Student Group Work

Just as in an in-person class, you can design activities and assessments that require students to work in groups. Online collaborative projects create opportunities to scaffold an assignment, meaning breaking a larger assessment into a series of smaller steps. Online group assignments also allow students to practice virtual team-based work, give and receive peer feedback, and encourage learner-to-learner interaction.

Some strategies facilitating group projects online include:

Group Formation

• Create (or have students choose) groups that are of a size that makes sense for the project and the size of the class. There is no hard and fast rule for the ideal group size—for some contexts, pairs are perfect, while other times a small learning team of eight is perfect. Randomized groups often are the most diverse.
• Give students time to get to know each other, establish any ground rules for interaction, and discuss their own strengths in order to distribute work equitably.
• Provide clear expectations and instructions for the assignment, and explicitly outline best approaches to group work. This may help students understand the project as a whole and their role within the group.

Technology

• Set up a safe, collaborative space using a platform that is easy to access and use. Brightspace works well for asynchronous work and the Groups function can be used to create group spaces within the course site, such as group discussion forums or group assignment dropboxes. Make available to students a synchronous way to meet as well, such as through Collaborate or Teams. Collaborative work can be accomplished with the Office 365 tools that are supported by the university (e.g., Word, Excel, Whiteboard, etc.).

Assessment

• Communicate with students ahead of time how you will grade their work. Do members of the group all receive the same mark? Are group members graded individually? University of Waterloo provides a resources on options for methods for assessing group work, including instructor-, peer-, and self-grading processes in various combinations.
• If peer feedback is a part of the group work process, create a rubric that is clear and easy to follow.

Support

• Make yourself available for questions and occasionally visit the collaborative spaces.