Guide to group work
Group work is essential to your academic and professional journey.
Knowing how to learn and work effectively as part of a team is crucial at university, but even more so beyond your studies.
Many professional organisations and employers stress the importance of group working skillsets in multidisciplinary teams. These skills can be as essential as your subject knowledge in enabling you to be an effective professional.
However, for many students, group learning can be among their most frustrating experiences. Nonetheless,Ìýyou can work enjoyably with anybody by developing strong group work skills and practices.
What skills will I build through group work?
- Building positive working relationships
- Communicating effectively in meetings
- Negotiating to agree on tasks and resolve conflicts
- Accommodating people of different cultural orientations and work habits.
- 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.
Why are group learning tasks useful?
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Courses include group work to provide safe environments where you can sound out your ideas with others. Thus, group learning lets you understand your own ideas on a deeper level before in the process of expressing them to other students. These environments also provide you with experience in receiving feedback.
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Group projects are among the most valuable and rewarding learning experiences, giving you the opportunity to draw on the different strengths of group members and produce a more extensive, higher quality project than you could complete on your own.
See also
Take some time early on to chat with and get to know each of your group mates.
The better you know each other and the more comfortable you are communicating, the more effectively you’ll be able to work together.
Quick tip: The Moodle forum set up for your group, or any other platform your group decides to communicate on, can be used for icebreaker conversations to build connection. The online setting often helps shy or reluctant people to speak openly.
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You may have little to no choice of your team members, but take the opportunity to get to know each other and improve your ability to work with people you aren’t immediately familiar with. This is good preparation for future workplaces, where you likely won’t have much choice of co-workers, and you’ll be under much more pressure to be productive.
To ensure a positive group working experience, each member should feel that:
- They can comfortably voice their opinions and that their opinions are being considered by all team membersÌý
- The goals and objectives of the group are not compromised to accommodate the wants of a few membersÌý
- All group members are contributing positively to the work by keeping to agreed procedures and plans, and producing good quality work on time.Ìý
Be sure to express your views and listen to others. Respect is key - there is nothing wrong with disagreeing with your group mates, as long as you communicate constructively and focus on the issue rather than the person. Likewise, when someone disagrees with you, respect what they’re saying and the risk they took in expressing their thoughts. Try to find a way forward that everybody is (mostly) comfortable with.
Working together involves a range of collaborative processes at each stage of your project:
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- Have clear objectives.
Try to agree on goals for each stage, including a timeline for progress on the project as well as more immediate goals (e.g. to agree on an assessment topic at the end of the first week). Each meeting or discussion should also begin with an aim in mind.Ìý - Set ground rules.
It’s important to decide how you’ll encourage equal discussion, reach resolution without unnecessary back-and-forth, and resolve differences of opinion. Set rules from the start to ensure all group members feel able to participate (you can use the contract template below for this) and modify them along the way if necessary.Ìý - Communicate clearly and consistently.
Make sure everyone is absolutely clear on what has been agreed to. Communicate regularly with group members to make sure everyone is on the same page.Ìý - Build consensus.
Ensure everyone has a say, even if you have to take time to get more reserved members to contribute. Listen to everyone's ideas and then try to come to an agreement that everyone can be satisfied with. - Divide tasks evenly.
As a group, you’ll need to decide on how to distribute the workload. Break the project down into smaller tasks and share them amongst each member. Sometimes one task cannot be started until another part is finished so draw up a simple timeline and set deadlines and start dates.Ìý - Keep good records.
Summarising in-person discussions on the group’s Moodle forum, or other agreed-upon platform, is a good was to keep a record of discussions. This minimises confusion about group decisions. - Stick to the plan.
If you agreed to do something as part of the plan, then do it. Your group relies on you to complete your agreed-upon task. If you think the plan should be revised, then discuss this with the group.Ìý - Monitor progress and keep to deadlines.
As a group, discuss progress in relation to your plan and deadlines. Make sure to meet your own deadlines to avoid letting your group down.
- Have clear objectives.
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Writing collaboratively is one of the trickiest parts of group work. There are many ways to do this, and your group will have to decide how to divide the work of writing, collating, editing and putting the final touches on your work.
Try to avoid the following extremes:
- Writing by committee, where every member tries to write every part of the project simultaneously. This is a recipe for conflict and lack of progress.
- Having only one writer, where all the responsibility and pressure falls on one person. This is unproductive and can promote resentment.
Divide the tasks of writing the initial draft into sections, and tackle these individually or in pairs. Once these sections have been drafted, share them as a group and provide feedback together. The group can then decide how to edit, improve and polish the manuscript so the final submission is consistent.
Make use of cloud programs like Microsoft Word (available in Microsoft 365Ìýthrough your student email) to keep all the work in one place and make sure each member has access to it.
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Refer to the teamwork checklistÌýbelow for a list of common issues that may emerge in group work. Use it regularly to identify problems before they get out of hand. If a major problem or tension does arise, get together as a group and identify where things are going wrong. Consider how you might overcome these problems. If you struggle to come up with an agreed solution, reach out to your lecturer or tutor for support.
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Group tasks and assessments may mean that marks are assigned to you based on the result for the whole group. It’s in everybody's interest to ensure an effective contribution from all group members and make sure that the finished task is of high quality.
Sometimes a system of peer assessment is used to determine the relative contributions of everyone to the group process. This could be used to moderate the marks for the assessment, or simply as a way to provide feedback on your group work skills.
Remember: Avoid directly blaming your group members if you're not satisfied with your marks. Reach out to your lecturer or tutor for feedback and support instead.
Assign specific roles to each member to make sure work is completed efficiently.
Below is an example of what kind of roles your team could assign to optimise group work.
Please note: Your group should adjust assigned roles to the nature of your task and group size.ÌýThis could involve merging, splitting, adding or even removing roles.
Clarifies meeting goals, summarises discussions and decisions, and ensures ground rules are followed.
Records the ideas discussed and decisions made about the project.
Makes sure meetings stay on track and everything necessary is discussed in the time available.
Chases people up to make sure tasks are completed by agreed deadlines and provides support where problems arise.
Keeps an eye on the process rather than content and brings problems to the attention of the team.
Compiles contributions, identifies gaps or overlaps, and ensures consistency in the final submission.
- Teamwork checklist
- Group contract
Copy the teamwork checklist template table below into your notes and personalise it for your groupwork activity. Be sure to:
- Answer each question regarding your own performance in the group.
- Answer each question regarding the rest of the group’s performance.
- Meet with your whole group to discuss any problems that come up and how you’ll overcome them.
Each member should reflect on their experience, then finish their own copy of this checklist to make this exercise worthwhile. Complete this exercise regularly to monitor and improve how effectively you’re working as a group.
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Are you:
Me
Group
Comments
Effectively clarifying your task or objective at each stage? Ìý Ìý Ìý Checking on progress? Ìý Ìý Ìý Clarifying and recording what your group decides? Ìý Ìý Ìý Clarifying who is going to do what? Ìý Ìý Ìý Clarifying when each task is to be done by? Ìý Ìý Ìý Establishing procedures for handling meetings? Ìý Ìý Ìý Keeping to agreed procedures? Ìý Ìý Ìý Listening to each other? Ìý Ìý Ìý Dominating / Allowing some members to dominate Ìý Ìý Ìý Withdrawing / Allowing some members to withdraw? Ìý Ìý Ìý Compromising individuals wants for the sake of the team? Ìý Ìý Ìý Recognising the feelings of other members? Ìý Ìý Ìý Contributing equally to team progress? Ìý Ìý Ìý Following agreed procedures for writing and file naming? Ìý Ìý Ìý Adapted from Scoufis (2000).
View an example of how you could format a group contract below. You can copy and personalise this format into a common document for your group to turn into a contract relevant to your project. It should be finalised by the first week and signed and dated by all group members.
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We, the members of .....(group name)..... agree to the following plan of action regarding our work toward the group assessment tasks:
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Meetings and communication
- Times and places for in-person meetings.
- Frequency of checks to Moodle discussion forums.
- Rules and procedures during face-to-face meetings.
- Who will summarise decisions, when will they 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 to discuss the topic)?
- When will you make a final decision on a topic?
- Who will write the first draft and who will edit for each component? (With deadlines)
- Who will collate the whole submission and then circulate it for the group to comment on? (With a deadline)
- Who will prepare and submit the final submission? (With a deadline)
Penalties
- What happens if members don’t meet agreed-to deadlines?
- What happens if members don’t attend or contribute to meetings?
Acknowledgement
This document (version: BA300112) was developed by staff at the Learning and Teaching Unit at ºÚÁÏÍø´óʼÇ, and includes material adapted from handouts developed by faculty teaching staff at ºÚÁÏÍø´óʼÇ.
References
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).
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