How can I organize group & team work?

HOW CAN I ORGANIZE GROUP & TEAM WORK?

This section provides an overview on delivering and managing group work using pedagogical best practices with technologies supported by the Office of Information Technology (OIT) and Learning Innovation.

Group work as defined here includes small sets of students discussing a problem or task. Team work refers to a longer-term team project resulting in a grade. Small group discussions foster engagement and reduce feelings of isolation in online courses. Team projects can help students learn skills such as research and problem solving, but also how to work effectively with others. 

Link group and team work to course design

Tie group work to student learning. The activity should help students meet course outcomes or prepare for other assignments. Team projects are a pedagogical tool for enabling students to learn course content. Resist the urge to layer a project on top of traditional readings and individual work. This will allow you to explain why a project was assigned which is important for reducing resistance to group work. For long-term projects, ask yourself if the project is engaging enough to require contributions from all members of the group. Are the skills and content for the project being practiced and talked about actively throughout the course? 

If your students’ projects will be available for public consumption, please note you need a release form for student work. Please see Duke ScholarWorks for a model form.

Include project milestones in the syllabus. Requiring students to submit smaller parts of a project allows you to catch groups going down the wrong path and help refocus their efforts. Specific deadlines, milestone descriptions and grading criteria should be part of the assessment plan for the course. Feedback can take several forms that don’t include lengthy notes by the instructor, including rubrics and peer review. It is best practice to grade both individual and group work for any project to increase accountability and engagement. Example of individual and collective assignment include:

Use team projects to facilitate student engagement. Team projects give students a chance to learn the course content by creating a tangible output. This course students also necessitates active student participation, which may be particularly helpful in remote or hybrid courses.

Allow class time for teamwork. Many project-based courses dedicate at least one class session to help teams build a strong foundation. Thereafter teams might spend 15 minutes during each class to assess progress and set priorities.

Resources
> How to select team projects (Bass Connections)
> 10 Recommendations for Improving Group Work

Provide instruction on how to be a good teammate

Provide guidelines for communication. Students may not feel comfortable communicating their ideas. At the start, students may lack the skills to contribute effectively to a discussion. As explained in a research-based approach to group work, “Novices in our discipline may not have developed the critical-thinking habits that are second nature to us. One way to improve their learning is to prompt them to explain their answers to each other.” ⁽¹⁾ Providing guidelines for discussions, emphasizing that all students should be heard in groups and modeling contributions to group work are worthwhile strategies.

Students may need guidance on how to be a productive team member. This guidance might include asking teams during class time to create a team charter that explicitly states their norms, such as meeting times, communication methods, deadlines and strategies for handling conflict. The grading criteria and expectations from the teams should be explicit before the project begins.

Have students fill out peer evaluations. Peer evaluations provide valuable feedback to team members to help them correct their behavior and make more valuable contributions. TEAMMATES and CATME are two commonly used peer evaluation tools that help form groups and distribute rubrics and qualitative questions among peers. It is best practice to ask students to fill out peer evaluations twice during a project. The first time should be mostly qualitative feedback for their team members to read anonymously, but the instructor can award points for completing the work. During the second round, instructors can ask students to assign a grade to their team members if desired. 

Resources
> Peer evaluation and self-reflection (Bass Connections)
> CATME
> TEAMMATES

Consider how to form teams

Deliberate group formation can reduce barriers to success. Short-term discussions in class or quick assignments do not have requirements in either size or formation. For an intensive online project, three or four is the maximum size. There are a several key considerations that you can take into account when forming long-term teams: 

• Would it be helpful to survey students about their previous knowledge to form diverse teams? Are you creating teams that inadvertently isolate minority groups? 
• If online, should students be grouped by time zone? 

If a project begins toward the end of the semester, you might be able to decide on groups easily. You can also survey your students with Qualtrics to gather the information you need.

Resources 
> Guidelines for group formation
> Qualtrics at Duke

Recommended practices for team organization

Remind students to set explicit deadlines for project milestones. Students may not have in-class time to coordinate work on their projects, so remind them to set explicit deadlines for various parts of the group work, and be clear with each other where and how group communications will happen so that everyone in the group stays aware of progress.

Students can use project planners to brainstorm ideas, gather documents and assign tasks. MindMeister is a mind-mapping tool available to create an outline of a project and assign tasks to team members. Microsoft Planner is a project planning tool that serves as a document repository, as well as a way to track team member contributions. Sympa email lists and Microsoft Teams are options for team communication. Less complex tools such as Box and email can also serve as the main organizers of the project.

Resources
> Sympa at Duke
> Microsoft Planner at Duke 
> Microsoft Teams at Duke 
> MindMeister at Duke
> Box for Duke

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Research

1. Hodges, Linda C. (2017). Ten Research-Based Steps for Effective Group Work: https://www.ideaedu.org/Portals/0/Uploads/Documents/IDEA%20Papers/IDEA%20Papers/PaperIDEA_65.pdf