insecure, competing unnecessarily to “win” at the expense of others within the group, and being outspoken to the point of distraction. An aggressor’s behaviors can quickly cross the fine line between being abrasive or dominant and being unethical. For example, a person vigorously defending a position that is relevant and valid is different from a person who claims others’ ideas are stupid but has nothing to contribute. As with most behaviors, the aggressors fall into a continuum based on their intensity. On the more benign end of the continuum is assertive behavior, toward the middle is aggressive behavior, and on the unethical side is bullying behavior. At their worst, an aggressor’s behaviors can lead to shouting matches or even physical violence within a group. Establishing group rules and norms that set up a safe climate for discussion and include mechanisms for temporarily or permanently removing a group member who violates that safe space may proactively prevent such behaviors.

While we all need to take one for the team sometimes or compromise for the sake of the group, the doormat is a person who is chronically submissive to the point that it hurts the group’s progress (Cragan & Wright, 1999). Doormat behaviors include quickly giving in when challenged, self-criticism, and claims of inadequacy. Some people who exhibit doormat behaviors may have difficulty being self-assured and assertive, may be conflict-avoidant, or may even feel that their behaviors will make other group members like them. Other people play the martyr and make sure to publicly note their “sacrifices” for the group, hoping to elicit praise or attention. If their sacrifices aren’t recognized, they may engage in further negative behaviors such as whining and/or insecure compliment seeking.

• Which of the task-related roles do you think has the greatest potential of going wrong and causing conflict within the group and why?
• Which maintenance role do you think you’ve performed the best in previous group experiences? How did your communication and behaviors help you perform the role’s functions? Which maintenance role have you had the most difficulty or least interest in performing? Why?
• Describe a situation in which you have witnessed a person playing one of the self-centered roles in a group. How did the person communicate? What were the effects? Now describe a situation in which you have witnessed a person playing one of the unproductive roles in a group. How did the person communicate? What were the effects?
• Allport, F. H. (1924).  Social psychology . Houghton Mifflin.
• Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation.  Psychological Bulletin, 117 , 497–529.
• Beebe, S.A., & Masterson, J.T. (2015).  Communicating in small groups: Principles and practices (11th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
• Benne, K. D., & Sheats, P. (1948). Functional roles of group members. Journal of Social Issues, 4(2), 41–49.
• Blascovich, J., Mendes, W. B., Hunter, S. B., & Salomon, K. (1999). Social “facilitation” as challenge and threat.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77 , 68–77.
• Bond, C. F., Atoum, A. O., & VanLeeuwen, M. D. (1996). Social impairment of complex learning in the wake of public embarrassment.  Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 18 , 31–44.
• Bormann, E. G., & Bormann, N. C. (1998). Effective Small Group Communication ( 4th ed.). Burgess Intl Group.
• Cragan, J. F., & Wright, D. W. (1991). Communication in Small Group Discussions: An Integrated Approach ( 3rd ed.) West Publishing.
• Crocker, J., & Luhtanen, R. (1990). Collective self-esteem and ingroup bias.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58 , 60–67.
• Crocker, J., & Major, B. (1989). Social stigma and self-esteem: The self-protective properties of stigma.  Psychological Review, 96 , 608–630.
• Darwin, C. (1859/1963).  The origin of species . Washington Square Press.
• Dashiell, J. F. (1930). An experimental analysis of some group effects.  Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 25 , 190–199.
• Davis, J. A., & Smith, T. W. (2007).  General social surveys (1972–2006) . [machine-readable data file]. Chicago: National Opinion Research Center & Storrs, CT: The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. Retrieved from http://www.norc.uchicago.edu
• Diehl, M., & Stroebe, W. (1987). Productivity loss in brainstorming groups: Toward the solution of a riddle.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53 , 497–509.
• Dion, K. L. (2000). Group cohesion: From “field of forces” to multidimensional construct.  Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 4 , 7–26.
• Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion.  Science, 302 , 290–292.
• Emerson, R. W. (2004).  Essays and poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson . Barnes & Noble. (originally published 1903).
• Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes.  Human Relations, 7 , 117–140.
• Festinger, L. (1950). Informal social communication.  Psychological Review, 57 , 271–282.
• George, J. M. (1992). Extrinsic and intrinsic origins of perceived social loafing in organizations.  Academy of Management Journal, 35 , 191–202.
• Gersick, C. J. G. (1991). Revolutionary change theories: A multilevel exploration of the punctuated equilibrium paradigm. Academy of Management Review , 16 , 10–36.
• Harkins, S. G. (2006). Mere effort as the mediator of the evaluation-performance relationship.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(3) , 436–455.
• Hogg, M. A. (2001). Social categorization, depersonalization, and group behavior. In M. A. Hogg & R. S. Tindale (Eds.),  Blackwell handbook of social psychology: Group processes  (pp. 56–85). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
• Huguet, P., Galvaing, M. P., Monteil, J. M., & Dumas, F. (1999). Social presence effects in the Stroop task: Further evidence for an attentional view of social facilitation.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77 , 1011–1025.
• Karau, S. J., & Williams, K. D. (1993). Social loafing: A meta-analytic review and theoretical integration.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65 , 681–706.
• Karriker, J. H. (2005). Cyclical group development and interaction-based leadership emergence in autonomous teams: An integrated model. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies , 11 , 54–64.
• Latané, B. (1981). The psychology of social impact.  American Psychologist, 36 , 343–356.
• Latané, B., Williams, K., & Harkins, S. (1979). Many hands make light the work: The causes and consequences of social loafing.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37 , 822–832.
• Leary, M. R. (2007). Motivational and emotional aspects of the self.  Annual Review of Psychology, 58 , 317–344.
• Leary, M. R. & Baumeister, R. F. (2000). The nature and function of self-esteem: Sociometer theory.  Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 32 , 1–62.
• Littlepage, G. E. (1991). Effects of group size and task characteristics on group performance: A test of Steiner’s model.  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17 , 449–456.
• Moreland, R. L. (1987). The formation of small groups.  Review of Personality and Social Psychology, 8 , 80–110.
• Mullen, B., & Copper, C. (1994). The relation between group cohesiveness and performance: An integration.  Psychological Bulletin, 115 , 210–227.
• Mullen, B., Driskell, J. E., & Salas, E. (1998). Meta-analysis and the study of group dynamics.  Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 2 , 213–229.
• Neu, W. A. (2012). Unintended cognitive, affective, and behavioral consequences of group assignments.  Journal of Marketing Education, 34 (1), 67–81.
• Paulus, P. B., & Brown, V. R. (2007). Toward more creative and innovative group idea generation: A cognitive-social-motivational perspective of brainstorming.  Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 1 , 248–265.
• Pavitt, C.. (1999). Theorizing about the group communication-leadership relationship. In L. R. Frey (Ed.), The Handbook of Group Communication Theory and Research. Sage.
• Putnam, R. D. (2000).  Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community . Simon & Schuster.
• Salas, E., Rosen, M. A., Burke, C. S., & Goodwin, G. F. (2009). The wisdom of collectives in organizations: An update of the teamwork competencies. In E. Salas, G. F. Goodwin, & C. S. Burke (Eds.),  Team effectiveness in complex organizations: Cross-disciplinary perspectives and approaches (pp. 39–79). Routledge.
• Schachter, S. (1959).  The psychology of affiliation . Stanford University Press.
• Seashore, S. E. (1954).  Group cohesiveness in the industrial work group . Institute for Social Research.
• Steiner, I. D. (1972).  Group process and productivity . Academic Press.
• Stroebe, W. (2012). The truth about Triplett (1898), but nobody seems to care.  Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7 (1), 54–57.
• Strube, M. J. (2005). What did Triplett really find? A contemporary analysis of the first experiment in social psychology.  American Journal of Psychology, 118 , 271–286.
• Tajfel, H. & Turner, J.C. (1986). The social identity theory of inter-group behavior. In S. Worchel & L.W. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of Intergroup Relations. (pp. 7-24). Nelson-Hall
• Tindale, R. S., Stawiski, S., & Jacobs, E. (2008). Shared cognition and group learning. In V. I. Sessa & M. London (Eds.),  Work group learning: Understanding, improving and assessing how groups learn in organizations (pp. 73–90). Taylor & Francis Group.
• Triplett, N. (1898). The dynamogenic factors in pacemaking and competition.  American Journal of Psychology, 9 , 507–533.
• Tuckman, B. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin , 63 , 384–399.
• Williams, K. D. (2007). Ostracism.  Annual Review of Psychology, 58 , 425–452.
• Zajonc, R. B. (1965). Social facilitation.  Science, 149 , 269–274.

Authors & Attribution

The sections “The Psychological Significance of Groups” and “Motivation and Performance” are adapted and condensed from: Forsyth, D. R. (2019). The psychology of groups . In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds.), Noba textbook series: Psychology. DEF publishers. nobaproject.com. This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The section “Group Development” is adapted from “ Group Dynamics ” in Organizational Behaviour from the University of Minnesota. The book was adapted from a work produced and distributed under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA) by a publisher who has requested that they and the original author not receive attribution. This work is made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license .

The section “roles”  is adapted from “ Group Member Roles ” in Communication in the Real World from the University of Minnesota. The book was adapted from a work produced and distributed under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA) by a publisher who has requested that they and the original author not receive attribution. This work is made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license .

the deliberate exclusion from groups

the theory that people join with others to evaluate the accuracy of their personal beliefs and attitudes

feelings of self-worth that are based on evaluation of relationships with others and membership in social groups

a conceptual analysis of self-evaluation processes that theorizes self-esteem functions to psychologically monitor of one’s degree of inclusion and exclusion in social groups

the enhancement of an individual’s performance when that person works in the presence of other people

members who contribute less to the group than other members or than they would if working alone. Social loafers expect that no one will notice their behaviors or that others will pick up their slack

the process by which members of the team combine their knowledge, skills, abilities, and other resources through a coordinated series of actions to produce an outcome

knowledge, expectations, conceptualizations, and other cognitive representations that members of a group have in common pertaining to the group and its members, tasks, procedures, and resources

the degree to which group members identify with and like the group’s task and other group members

models of group development help us make sense of our group experiences by describing what might be 'normal' or 'typical' group processes. They reflect common patterns researchers have observed in groups

a descriptive model of group development developed by Tuckman that proposes groups move through five stages —forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning

a stage of group development in which group members experience uncertainty and seek to get to know each other

a phase of group development marked by conflict as group members struggle to explore their power and influence within the group

a phase of group development when groups start to reach agreements, become more cohesive and establish ground rules (norms)

a phase in group development when groups are operating at their peak with increased task effectiveness and problem solving

a model of group development that suggests that in groups remain relatively static for long periods of time and then change occurs in brief, punctuated bursts, generally catalyzed by a crisis or problem that breaks through the systemic inertia

expected behaviors or functions of group members

group roles that contribute directly to the group’s completion of a task or achievement of its goal or purpose. Task-related roles typically serve leadership, informational, or procedural functions

roles that function to create and maintain social cohesion and fulfill the interpersonal needs of group members

roles that can harm the group by either diverting attention away from the task at hand or making it difficult for the group to make progress

roles that divert attention from the task to the group member exhibiting the behavior. Examples include the central negative, monopolizer, self-confessor, insecure compliment seeker, and joker

group roles that prevent or make it more difficult for the group to make progress. Examples of these roles include the blocker, withdrawer, aggressor, and doormat

Working in Small Groups Copyright © 2020 by Jasmine R. Linabary, Ph.D. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

Search form

• About Faculty Development and Support
• Programs and Funding Opportunities

Consultations, Observations, and Services

• Strategic Resources & Digital Publications
• Canvas @ Yale Support
• Learning Environments @ Yale
• Teaching Workshops
• Teaching Consultations and Classroom Observations
• Teaching Programs
• Spring Teaching Forum
• Written and Oral Communication Workshops and Panels
• Writing Resources & Tutorials
• About the Graduate Writing Laboratory
• Writing and Public Speaking Consultations
• Writing Workshops and Panels
• Writing Peer-Review Groups
• Writing Retreats and All Writes
• Online Writing Resources for Graduate Students
• About Teaching Development for Graduate and Professional School Students
• Teaching Programs and Grants
• Teaching Forums
• Resources for Graduate Student Teachers
• About Undergraduate Writing and Tutoring
• Academic Strategies Program
• The Writing Center
• STEM Tutoring & Programs
• Humanities & Social Sciences
• Center for Language Study
• Online Course Catalog
• Antiracist Pedagogy
• NECQL 2019: NorthEast Consortium for Quantitative Literacy XXII Meeting
• STEMinar Series
• Teaching in Context: Troubling Times
• Helmsley Postdoctoral Teaching Scholars
• Pedagogical Partners
• Instructional Materials
• Evaluation & Research
• STEM Education Job Opportunities
• Yale Connect
• Online Education Legal Statements

You are here

Largely grounded in Vygotsky’s sociocultural theories of learning, collaborative learning can be a powerful strategy in the classroom. Group work can help students uncover and address gaps and misconceptions in knowledge, further developing their conceptual frameworks while improving their public reasoning and team-based skills (John-Steiner and Mahn, 1996). In this way, group work frees instructors to challenge students to higher orders of thinking, rather than remediation. More skilled or knowledgeable students can also provide scaffolding for their peers in this setting to advance learning (Chaiklin, 2003).

While the educational benefits of group work are numerous, so are the challenges. Students may feel resentment if a group member does not adequately contribute to a particular assignment, or, a student within a group may become overly dominant and prevent others from contributing to decision-making processes. Instructors should consider best practices around collaborative learning to mitigate challenges from the beginning, encouraging a smoother group process.

Collaborative learning can be implemented in the college classroom through a variety of ways: 

• Presentation - A foreign language instructor divides students into conversation groups. Their task is to perform a dialogue in front of the class pretending that they are ordering food at a restaurant. The groups have 30 minutes to prepare their conversation and 10 minutes to present it to the class. This activity culminates a course unit where students have learned vocabulary and phraseology around everyday conversations in the language.
• Problem Sets - After learning the steps for conducting several statistical tests, students in a statistics course are divided into groups and assigned a problem set. In well-functioning groups, all students contribute equally by working through the problems and offering assistance to one another until each group member fully understands the solution.
• Case Study - A sociology instructor implements case studies in the course around pressing issues. Students within each group take on particular roles and debate the issue under discussion. 
• Comparative Work - A writing instructor has groups write the same general letter to different audiences, adjusting tone, wording, and style to reach their unique assigned readers. Groups then read out their letters and discuss similarities and differences based on audience.
• Jigsaw - A literature instructor breaks class into groups to close read and discuss a passage from John Milton's Paradise Lost . After some time, the instructor uses the jigsaw method by creating new groups comprised of representatives from each original group. New groups share what they discussed previously, and explore new ideas.

Recommendations

• Group size - In general, smaller group sizes are desirable, typically between 3 - 4 students per group. When groups are too large, equitable student contribution can be challenging. When groups are too small, they may not experience as many benefits from the ideas and contributions of others.
• Stable vs. alternating groups - Depending on the goals of the activities and instructor preference, groups can be stable throughout the semester or change more frequently. There are pros and cons to both approaches. Stable groups grant students more time to become accustomed to how they work together. However, dysfunctional stable groups are less likely to achieve class learning outcomes. In general, for the group process to occur more effectively, members must spend significant time working together. Alternating groups help students by refreshing their expectations and enabling them  to work with other members of the class. However, students may also find forming connections with their group members more challenging. In general, groups may be formed randomly or the instructor can deliberately form groups using particular attributes (e.g. ability level or demographics).
• Group expectations and accountability - With regards to more time-intensive projects, students expect accountability of individual group members. To mitigate potential conflict, instructors can have groups come together before starting a project to develop an agreement around how the group will function. During this time, group members can also assign one another roles (e.g. facilitator, researcher, recorder, presenter) and delineate responsibilities. Finally, this agreement can address expectations around attendance in class and group meetings outside of class. For a more structured approach to balancing individual and group participation, instructors can also consider Team-Based Learning .
• Confidential peer evaluation - As another accountability measure, instructors can ask students to confidentially evaluate their peers on their contributions to the project. Instructors can choose whether to use these scores in determining final grades for a project. 
• Group and individual grades - To account for individual as well as group contribution, instructors can consider including both individual and group assignments for the project. In doing so, both efforts can be accounted for in the grading process, motivating students to perform well on their own while contributing to the group's progress.

Additional Resources

Cohan EG and Lotan RA. (2014). Designing Groupwork: Strategies for the Heterogeneous Classroom. Third Edition. New York, New York: Teachers College, Columbia University.

Collaborative Learning: Group Work - Cornell Center for Teaching Innovation

Working in Groups - Harvard Bok Center for Teaching and Learning

Chaiklin S. (2003) Chapter 2. The Zone of Proximal Development in Vygotsky’s Analysis of Learning and Instruction. In, Vygotsky’s Educational Theory in Cultural Context. A Kozulin, B Gindis, V Ageyev, S Miller (Eds). New York, New York: Cambridge University Press. P. 65-82.

John-Steiner V and Mahn H. (1996). Sociocultural approaches to learning and development: A Vygotskyian framework. Educational Psychologist 31(3-4):191-206

YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN

Instructional Enhancement Fund

The Instructional Enhancement Fund (IEF) awards grants of up to $500 to support the timely integration of new learning activities into an existing undergraduate or graduate course. All Yale instructors of record, including tenured and tenure-track faculty, clinical instructional faculty, lecturers, lectors, and part-time acting instructors (PTAIs), are eligible to apply. Award decisions are typically provided within two weeks to help instructors implement ideas for the current semester.

Reserve a Room

The Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning partners with departments and groups on-campus throughout the year to share its space. Please review the reservation form and submit a request.

The Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning routinely supports members of the Yale community with individual instructional consultations and classroom observations.

• Our Mission

Group Work That Works

Educators weigh in on solutions to the common pitfalls of group work.

Mention group work and you’re confronted with pointed questions and criticisms. The big problems, according to our audience: One or two students do all the work; it can be hard on introverts; and grading the group isn’t fair to the individuals.

But the research suggests that a certain amount of group work is beneficial.

“The most effective creative process alternates between time in groups, collaboration, interaction, and conversation... [and] times of solitude, where something different happens cognitively in your brain,” says Dr. Keith Sawyer, a researcher on creativity and collaboration, and author of Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration .

So we looked through our archives and reached out to educators on Facebook to find out what solutions they’ve come up with for these common problems.

Making Sure Everyone Participates

“How many times have we put students in groups only to watch them interact with their laptops instead of each other? Or complain about a lazy teammate?” asks Mary Burns, a former French, Latin, and English middle and high school teacher who now offers professional development in technology integration.

Unequal participation is perhaps the most common complaint about group work. Still, a review of Edutopia’s archives—and the tens of thousands of insights we receive in comments and reactions to our articles—revealed a handful of practices that educators use to promote equal participation. These involve setting out clear expectations for group work, increasing accountability among participants, and nurturing a productive group work dynamic.

Norms: At Aptos Middle School in San Francisco, the first step for group work is establishing group norms. Taji Allen-Sanchez, a sixth- and seventh-grade science teacher, lists expectations on the whiteboard, such as “everyone contributes” and “help others do things for themselves.”

For ambitious projects, Mikel Grady Jones, a high school math teacher in Houston, takes it a step further, asking her students to sign a group contract in which they agree on how they’ll divide the tasks and on expectations like “we all promise to do our work on time.” Heather Wolpert-Gawron, an English middle school teacher in Los Angeles, suggests creating a classroom contract with your students at the start of the year, so that agreed-upon norms can be referenced each time a new group activity begins.

Group size: It’s a simple fix, but the size of the groups can help establish the right dynamics. Generally, smaller groups are better because students can’t get away with hiding while the work is completed by others.

“When there is less room to hide, nonparticipation is more difficult,” says Burns. She recommends groups of four to five students, while Brande Tucker Arthur, a 10th-grade biology teacher in Lynchburg, Virginia, recommends even smaller groups of two or three students.

Meaningful roles: Roles can play an important part in keeping students accountable, but not all roles are helpful. A role like materials manager, for example, won’t actively engage a student in contributing to a group problem; the roles must be both meaningful and interdependent.

At University Park Campus School , a grade 7–12 school in Worcester, Massachusetts, students take on highly interdependent roles like summarizer, questioner, and clarifier. In an ongoing project, the questioner asks probing questions about the problem and suggests a few ideas on how to solve it, while the clarifier attempts to clear up any confusion, restates the problem, and selects a possible strategy the group will use as they move forward.

At Design 39, a K–8 school in San Diego, groups and roles are assigned randomly using Random Team Generator , but ClassDojo , Team Shake , and drawing students’ names from a container can also do the trick. In a practice called vertical learning, Design 39 students conduct group work publicly, writing out their thought processes on whiteboards to facilitate group feedback. The combination of randomizing teams and public sharing exposes students to a range of problem-solving approaches, gets them more comfortable with making mistakes, promotes teamwork, and allows kids to utilize different skill sets during each project.

Rich tasks: Making sure that a project is challenging and compelling is critical. A rich task is a problem that has multiple pathways to the solution and that one person would have difficulty solving on their own.

In an eighth-grade math class at Design 39, one recent rich task explored the concept of how monetary investments grow: Groups were tasked with solving exponential growth problems using simple and compound interest rates.

Rich tasks are not just for math class. When Dan St. Louis, the principal of University Park, was a teacher, he asked his English students to come up with a group definition of the word Orwellian . They did this through the jigsaw method, a type of grouping strategy that John Hattie’s study Visible Learning ranked as highly effective.

“Five groups of five students might each read a different news article about the modern world,” says St. Louis. “Then each student would join a new group of five where they need to explain their previous group’s article to each other and make connections to each. Using these connections, the group must then construct a definition of the word Orwellian .” For another example of the jigsaw approach, see this video from Cult of Pedagogy.

Supporting Introverts

Teachers worry about the impact of group work on introverts. Some of our educators suggest that giving introverts choice in who they’re grouped with can help them feel more comfortable.

“Even the quietest students are usually comfortable and confident when they are with peers with whom they connect,” says Shelly Kunkle, a veteran teacher at Wasawee Middle School in North Webster, Indiana. Wolpert-Gawron asks her students to list four peers they want to work with and then makes sure to pair them with one from their list.

Having defined roles within groups—like clarifier or questioner—also provides structure for students who may be less comfortable within complex social dynamics, and ensures that introverts don’t get overshadowed by their more extroverted peers.

Finally, be mindful that introverted students often simply need time to recharge. “Many introverts do not mind and even enjoy interacting in groups as long as they get some quiet time and solitude to recharge. It’s not about being shy or feeling unsafe in a large group,” says Barb Larochelle, a recently retired high school English teacher in Edmonton, Alberta, who taught for 29 years.

“I planned classes with some time to work quietly alone, some time to interact in smaller groups or as a whole class, and some time to get up and move around a little. A whole class of any one of those is going to be hard on one group, but a balance works well.”

Assessing Group Work

Grading group work is problematic. Often, you don’t have a clear understanding of what each student knows, and a single student’s lack of effort can torpedo the group grade. To some degree, strategies that assign meaningful roles or that require public presentations from groups provide a window in to each student’s knowledge and contributions.

But not all classwork needs to be graded. Suzanna Kruger, a high school science teacher in Seaside, Oregon, doesn’t grade group work—there are plenty of individual assignments that receive grades, and plenty of other opportunities for formative assessment.

John McCarthy, a former high school English and social studies teacher and current education consultant and adjunct professor at Madonna University for the graduate department for education, suggests using group presentations or group products as a non-graded review for a test. But if you want to grade group work, he recommends making all academic assessments within group work individual assessments. For example, instead of grading a group presentation, McCarthy grades each student on an essay, which the students then use to create their group presentation.

Laura Moffit, a fifth-grade teacher in Wilmington, North Carolina, uses self and peer evaluations to shed light on how each student is contributing to group work—starting with a lesson on how to do an objective evaluation. “Just have students circle :), :|, or :( on three to five statements about each partner, anonymously,” Moffit commented on Facebook. “Then give the evaluations back to each group member. Finding out what people really think of your performance is a wake-up call.”

And Ted Malefyt, a middle school science teacher in Hamilton, Michigan, carries a clipboard with the class list formatted in a spreadsheet and walks around checking in on students while they do group work.

“Using this spreadsheet, you have your own record of which student is meeting your expectations and who needs extra help,” explains Malefyt. “As formative assessment takes place, quickly document with simple checkmarks.”

Teamwork Skills: Being an Effective Group Member

For groups to function effectively, it's important for students to think critically about the climate within their group and the process by which they accomplish their tasks. Although students can gain many of the skills described below through ad hoc interactions, instructors play a key role in making them explicit protocols.

To hone these skills, students need opportunities to practice and to receive regular feedback. Consider sharing the information below with your students, structure activities for them, and incorporate three components of feedback into your plan: instructor comments (oral and/or written); reflective group discussions and/or peer assessment; and self-reflection (see the reflection prompts in Appendix A for ideas). 

Communication skills 

To function successfully in a group, students need to be able to communicate clearly on intellectual and emotional levels. Effective communicators should be able to: 

• Explain their own ideas; 
• Express their feelings in an open but non-threatening way; 
• Listen carefully to others; 
• Ask questions to clarify others’ ideas and emotions; 
• Sense how others feel based on their nonverbal communication (e.g., facial expressions, tone of voice, diminished participation);
• Initiate conversations about the group climate or process if they sense tensions brewing; 
• Reflect on their group's activities and interactions and encourage other group members to do so. 

Regular open communication, in which group members share their thoughts, ideas, and feelings, is key for successful group work. Unspoken assumptions and issues can be harmful to productive group functioning. Students’ ability to communicate openly with one another can help foster a healthy group climate and process. 

Skills for a healthy group climate 

To work together successfully, group members must demonstrate a sense of cohesion. cohesion emerges as group members: .

• Get to know one another, particularly those with different interests and backgrounds. They are open to innovative ideas and diverse viewpoints. They also listen to others and elicit their ideas. They know how to balance the need for cohesion within a group with the need for individual expression. 
• Trust one another enough to share their own ideas and feelings. A sense of mutual trust develops only to the extent that everyone is willing to self-disclose and be honest yet respectful. Trust also grows as group members demonstrate personal accountability for the tasks they have been assigned. 
• Demonstrate support for one another as they accomplish their goals. They cheer on the group and support members individually. They view one another not as competitors but as collaborators: everyone in the group can and should have a role by which they contribute.
• Communicate their opinions in a way that respects others, focusing on “What can we learn?” rather than “Who is to blame?” 

As an instructor, you can use several strategies to encourage students to develop a healthy group climate: 

• Randomize group membership to increase the chances of students encountering peers with diverse backgrounds and interests. 
• Design icebreaker activities that promote awareness and appreciation of inherent differences within a group. 
• Walk students through effective strategies for identifying and overcoming group conflict.  
• Encourage students to participate actively and pose questions to their peers. To encourage listening skills and ensure that everyone in the group speaks, try the “circle of voices” exercise. See the CTE Teaching Tip: Group Work in the Classroom: Types of Small Groups . 
• Devote class time to help students reflect on their group dynamic and overall functioning. You can provide them with prompt questions to consider and/or facilitate a conversation driven by student insights, questions, and concerns. 

Skills for an effective group process 

In addition to knowing how to develop a healthy group climate, students need to exercise key skills to contribute to an effective group process. This process emerges when students: 

• Agree on what needs to be done and by whom. Each student then determines what they need to do and takes responsibility to complete the task(s). They can be held accountable for their tasks, and they hold others accountable for theirs. 
• Give and receive feedback about group ideas. Giving constructive feedback requires focusing on ideas and behaviours instead of individuals and offering suggestions for improvement. Receiving feedback requires the ability to listen well, ask for clarification if the comment is unclear, and being open to change and to other ideas. 
• Help the group to develop and use central strategies to move toward their group goals. As such, they can facilitate group decision making and manage group conflict in a productive way, rather than approaching the instructor for guidance as the first step.  
• Know how to plan and manage a task, how to manage their time, and how to run a meeting. For example, they ensure meeting goals are set, an agenda is created and followed, and everyone can participate. They stay focused on the task and help others to do so, too. 
• Know which roles can be filled within a group (e.g., facilitator, idea-generator, summarizer, evaluator, mediator, encourager, recorder) and are aware of which role(s) they and others are best suited for. They are also willing to rotate roles to maximize their own and others’ group learning experience. 

As an instructor, use some of these strategies to help students develop an effective process within their groups: 

• Design the group task so that the students must rely on one another to produce their best work. Group members will be more motivated and committed to working together if they are given a group mark. If you choose to evaluate in this way, be sure to make your expectations extremely clear. See the CTE Teaching Tip: Methods for Assessing Group Work for additional ideas. 
• Invite students to develop a group contract in which they articulate ground rules and group goals. See the CTE Teaching Tip Making Group Contracts for details. Be sure that groups discuss how they will respond to various scenarios such as absent or late group members and those who do not complete their assigned tasks. 
• Distribute a list of decision-making methods and strategies for conflict resolution and facilitate a conversation with students about these resources in class. The CTE Teaching Tip: Group Decision Making is a good place to start. You may also want to offer yourself as an impartial arbitrator in emergency situations but encourage students to work out problems among themselves. 
• Provide students with guidelines for running a meeting, such as setting and following an agenda, specifying time limits, and monitoring progress on the agenda. Consult CTE Teaching Tip: Meeting Strategies to Help Prepare Students for Group Work for additional suggestions. 
• Teach students effective methods for giving and receiving feedback and explain the purpose of feedback in your course. For sample methods, see CTE Teaching Tip: Receiving and Giving Effective Feedback . Create an assignment that involves them giving feedback to group members and make it part of their final grade. 
• Help students recognize and make the most of their own and one another’s preferred roles. Outline with them a list of team roles (see the CTE Teaching Tip: Group Roles for examples), have them determine which role(s) suits them best, and give them time to discuss how their role(s) will complement those of other group members. Asking students to rotate their roles helps them to expand their skillset. 

Appendix A: Encouraging self-awareness and reflection in group work 

One of the most important things you can do as an instructor is to have students reflect regularly on their group experiences. Their self-reflection will reinforce and further develop critical teamwork skills. Based on your objectives for the group project, create a set of prompts using the questions below. Have students use these prompts to journal about their reactions to group climate and process. The journals encourage self-reflection and can help students see teamwork issues in new ways and create ideas for resolution. They can also provide a good basis from which students can choose comments to share with their group members in debriefing sessions.

If students submit their journals periodically throughout the term, give them feedback orally or in writing, and to the extent appropriate, discuss any trends that you have identified through observation or in the journals (remember to reassure students that other groups may be facing similar challenges). Also, requiring all students to submit a final reflective report after the group project can help them to see the value of the teamwork expertise they have developed through practice. 

• What have you enjoyed the most/the least about getting to know your group members? 
• How is your attitude towards your group members demonstrated in how you function within the group? 
• How do you demonstrate trust and openness towards the other members and their ideas? 
• How much do you feel you can rely on your group members to complete the required task(s)? 
• How do you make sure that group members feel supported, encouraged, and appreciated for their work? 
• How does the team ensure that all voices are heard? 
• Do you participate willingly in discussions? If not, why not? 
• Do others appear to understand your ideas? If not, why not? 
• What do you do if another person’s ideas are unclear? 
• What do you focus on when others speak? How could you improve your listening skills? 
• How do you respond to others’ ideas? How do they respond to yours? What could be improved? 
• What are your group’s ground rules and goals? What changes to these rules and goals might improve the functioning of your group? 
• How is everyone encouraged to stay accountable for the tasks they have been assigned? 
• To what extent do you and others follow the feedback methods laid out in class? How could you and your group members improve the way you give and receive feedback? 
• To what extent does your group reflect on how well its goals are being achieved? How would more (or less) discussion about goals help or hinder your group’s functioning? 
• How are decisions made in your group? Who is involved and in which ways? What has been effective about the processes you have used? How could your decision-making processes be improved? 
• What happens if a group member is unhappy or uncomfortable with a decision made by the group? 
• What conflicts have arisen within your group? How (if at all) have the conflicts been resolved? What role do you play in resolving these conflicts? What could you (or others) do to improve your group’s ability to deal productively with conflict? 
• How do your meetings typically proceed? What do you accomplish and in how much time? What is effective about your group functioning during meetings? What changes would improve your meetings? 
• Who has emerged as the leader in your group? Which other roles do you see team members playing? Which role(s) do you play? Which role do you prefer and why? 

If you would like support applying these tips to your own teaching, CTE staff members are here to help. View the  CTE Support  page to find the most relevant staff member to contact. 

References 

• Bosworth, K. (1994). Developing Collaborative Skills in College Students. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 59. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. pp. 25-31. 
• Breslow, L. (1998). Teaching Teamwork Skills, Part 2. Teach Talk, X, 5.  
• Burke, A. (2011). Group work: How to use groups effectively. The Journal of Effective Teaching, 11(2), 87-95. 
• Hills, H. (2001). Team-Based Learning. Burlington, VT: Gower. 
• Lang, J. M. (2022, June 17). Why students hate group projects (and how to change that). The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-students-hate-group-projects-and-how-to-change-that   
• Shier, M. (2020). Student Success. Victoria, BC: BCcampus. Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/studentsuccess/  
• UWaterloo’s  Student Success Office  
• UWaterloo’s  Office of Academic Integrity  

Catalog search

Teaching tip categories.

• Assessment and feedback
• Blended Learning and Educational Technologies
• Career Development
• Course Design
• Course Implementation
• Inclusive Teaching and Learning
• Learning activities
• Support for Student Learning
• Support for TAs
• Learning activities ,

Eberly Center

Teaching excellence & educational innovation, what are the benefits of group work.

“More hands make for lighter work.” “Two heads are better than one.” “The more the merrier.”

These adages speak to the potential groups have to be more productive, creative, and motivated than individuals on their own.

Benefits for students

Group projects can help students develop a host of skills that are increasingly important in the professional world (Caruso & Woolley, 2008; Mannix & Neale, 2005). Positive group experiences, moreover, have been shown to contribute to student learning, retention and overall college success (Astin, 1997; Tinto, 1998; National Survey of Student Engagement, 2006).

Properly structured, group projects can reinforce skills that are relevant to both group and individual work, including the ability to: 

• Break complex tasks into parts and steps
• Plan and manage time
• Refine understanding through discussion and explanation
• Give and receive feedback on performance
• Challenge assumptions
• Develop stronger communication skills.

Group projects can also help students develop skills specific to collaborative efforts, allowing students to...

• Tackle more complex problems than they could on their own.
• Delegate roles and responsibilities.
• Share diverse perspectives.
• Pool knowledge and skills.
• Hold one another (and be held) accountable.
• Receive social support and encouragement to take risks.
• Develop new approaches to resolving differences. 
• Establish a shared identity with other group members.
• Find effective peers to emulate.
• Develop their own voice and perspectives in relation to peers.

While the potential learning benefits of group work are significant, simply assigning group work is no guarantee that these goals will be achieved. In fact, group projects can – and often do – backfire badly when they are not designed , supervised , and assessed in a way that promotes meaningful teamwork and deep collaboration.

Benefits for instructors

Faculty can often assign more complex, authentic problems to groups of students than they could to individuals. Group work also introduces more unpredictability in teaching, since groups may approach tasks and solve problems in novel, interesting ways. This can be refreshing for instructors. Additionally, group assignments can be useful when there are a limited number of viable project topics to distribute among students. And they can reduce the number of final products instructors have to grade.

Whatever the benefits in terms of teaching, instructors should take care only to assign as group work tasks that truly fulfill the learning objectives of the course and lend themselves to collaboration. Instructors should also be aware that group projects can add work for faculty at different points in the semester and introduce its own grading complexities .

Astin, A. (1993). What matters in college? Four critical years revisited. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Caruso, H.M., & Wooley, A.W. (2008). Harnessing the power of emergent interdependence to promote diverse team collaboration. Diversity and Groups. 11, 245-266.

Mannix, E., & Neale, M.A. (2005). What differences make a difference? The promise and reality of diverse teams in organizations. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 6(2), 31-55.

National Survey of Student Engagement Report. (2006). http://nsse.iub.edu/NSSE_2006_Annual_Report/docs/NSSE_2006_Annual_Report.pdf .

Tinto, V. (1987). Leaving college: Rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.