Forming effective groups requires an instructor to consider the instructional goals of the group work in order to determine how to best organize student collaboration. For instance, if the key assessments of a course are a series of exams, student learning could be enhanced by study groups and collaborative problem solving assignments before the exams. Groups whose members serve as study partners might best be organized by residential location. For collaborative problem solving activities, groups may not need to be permanent but composed in a way that ensures a range of skill levels and experience with the topics. These groups could be changed up according to exam scores over the course of the term.
If the course is discussion-based, perhaps with an emphasis on writing, or if projects are a significant component, spending course time to manage teams and gather feedback on whether their team is working effectively is merited. In that kind of course, it may be most effective to form groups based on student interest in the specific topic of a discussion or project. It may also be worthwhile to define roles within each group, such as Organizer, Graphic Designer, and Editor, and assign students to specific roles or tasks. Several technology tools can assist, either by randomly assigning students or gathering information from students and then organizing them into groups based on the results. CATME, which stands for Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness, offers several different components: a surveying tool to gather data for forming teams, resources for students to evaluate their teammates’ performance as well as their own, and materials that help students recognize effective team behaviors. A similar tool, developed by the University of Michigan’s Academic Innovation, Tandem, focuses on features that gather frequent feedback from the teams about team function itself, allowing instructors to intervene when called for. A final tool related to teams is Canvas Groups, which gives each group in a course their own miniature Canvas site for the purposes of collaboration.
If you think you’d like to learn more about how to effectively compose and manage groups in your course, please contact [email protected] to speak with an instructional consultant about it!
Sources
Hodges, L. C. (2017, August). Ten Research-Based Steps for Effective Group Work - IDEA Paper 65.
Retrieved October 16, 2019, from https://www.ideaedu.org/Research/IDEA-Papers-Series/Paper-Details?story=ten-research-based-steps-for-effective-group-work..
