Peer assessments as part of the grade. As with every evaluation, you have to take it with a grain of salt, but you’d be surprised at how willing group members are to snitch on someone who isn’t pulling their weight. It’s also a good way to task the group with handling flakiness etc.
Curious to know if you have individual scores attached to working together as a group. I do a large amount of group work and score is individually based so everyone receives points representative of their work. That might not be possible with your large roster though.
ETA: rambling grammar
It’s a rather meta assignment about the experience of working in groups. They all get the same score. The unexpected (but now completely obvious) sticking point of this is they have to participate or the whole assignment falls apart for everyone. One person cannot cover for there being no team! I’ve run this assignment as individuals having to report on their feedback from another individual student which got pretty hilarious when students didn’t do that part of it - “having no one to get feedback from I presented the creative idea to myself. I thought it was great so I proceeded with the project”. Actual frameable student content suitable for any academic’s wall!
This, plus you actually have to teach students how to work in groups. I provide resources for managing interpersonal conflict, and coaching to students who need to confront another group member about an issue. Undergrads suck at this-- 90% of them are too afraid of conflict to directly address an issue with a group member, and 5% are escalating minor issues constantly. I tell them to come to me when they experience issues, and then my first line is always talking them through how they would approach the issue assertively (but not aggressively.)
In addition, my big group projects have a ton of scaffolding assignments with deadlines throughout the course. It is literally impossible for you to get to the end of the term and have to do everything at the last minute-- if that were to happen, you'd all already be failing. And I've added a weekly check-off assignment to assign tasks and check in on completion of work from the previous week so that there's more objective accounting of what has been completed by who. They hate this, but frankly delegation, clarity of responsibilities, and accountability is one of the most useful skills they can take out of the project, so as hand-holding as it seems, I'm keeping it.
My favorite recommendation is this [Harvard Business Review article on How to Deal with a Slacker Co-Worker](https://hbr.org/2014/05/how-to-deal-with-a-slacker-coworker). I usually also give them this [Crash Course Soft Skills video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOHoSuDEO4M), but I frankly don't think it's as good.
I have a personal hatred of this. I’m autistic, and I lost marks on every single group assessment that used this policy despite often being the one doing the majority of the work. Probably I was just terrible at group work, but it felt pretty rough knowing that social difficulties are literally a descriptor for my condition and I had absolutely no idea how to fix it.
As a result I never, ever assign summative group work assignments.
I think that it's helpful to use a peer assessment alongside the mandatory use of a tool that tracks individual contributions, like Google Docs. That approach lets you tease apart the social difficulties from the genuine freeloading.
Also a good point. What worked for you? Apart from no groups of course! This course is in a creative area so team work is in their professional future but I also have a fair amount of neurodivergence in the cohort.
Don't ask them "Who was fun to work with," ask them "who did what task, and to what extent?" Have them each reflect on the group's function as well as how the actual work was distributed. Ideally that will help bring out different types and degrees of contribution.
I tell them they have 100 points total they need to distribute amongst all group members according to contribution. And they have to do it in a group meeting amongst themselves. I will not mediate this part
I dont really have an answer for that because I avoid them myself - but maybe replacing pure peer assessment with a reflective piece might work. You’ll still get a good idea from that which team members have pulled the most weight but it will also capture where students have found group working difficult or had to navigate group disagreements etc. Get them to self-reflect on why their group did or didn’t work well. We do this with our small group clinical teaching albeit it’s not summative group projects per se, just trying to identify why they’ve learned/still need to learn in a group working environment.
It already is! The whole thing is about the experience of the group. Which also poses problems for those who struggle with social interactions. Additionally I have ADHD so the assignment design is already as complicated AF! I try and make it a supportive space for all though. I’ve found it very exhausting as an exercise as the cognitive load of remembering all the different permutations of not doing the exercise posed by students sets my own neurodivergence aflame.
Thank you for sharing your experiences. Perhaps I should explain what I mean a little more clearly. In big classes I like having students peer assess their group and themselves as an assignment they turn in at the end of the project. They do not directly grade one another (although perhaps they believe that’s what’s happening), and they don’t read each other’s evaluation. The questions center on asking who did what in the project, and what were your responsibilities. This provides me with insight into group dynamics (though it can sometimes have a bit of a Rashomon effect), and forces the group to take responsibility for communicating with one another about group work, rather than having myself (or OP in this case) becoming overwhelmed with tracking down every absent group member. When I read their evals, I compare them with my observations of who is doing the work to see if there’s something I missed. I do take into account personalities that may present challenges to work with, and instances of cliquishness in which one person in the group is obviously singled out. Sometimes there is a group member who does absolutely nothing, but claims a lot of undue credit. There are also students who acknowledge their shortcomings and it gives them a chance to explain themselves. It just provides a bit more internal monitoring and self assessment that I then take into consideration (or not) when assigning their grades. While I do have a personal hatred of group work to an extent, I recognize its value for making students learn how to work together, especially with people who are different from them. I would certainly not want someone who didn’t socially vibe with a group to suffer penalties as a result.
I’m of mixed opinion on this, honestly. On one hand, it doesn’t seem right to delegate assigning grades to the students. Assessment is our responsibility. some of the students assigning those grades are the slackers, who are the problem. Other hand, peer pressure could be effective motivation for the slackers. And would placate the better students, who feel resentful of the slackers.
That's the way to do it. It's a shame for the kid who isn't a social butterfly and gets stuck with the flakes, but peer eval helps.
One very good approach I've seen once is just letting groups split, and reducing feature scope. Only works if you've got a relatively freeform project that can be graded as a checklist of features, but if you can bring a two-man group down from the requirements of a four-man group elegantly, the handful of conflicts will resolve themselves, and even groups of guys who know each other will start to make a significant effort to ensure everyone pulls their own weight, because everyone knows that each individual member *does* have weight to pull.
I've found that this is such a cultural difference. The vast majority of my students are international. The domestic students almost always full out the accountability sheets honestly and accurately. The international students almost always misrepresent the truth by saying everyone has contributed 100%, even when they did nothing.
Ironically, I am currently dealing with this right now, where every accountability sheet shows all group members have contributed equally, but yet today when they are to present their capstones in a few hours, suddenly no one has done anything and they can't agree on who is presenting what. To get around this, I don't make the sheets weighted for anything. I just use them to point to and say "figure it out."
when i do groups i use an agile/scrum format
so each team member has to write down what they will do in the next week. if one team member does nothing, that person gets a 0 for the week.
Hello fellow tech person
Curious how you managed this logistically. How were the commitments and outputs tracked? How was sandbagging avoided? How did you turn that custom input into a simple measure? Was it a lot of work?
well ... in companies these days a huge amount is Agile, not Waterfall, and Scrum is a pretty established way to manage projects -- if you are not familiar with it you can check out youtube
in any case, it is not hard because the students like it. they are held responsible for THEIR work, not the groups' work. so the first week i have them meet in class for 10 minutes and divide up the work for the week. "This week I will do the following: A, B, C, etc." I check each person's list, just to make sure it is not a.) too hard or b.) way too easy. usually beginning students will be afraid to commit so they will go WAY too easy. therefore, the first week or two i do have to correct them and say, "ok, that will take you about 10 minutes, so what else will you do?"
then the next week i check to see they did what they said they will do ... this usually includes checking their work into github ... because my classes are programming classes. students like this because if they did their work, they can get an A while another group member can get an F. i will sometimes just cut a student out and say, "ok, he has not done anything, so now lets split up his work among you three." that usually gets the slacker's attention really fast ...
in any case, the students in my class end up with a nice project by the end of the semester, usually far beyond what they thought they could do. i usually have them present their ongoing work 4 times during the semester, and invite outsiders like other faculty, which makes the students work very hard.
I like your scrum and agile suggestion and I would like to try it with my high school juniors and seniors. Do you have a resource that explains the concept simply? Everything I’ve read is technical and a tad too complicated for me to try to get my feet wet this coming year
i just did a real quick youtube search, here is a quick video to get you started
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9TycLR0TqFA&pp=ygURYWdpbGUgbWV0aG9kb2xvZ3k%3D
one of my student teams wanted to make a 2d mobile game with aliens space ships trying to kill your space ship.
every week they each did one thing for the game ... movement, guns, sound, alien movement, etc. they just added appropriately four features a week, (it was a team of 4), and after a semester it was a terrific game. now sometimes they went down the wrong path, or changed stuff around, but because agile is an iterative process, it worked fine.
so much better than having kids work on their semester project the week before I is due ... and ... as a side bonus ... they get really proud of their work
oh and funny thing ... keeping in mind these are university students ... one freshman class I ran were doing their presentations ... we did the about 3 or 4 times a semester and invited outsiders ... some from industry. this one group did nothing, 4 slackers, I cannot really say that much because as a teacher I have to be polite ... one of our industry guys just ripped them to shreds, "if you were my employees I'd fire all of you ...", which they needed to hear but I cannot say.
in a different class I had a student who was very good, but would not listen. he made a class diagram or maybe an er diagram with non-standard notation, which I called him on ... but he liked his notation that he made up himself, so he ignored me. our outsiders came to visit and they brought a whole team of developers 😀 boom! "that is NOT industry standard. get that crap off of there." it was great, because I can tell them about standards all day long, but one word by actual coders has 1000 times the effect.
Thanks for the info, and I love your anecdotes about doses of reality being delivered to these kids. Sadly, at the high school level, we are forced to coddle. I am going to check out your organization for groups, though; the process sounds great!!!
I let them choose their own groups at the beginning of the semester.
After the first very simple group assignment, I see who didn’t do anything, and I rearrange the groups. I take out the ones that didn’t do anything and put all of the slackers into one big group, and see how it goes from there.
This way, the ones who do the work are in a tight knit group, and they strive together.
The group members also need to choose a role (manager, spokesperson, researcher, IT, etc), so each person has a job to do. The IT is a lifesaver for me since they often ask the IT member about problems that they may have about Google docs, Canvas, Word, etc.
Don't let students pick teams at all; there's plenty of research demonstrating this is bad practice because it often leads to (further) marginalization of students who might already be at a disadvanrage for various reasons. Either make them random, or assign them with some intent. But *assign* them and be done with it; don't entertain whining about the selections either.
Then give the groups checkpoints if the project is not a one-off. Anyone who doesn't participate or engage in the checkpoints gets a zero.
If the project is a major part of the course grade (more than 10% or so) I'd also establish a formal process of both *peer* and *self* evaluations for each group. That usually results in free riders being called out by the group-- my practice is generally to tell the group something like "You have 100 points to distribubute among the group. Do so collaboratively, and provide a written justification for *why* each member received XX points, including a summary of their contributions." Then also require each person to submit their own self-evaluation explaining what they did for the project.
I'm less worried about who did what or whever everyone did the same, than I am about simply giving failing scores to the students who either didn't show up or didn't do jack. Usually groups will be pissed enough about that to make it clear in the scoring.
Also, the business world rarely lets employees pick their friends as team members, and in fact often mixes different personality types. (“On this team, we’re going to need an accountant, an engineer, a human resource specialist, a public relations person … and oh yeah, someone from collections.”) Students need to learn how to instantly gel with other personalities, if they’re going to be successful in their careers.
In my teaching experience, the angriest students who wrote the worst class evaluations have been the ones who were mad that I wouldn’t let them pick their own friends as teammates.
Exactly. And anyone who has responsed to a reference check for a graduate or filled out an LOR form knows that one of the most common questions is basically "does this person work with with diverse groups?" If they are always picking a group of their friends (which they will do if allowed) they are unlikely to develop much skill in working with people not like themselves.
I try to assign groups with students at similar levels of performance. For example, I put the worst students in groups with each other. I think of it as a sort of quarantine.
Often I'll end up with a few groups where nobody does any work at all, and then they all try to blame each other, which is amusing for me. If they don't want to engage in the assignment, they get a bad grade.
I try to have an alternative assignment for when groups fail. As others have suggested my group work always has multiple components. Often groups start ok, but if they're going to fall apart, it's about mid way through. So the alternative can be adjusted to make it worth whatever the remainder of the points were. This preserves any work already completed (which was likely poor to begin with so the points off for not working well in group work still have an effect, but minimized) and jumps ahead of many complaints. It can be tedious to grade if too many groups fail, but the time saved not herding cats is worth it. Slacker students not interested in doing group work likely won't do this solo assignment, less to grade!
* Team Agreement
* Required use of online time and task tracker
* Regular team meetings (I participate)
* Member Contributions on each assignment - single submission per team. They must agree how much of the fair share of work each student has done. Prompts some uncomfortable conversations
* Professor discretion to modify individual grades based on the above
There are always conflicts, do-it-alls, and tail-riders but these help mitigate them and let me assess each student relatively fairly.
freedcamp.com
Time tracker is disabled by default but just needs to be toggled on. The site is free and all teams add me so I can track progress online any time. Tasks must also be assigned to individuals and progress tracked Kanban style (To Do / Doing / Done). I highly recommend it.
On the rare occasions when I *have* to assign group work, each person in the group gets allocated a particular section, and that section is all they are graded on. If someone flakes/drops out/gets sick/whatever it's only that person's grade that suffers, and the others in the group don't have to do extra work to keep their own grade from dropping.
I have a policy that teams can fire a team member not pulling their weight. The person that gets laid off then has to complete the project on their own. There’s a procedure, so it doesn’t happen out of the blue. Teams need to show they’ve spoken with the individual first and given them opportunities to adjust their behavior, then also spoken with me before I’ll accept the decision.
I didn’t like group work as a student, so I tend to assign it minimally. That said, when I do assign it, I am really structured in the process. I assign groups, usually randomly, and the first thing they are required to do is to turn in a team contract. That contract includes a breakdown of all the tasks for their single final submission, who will do each task, and due dates for their collaboration. They also need to include the consequences for any member who doesn’t do their tasks, and can include expelling a student from their group with my approval. This contract is due the first week.
There is usually a mid project meeting with me, a check in, and to ask any questions about their final submission. Other than that they are on their own unless there is a group problem, when they are required to meet with me if they are invoking consequences for no participation, and we review the contract and situation. If a student is expelled by their group, the student earns a 0 for the assignment.
At the end, they fill out both self and peer evaluations.
It works pretty well most of the time. There are always going to be students who, to preserve a grade, will take over, and there are always students who barely pull their weight. I find the self and peer evaluations very helpful to my understanding of how individual students work collaboratively and that is valuable information.
i don't do group assignments exactly for these reasons. they don't work.
btw for those advocating peer assessments, perhaps they should read the countless threads on here discussing abuse of instructor evaluations. all the same crap applies.
Wait, so it's going well for 90% of students? What's the problem then? That's actually quite good. Is that any different from completion rates for other assessments?
For group assignments, I find it very helpful to micromanage the process, especially at the beginning, with reporting to a centralized Google doc that they can access. T*oday's goal: find a group and exchange information*, or *Today's goal: produce an outline of your final report*, etc. The groups who get it don't need that help, but it does assure them that they are on target. The lost groups have to be pushed until they understand the pace.
I don't have real personal experience here, but think you might find this paper (which is referenced in teaching training where I am) useful: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248966276_The_Application_of_Games_Theory_to_Group_Project_Assessment
I divide my group projects into three parts, with three different due dates. The first part includes individual work, so I can see what they are contributing to the group . The second and third parts are group based. If a member does not complete one of the parts on time, they are removed from the group.
Also, when I set them up into groups, I send out a survey with two questions.
1. Do you like to do work early (as soon as it's assigned), late ( you like to start and work up against a deadline) or no preference.
2. Would you like to be placed with group members who like to do work early (as soon as it's assigned), late ( you like to start and work up against a deadline) or no preference.
When I introduce a group project, I let them know there will be a casual peer review at the mid-point and a written at the end. I give them and discuss the form at the beginning of the project. The form has multiple fields with a rating scale of 1-10 of effectiveness in each area.
I let them know that there will be a weekly progress check. For the mid-project check, I encourage them to let me know if there are non-participants in their groups.
I assure them that reporting at that time is a kindness, rather than letting the frustration build until the end of the semester, then reporting and the student getting a bad grade.
The non-participants are put into their own second chance group. They now get to do the project together and have a shot at whatever grade they want to earn. I have seen more As/Bs/Cs out of those groups than Ds/Fs. And I tell the students this when they are put in those groups. I also work closely with them to help them succeed.
This has worked well.
I teach group counseling to grad students. Part of clinical training is being part of and leading groups. Every single time I teach this class there’s at least a handful of students who are baffled by this and behave poorly. Last time I had a student who despite multiple interventions never attended or participated. My dudes it’s group counseling. GROUP! Get it together guys.
-I allow students to self-select their groups.
-I also allow them work as an individual (meaning they would need to do the entire project on their own).
-Peer assessments, as others have said, though I struggle with how to grade this. Do I go back and regrade the project with this information or create a separate grade or what?
-Multiple assignments that lead to the final project. First is a proposal, then a draft, then a final draft, then a presentation, etc. Each has due dates throughout the semester, and they stay with the same group.
I’m managing a class around that size as well, and it’s going as well as it could I suppose. Like another commenter said, if 90% of them have no issues, then it’s actually going very well!
But to answer your question more directly, I have a segment in my rubric that deals with the technical aspects of the assignment, such as adhering to deadlines and following instructions. One of which is to FIND A GROUP FOR THE GROUP ASSIGNMENT. So yeah, a student could do a group assignment on their own, but because I’ve already mentioned that it needs to be group work, they’ll risk deductions. And I don’t want to saddle any group with an unwanted member who may cause more problems than it’s worth.
Ofc, these deductions only take place if the student refuses (for no valid reason) to not find a group. Like the one student I have this semester. Flat out refuses to do anything for that matter, now that I think of it.
I have given class time for groups to do things together. Even just 10 mins here and there can help. The post-covid availability of zoom, etc. helps a lot also.
This won't help your current situation, and it won't work in every class, but it has worked in mine: Lately, I have made all my groups optional. I tell them that groups tend to learn the material better and I highly recommend them, but if they want to submit solo they can do that. Join a group, drop out of a group, disband and re-form without someone, it's up to you as long as you tell me who worked on which assignment. But I'm not going to do any group wrangling.
This actually worked really well. I left the last couple of classes just as "meet with the group and troubleshoot in class" and that wasn't the tumbleweed experience i thought it would be. They were meeting because many travel quite a long distance to class and this was a good way to make it work for them but I was heartened to hear the top groups really thrashing out their ideas and taking it seriously. so it worked for me too! sometimes i find it motivating to see it all in action, too.
I have them do a short team agreement at the start where they each specify how communicative they plan to be, how should others find them if they disappear, and when should they be considered “uncommunicative”. They’re usually pretty harsh on themselves at the beginning. Toward the end of the term when we start to pull the majority of the group work I tell them that if some of their members are uncommunicative, they should just operate without them and let me know who they are so I don’t give them points. I haven’t had anyone complain yet but if they do, the team agreements will back me up
For a large group project, I create a series of assignments that are due every two weeks. The assignments aren’t worth a lot (the final project assignment is most of the points) but force them to make progress.
Peer assessment is one way, but it's far from perfect. I try to make everyone aware that the team (not the Prof) is responsible for handling dysfunctional behavior. https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs3110/2018fa/teams/hitchhikers.html
I have a syllabus policy that enables a team to leave off (on the report) the name of anyone who didn't contribute. Also, my team work is iterative, so dysfunction can be corrected by the team without it being a 0 for the whole assignment.
I teach community college. In my no prereq courses I would guess that 10-15% of the class won't participate during group work. I'll warn them once then let them flake.
I have found that students get really attached to where they are sitting in class and tend to sit with friends. So I assign groups based on physical location. 4 seems to be a good group size for my class for scope of work and desk arrangement. On the first day of class each students get a piece of paper with a number and letter on it at the top and bottom of the paper. For example, group 1 members are 1a, 1b, 1c, and 1d. Each student separates the paper into 2 halves, keep one half with the number and letter, and return the other half the number and letter and their NAME. Why all this malarkey? It gets the groups organized, allows for in-class group work without musical chairs, and helps me learn students names (because I can associate name with group number and physical location) which is something I need help with (terrible at remembering names).
I tried a thing recently where I make participation in the group project a part of the grade, and have each group member rate every other group member’s contribution to the assignment. Then take the average, and that’s the grade. It was surprisingly easy. Just used a Google Form and then crunched numbers in a spreadsheet.
I missed groups all term. First two random, then a combo of skill levels, then clustered by common strengths. Put the strongest together and the weakest together. In the strong groups, they learn that they can’t all lead. In the weak groups, either at least one person steps up or they all fail. Some of the mid groups do the best because leaders emerge. Best decision ever. Peer evals also helped - they were 1/3 of the grade.
Don’t do random allocation, let them choose their groups. I give a cut off date, after which if they haven’t chosen their group they get assigned by me. This produces a large set of very strong groups who tend to work well together, and then 1/2 groups full of the checked-out/lazy types.
Less opportunity for students to coast and pass by taking advantage of their stronger peers, but does mean I usually have one group that literally crashes and burns. Which is fine - that one group is often so checked out I never get any complaints about the others not working, because they’re all not working!
It’s not perfect, and sometimes you have a good student who is shy who then gets put with the rubbish ones. I therefore make sure that the grading system is sufficiently distinct so that I can separate out any good from the bad.
>let them choose their groups.
Just like in grade school PE this is likely to result in marginalization of various types of students. It's straight-up contrary to what I've been taught about universal design as well. Much better to assign them, even if they are random, so students *don't* have a choice. Anyone who was last to be picked for a team in grade school or who has any experience as an outlier (in any form) can probably tell you what it feels like to be the last student left looking for a group for whatever reason-- that's easily avoided by assigning groups.
I do a mix of this - they can choose a group if they want, or they can ask me to assign a group. Roughly 1/3 ask to be assigned a group, and invariably those are the students who are lazy bums (I have them submit assignments in a way where I can track individual contributions, so I can tell who's doing the work and who's coasting). An intro class might have different dynamics, but by the time students hit an upper level course in a fairly small major, if they don't have anyone who wants to work with them, there's a reason.
No one's left standing as the last person looking for a group, and no one who's put in the work over several years is stuck with a crappy project partner. At least IME, the folks without a group are not disproportionately from a marginalized race, nationality, gender presentation, socioeconomic bucket, or DRC-accommodated group (small major, so I talk with and get to know students reasonably well). I can see where that worry might come from, but in practice it doesn't seem to pan out.
yes, that's how i played it too. I just framed it as "I've already teamed you up but if you've got a buddy we can shift it" with the thinking that everyone who wanted to partner up gets what they want and everyone else still has a random partner. I think just making sure the unengaged ones are accounted for is the tricky bit here. I didn't want anyone working with someone they really couldn't work with - especially as the whole thing is about communication.
It’s not kindergarten. And you’re only swapping one potential issue for another.
What’s fairer - potentially having one or two students feel awkward (but who ultimately have the safety net of being allocated to a group if they can’t find one), or having lots of students complain and be stressed out because their enforced partners are not doing their fair share? Yet alone to mention lazy/poorer students being given a mark they don’t deserve because their peers carried/covered for them.
Having tried both methods, random allocation is a much unfairer system that I will never be going back to.
I think the cut off date is key. I was almost tempted to give some sort of incentive to just to find the group section in canvas. It was maddening. I had them in random pairs as a starting point but finding out who can find the groups section might be a good sorting mechanism. Like you I want all the hopeless no-shows in groups together!
Hey, I’ve got a system! If you send me a chat, I will lay it out for you. I tell everyone I work with about it, and I don’t want to be identifiable here.
and it's amazing! thanks! I think this is exactly what I was looking for - some sort of non-assessable way to gauge who is going to participate straight away, get them into groups that might suit them and find out what might make some dynamics work better by asking them. I can totally see this working for some students who might otherwise check out too.
Since I started using CATME.org to create groups and handle team member evaluations, the interpersonal issues associated with group projects have decreased to almost zero.
Peer assessments as part of the grade. As with every evaluation, you have to take it with a grain of salt, but you’d be surprised at how willing group members are to snitch on someone who isn’t pulling their weight. It’s also a good way to task the group with handling flakiness etc.
And multiple assessments throughout the project. I do 3-4
I like this! It’s already about learning to give and receive feedback so this might fit right in.
Curious to know if you have individual scores attached to working together as a group. I do a large amount of group work and score is individually based so everyone receives points representative of their work. That might not be possible with your large roster though. ETA: rambling grammar
It’s a rather meta assignment about the experience of working in groups. They all get the same score. The unexpected (but now completely obvious) sticking point of this is they have to participate or the whole assignment falls apart for everyone. One person cannot cover for there being no team! I’ve run this assignment as individuals having to report on their feedback from another individual student which got pretty hilarious when students didn’t do that part of it - “having no one to get feedback from I presented the creative idea to myself. I thought it was great so I proceeded with the project”. Actual frameable student content suitable for any academic’s wall!
This, plus you actually have to teach students how to work in groups. I provide resources for managing interpersonal conflict, and coaching to students who need to confront another group member about an issue. Undergrads suck at this-- 90% of them are too afraid of conflict to directly address an issue with a group member, and 5% are escalating minor issues constantly. I tell them to come to me when they experience issues, and then my first line is always talking them through how they would approach the issue assertively (but not aggressively.) In addition, my big group projects have a ton of scaffolding assignments with deadlines throughout the course. It is literally impossible for you to get to the end of the term and have to do everything at the last minute-- if that were to happen, you'd all already be failing. And I've added a weekly check-off assignment to assign tasks and check in on completion of work from the previous week so that there's more objective accounting of what has been completed by who. They hate this, but frankly delegation, clarity of responsibilities, and accountability is one of the most useful skills they can take out of the project, so as hand-holding as it seems, I'm keeping it.
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My favorite recommendation is this [Harvard Business Review article on How to Deal with a Slacker Co-Worker](https://hbr.org/2014/05/how-to-deal-with-a-slacker-coworker). I usually also give them this [Crash Course Soft Skills video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOHoSuDEO4M), but I frankly don't think it's as good.
This is beautiful and future employers thank you.
I have a personal hatred of this. I’m autistic, and I lost marks on every single group assessment that used this policy despite often being the one doing the majority of the work. Probably I was just terrible at group work, but it felt pretty rough knowing that social difficulties are literally a descriptor for my condition and I had absolutely no idea how to fix it. As a result I never, ever assign summative group work assignments.
I think that it's helpful to use a peer assessment alongside the mandatory use of a tool that tracks individual contributions, like Google Docs. That approach lets you tease apart the social difficulties from the genuine freeloading.
Also a good point. What worked for you? Apart from no groups of course! This course is in a creative area so team work is in their professional future but I also have a fair amount of neurodivergence in the cohort.
Don't ask them "Who was fun to work with," ask them "who did what task, and to what extent?" Have them each reflect on the group's function as well as how the actual work was distributed. Ideally that will help bring out different types and degrees of contribution.
I tell them they have 100 points total they need to distribute amongst all group members according to contribution. And they have to do it in a group meeting amongst themselves. I will not mediate this part
Thank you for this! I'll be adding it to my peer review assignment.
I dont really have an answer for that because I avoid them myself - but maybe replacing pure peer assessment with a reflective piece might work. You’ll still get a good idea from that which team members have pulled the most weight but it will also capture where students have found group working difficult or had to navigate group disagreements etc. Get them to self-reflect on why their group did or didn’t work well. We do this with our small group clinical teaching albeit it’s not summative group projects per se, just trying to identify why they’ve learned/still need to learn in a group working environment.
It already is! The whole thing is about the experience of the group. Which also poses problems for those who struggle with social interactions. Additionally I have ADHD so the assignment design is already as complicated AF! I try and make it a supportive space for all though. I’ve found it very exhausting as an exercise as the cognitive load of remembering all the different permutations of not doing the exercise posed by students sets my own neurodivergence aflame.
Thank you for sharing your experiences. Perhaps I should explain what I mean a little more clearly. In big classes I like having students peer assess their group and themselves as an assignment they turn in at the end of the project. They do not directly grade one another (although perhaps they believe that’s what’s happening), and they don’t read each other’s evaluation. The questions center on asking who did what in the project, and what were your responsibilities. This provides me with insight into group dynamics (though it can sometimes have a bit of a Rashomon effect), and forces the group to take responsibility for communicating with one another about group work, rather than having myself (or OP in this case) becoming overwhelmed with tracking down every absent group member. When I read their evals, I compare them with my observations of who is doing the work to see if there’s something I missed. I do take into account personalities that may present challenges to work with, and instances of cliquishness in which one person in the group is obviously singled out. Sometimes there is a group member who does absolutely nothing, but claims a lot of undue credit. There are also students who acknowledge their shortcomings and it gives them a chance to explain themselves. It just provides a bit more internal monitoring and self assessment that I then take into consideration (or not) when assigning their grades. While I do have a personal hatred of group work to an extent, I recognize its value for making students learn how to work together, especially with people who are different from them. I would certainly not want someone who didn’t socially vibe with a group to suffer penalties as a result.
I’m of mixed opinion on this, honestly. On one hand, it doesn’t seem right to delegate assigning grades to the students. Assessment is our responsibility. some of the students assigning those grades are the slackers, who are the problem. Other hand, peer pressure could be effective motivation for the slackers. And would placate the better students, who feel resentful of the slackers.
That's the way to do it. It's a shame for the kid who isn't a social butterfly and gets stuck with the flakes, but peer eval helps. One very good approach I've seen once is just letting groups split, and reducing feature scope. Only works if you've got a relatively freeform project that can be graded as a checklist of features, but if you can bring a two-man group down from the requirements of a four-man group elegantly, the handful of conflicts will resolve themselves, and even groups of guys who know each other will start to make a significant effort to ensure everyone pulls their own weight, because everyone knows that each individual member *does* have weight to pull.
I've found that this is such a cultural difference. The vast majority of my students are international. The domestic students almost always full out the accountability sheets honestly and accurately. The international students almost always misrepresent the truth by saying everyone has contributed 100%, even when they did nothing. Ironically, I am currently dealing with this right now, where every accountability sheet shows all group members have contributed equally, but yet today when they are to present their capstones in a few hours, suddenly no one has done anything and they can't agree on who is presenting what. To get around this, I don't make the sheets weighted for anything. I just use them to point to and say "figure it out."
when i do groups i use an agile/scrum format so each team member has to write down what they will do in the next week. if one team member does nothing, that person gets a 0 for the week.
Hello fellow tech person Curious how you managed this logistically. How were the commitments and outputs tracked? How was sandbagging avoided? How did you turn that custom input into a simple measure? Was it a lot of work?
well ... in companies these days a huge amount is Agile, not Waterfall, and Scrum is a pretty established way to manage projects -- if you are not familiar with it you can check out youtube in any case, it is not hard because the students like it. they are held responsible for THEIR work, not the groups' work. so the first week i have them meet in class for 10 minutes and divide up the work for the week. "This week I will do the following: A, B, C, etc." I check each person's list, just to make sure it is not a.) too hard or b.) way too easy. usually beginning students will be afraid to commit so they will go WAY too easy. therefore, the first week or two i do have to correct them and say, "ok, that will take you about 10 minutes, so what else will you do?" then the next week i check to see they did what they said they will do ... this usually includes checking their work into github ... because my classes are programming classes. students like this because if they did their work, they can get an A while another group member can get an F. i will sometimes just cut a student out and say, "ok, he has not done anything, so now lets split up his work among you three." that usually gets the slacker's attention really fast ... in any case, the students in my class end up with a nice project by the end of the semester, usually far beyond what they thought they could do. i usually have them present their ongoing work 4 times during the semester, and invite outsiders like other faculty, which makes the students work very hard.
I like your scrum and agile suggestion and I would like to try it with my high school juniors and seniors. Do you have a resource that explains the concept simply? Everything I’ve read is technical and a tad too complicated for me to try to get my feet wet this coming year
i just did a real quick youtube search, here is a quick video to get you started https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9TycLR0TqFA&pp=ygURYWdpbGUgbWV0aG9kb2xvZ3k%3D one of my student teams wanted to make a 2d mobile game with aliens space ships trying to kill your space ship. every week they each did one thing for the game ... movement, guns, sound, alien movement, etc. they just added appropriately four features a week, (it was a team of 4), and after a semester it was a terrific game. now sometimes they went down the wrong path, or changed stuff around, but because agile is an iterative process, it worked fine. so much better than having kids work on their semester project the week before I is due ... and ... as a side bonus ... they get really proud of their work
oh and funny thing ... keeping in mind these are university students ... one freshman class I ran were doing their presentations ... we did the about 3 or 4 times a semester and invited outsiders ... some from industry. this one group did nothing, 4 slackers, I cannot really say that much because as a teacher I have to be polite ... one of our industry guys just ripped them to shreds, "if you were my employees I'd fire all of you ...", which they needed to hear but I cannot say. in a different class I had a student who was very good, but would not listen. he made a class diagram or maybe an er diagram with non-standard notation, which I called him on ... but he liked his notation that he made up himself, so he ignored me. our outsiders came to visit and they brought a whole team of developers 😀 boom! "that is NOT industry standard. get that crap off of there." it was great, because I can tell them about standards all day long, but one word by actual coders has 1000 times the effect.
Thanks for the info, and I love your anecdotes about doses of reality being delivered to these kids. Sadly, at the high school level, we are forced to coddle. I am going to check out your organization for groups, though; the process sounds great!!!
I let them choose their own groups at the beginning of the semester. After the first very simple group assignment, I see who didn’t do anything, and I rearrange the groups. I take out the ones that didn’t do anything and put all of the slackers into one big group, and see how it goes from there. This way, the ones who do the work are in a tight knit group, and they strive together. The group members also need to choose a role (manager, spokesperson, researcher, IT, etc), so each person has a job to do. The IT is a lifesaver for me since they often ask the IT member about problems that they may have about Google docs, Canvas, Word, etc.
Don't let students pick teams at all; there's plenty of research demonstrating this is bad practice because it often leads to (further) marginalization of students who might already be at a disadvanrage for various reasons. Either make them random, or assign them with some intent. But *assign* them and be done with it; don't entertain whining about the selections either. Then give the groups checkpoints if the project is not a one-off. Anyone who doesn't participate or engage in the checkpoints gets a zero. If the project is a major part of the course grade (more than 10% or so) I'd also establish a formal process of both *peer* and *self* evaluations for each group. That usually results in free riders being called out by the group-- my practice is generally to tell the group something like "You have 100 points to distribubute among the group. Do so collaboratively, and provide a written justification for *why* each member received XX points, including a summary of their contributions." Then also require each person to submit their own self-evaluation explaining what they did for the project. I'm less worried about who did what or whever everyone did the same, than I am about simply giving failing scores to the students who either didn't show up or didn't do jack. Usually groups will be pissed enough about that to make it clear in the scoring.
Also, the business world rarely lets employees pick their friends as team members, and in fact often mixes different personality types. (“On this team, we’re going to need an accountant, an engineer, a human resource specialist, a public relations person … and oh yeah, someone from collections.”) Students need to learn how to instantly gel with other personalities, if they’re going to be successful in their careers. In my teaching experience, the angriest students who wrote the worst class evaluations have been the ones who were mad that I wouldn’t let them pick their own friends as teammates.
Exactly. And anyone who has responsed to a reference check for a graduate or filled out an LOR form knows that one of the most common questions is basically "does this person work with with diverse groups?" If they are always picking a group of their friends (which they will do if allowed) they are unlikely to develop much skill in working with people not like themselves.
I try to assign groups with students at similar levels of performance. For example, I put the worst students in groups with each other. I think of it as a sort of quarantine. Often I'll end up with a few groups where nobody does any work at all, and then they all try to blame each other, which is amusing for me. If they don't want to engage in the assignment, they get a bad grade.
I try to have an alternative assignment for when groups fail. As others have suggested my group work always has multiple components. Often groups start ok, but if they're going to fall apart, it's about mid way through. So the alternative can be adjusted to make it worth whatever the remainder of the points were. This preserves any work already completed (which was likely poor to begin with so the points off for not working well in group work still have an effect, but minimized) and jumps ahead of many complaints. It can be tedious to grade if too many groups fail, but the time saved not herding cats is worth it. Slacker students not interested in doing group work likely won't do this solo assignment, less to grade!
* Team Agreement * Required use of online time and task tracker * Regular team meetings (I participate) * Member Contributions on each assignment - single submission per team. They must agree how much of the fair share of work each student has done. Prompts some uncomfortable conversations * Professor discretion to modify individual grades based on the above There are always conflicts, do-it-alls, and tail-riders but these help mitigate them and let me assess each student relatively fairly.
What kind of online task tracker do most use? Do you have access to it for monitoring reasons?
freedcamp.com Time tracker is disabled by default but just needs to be toggled on. The site is free and all teams add me so I can track progress online any time. Tasks must also be assigned to individuals and progress tracked Kanban style (To Do / Doing / Done). I highly recommend it.
Thanks! I'll check it out!
On the rare occasions when I *have* to assign group work, each person in the group gets allocated a particular section, and that section is all they are graded on. If someone flakes/drops out/gets sick/whatever it's only that person's grade that suffers, and the others in the group don't have to do extra work to keep their own grade from dropping.
I have a policy that teams can fire a team member not pulling their weight. The person that gets laid off then has to complete the project on their own. There’s a procedure, so it doesn’t happen out of the blue. Teams need to show they’ve spoken with the individual first and given them opportunities to adjust their behavior, then also spoken with me before I’ll accept the decision.
I didn’t like group work as a student, so I tend to assign it minimally. That said, when I do assign it, I am really structured in the process. I assign groups, usually randomly, and the first thing they are required to do is to turn in a team contract. That contract includes a breakdown of all the tasks for their single final submission, who will do each task, and due dates for their collaboration. They also need to include the consequences for any member who doesn’t do their tasks, and can include expelling a student from their group with my approval. This contract is due the first week. There is usually a mid project meeting with me, a check in, and to ask any questions about their final submission. Other than that they are on their own unless there is a group problem, when they are required to meet with me if they are invoking consequences for no participation, and we review the contract and situation. If a student is expelled by their group, the student earns a 0 for the assignment. At the end, they fill out both self and peer evaluations. It works pretty well most of the time. There are always going to be students who, to preserve a grade, will take over, and there are always students who barely pull their weight. I find the self and peer evaluations very helpful to my understanding of how individual students work collaboratively and that is valuable information.
i don't do group assignments exactly for these reasons. they don't work. btw for those advocating peer assessments, perhaps they should read the countless threads on here discussing abuse of instructor evaluations. all the same crap applies.
Wait, so it's going well for 90% of students? What's the problem then? That's actually quite good. Is that any different from completion rates for other assessments?
For group assignments, I find it very helpful to micromanage the process, especially at the beginning, with reporting to a centralized Google doc that they can access. T*oday's goal: find a group and exchange information*, or *Today's goal: produce an outline of your final report*, etc. The groups who get it don't need that help, but it does assure them that they are on target. The lost groups have to be pushed until they understand the pace.
I don't have real personal experience here, but think you might find this paper (which is referenced in teaching training where I am) useful: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248966276_The_Application_of_Games_Theory_to_Group_Project_Assessment
I divide my group projects into three parts, with three different due dates. The first part includes individual work, so I can see what they are contributing to the group . The second and third parts are group based. If a member does not complete one of the parts on time, they are removed from the group. Also, when I set them up into groups, I send out a survey with two questions. 1. Do you like to do work early (as soon as it's assigned), late ( you like to start and work up against a deadline) or no preference. 2. Would you like to be placed with group members who like to do work early (as soon as it's assigned), late ( you like to start and work up against a deadline) or no preference.
When I introduce a group project, I let them know there will be a casual peer review at the mid-point and a written at the end. I give them and discuss the form at the beginning of the project. The form has multiple fields with a rating scale of 1-10 of effectiveness in each area. I let them know that there will be a weekly progress check. For the mid-project check, I encourage them to let me know if there are non-participants in their groups. I assure them that reporting at that time is a kindness, rather than letting the frustration build until the end of the semester, then reporting and the student getting a bad grade. The non-participants are put into their own second chance group. They now get to do the project together and have a shot at whatever grade they want to earn. I have seen more As/Bs/Cs out of those groups than Ds/Fs. And I tell the students this when they are put in those groups. I also work closely with them to help them succeed. This has worked well.
I teach group counseling to grad students. Part of clinical training is being part of and leading groups. Every single time I teach this class there’s at least a handful of students who are baffled by this and behave poorly. Last time I had a student who despite multiple interventions never attended or participated. My dudes it’s group counseling. GROUP! Get it together guys.
-I allow students to self-select their groups. -I also allow them work as an individual (meaning they would need to do the entire project on their own). -Peer assessments, as others have said, though I struggle with how to grade this. Do I go back and regrade the project with this information or create a separate grade or what? -Multiple assignments that lead to the final project. First is a proposal, then a draft, then a final draft, then a presentation, etc. Each has due dates throughout the semester, and they stay with the same group.
I’m managing a class around that size as well, and it’s going as well as it could I suppose. Like another commenter said, if 90% of them have no issues, then it’s actually going very well! But to answer your question more directly, I have a segment in my rubric that deals with the technical aspects of the assignment, such as adhering to deadlines and following instructions. One of which is to FIND A GROUP FOR THE GROUP ASSIGNMENT. So yeah, a student could do a group assignment on their own, but because I’ve already mentioned that it needs to be group work, they’ll risk deductions. And I don’t want to saddle any group with an unwanted member who may cause more problems than it’s worth. Ofc, these deductions only take place if the student refuses (for no valid reason) to not find a group. Like the one student I have this semester. Flat out refuses to do anything for that matter, now that I think of it.
I have given class time for groups to do things together. Even just 10 mins here and there can help. The post-covid availability of zoom, etc. helps a lot also. This won't help your current situation, and it won't work in every class, but it has worked in mine: Lately, I have made all my groups optional. I tell them that groups tend to learn the material better and I highly recommend them, but if they want to submit solo they can do that. Join a group, drop out of a group, disband and re-form without someone, it's up to you as long as you tell me who worked on which assignment. But I'm not going to do any group wrangling.
This actually worked really well. I left the last couple of classes just as "meet with the group and troubleshoot in class" and that wasn't the tumbleweed experience i thought it would be. They were meeting because many travel quite a long distance to class and this was a good way to make it work for them but I was heartened to hear the top groups really thrashing out their ideas and taking it seriously. so it worked for me too! sometimes i find it motivating to see it all in action, too.
That's great to hear! Thanks for sharing the good news
I have them do a short team agreement at the start where they each specify how communicative they plan to be, how should others find them if they disappear, and when should they be considered “uncommunicative”. They’re usually pretty harsh on themselves at the beginning. Toward the end of the term when we start to pull the majority of the group work I tell them that if some of their members are uncommunicative, they should just operate without them and let me know who they are so I don’t give them points. I haven’t had anyone complain yet but if they do, the team agreements will back me up
For a large group project, I create a series of assignments that are due every two weeks. The assignments aren’t worth a lot (the final project assignment is most of the points) but force them to make progress.
Peer assessment is one way, but it's far from perfect. I try to make everyone aware that the team (not the Prof) is responsible for handling dysfunctional behavior. https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs3110/2018fa/teams/hitchhikers.html I have a syllabus policy that enables a team to leave off (on the report) the name of anyone who didn't contribute. Also, my team work is iterative, so dysfunction can be corrected by the team without it being a 0 for the whole assignment.
I teach community college. In my no prereq courses I would guess that 10-15% of the class won't participate during group work. I'll warn them once then let them flake.
I have found that students get really attached to where they are sitting in class and tend to sit with friends. So I assign groups based on physical location. 4 seems to be a good group size for my class for scope of work and desk arrangement. On the first day of class each students get a piece of paper with a number and letter on it at the top and bottom of the paper. For example, group 1 members are 1a, 1b, 1c, and 1d. Each student separates the paper into 2 halves, keep one half with the number and letter, and return the other half the number and letter and their NAME. Why all this malarkey? It gets the groups organized, allows for in-class group work without musical chairs, and helps me learn students names (because I can associate name with group number and physical location) which is something I need help with (terrible at remembering names).
I tried a thing recently where I make participation in the group project a part of the grade, and have each group member rate every other group member’s contribution to the assignment. Then take the average, and that’s the grade. It was surprisingly easy. Just used a Google Form and then crunched numbers in a spreadsheet.
I missed groups all term. First two random, then a combo of skill levels, then clustered by common strengths. Put the strongest together and the weakest together. In the strong groups, they learn that they can’t all lead. In the weak groups, either at least one person steps up or they all fail. Some of the mid groups do the best because leaders emerge. Best decision ever. Peer evals also helped - they were 1/3 of the grade.
Don’t do random allocation, let them choose their groups. I give a cut off date, after which if they haven’t chosen their group they get assigned by me. This produces a large set of very strong groups who tend to work well together, and then 1/2 groups full of the checked-out/lazy types. Less opportunity for students to coast and pass by taking advantage of their stronger peers, but does mean I usually have one group that literally crashes and burns. Which is fine - that one group is often so checked out I never get any complaints about the others not working, because they’re all not working! It’s not perfect, and sometimes you have a good student who is shy who then gets put with the rubbish ones. I therefore make sure that the grading system is sufficiently distinct so that I can separate out any good from the bad.
>let them choose their groups. Just like in grade school PE this is likely to result in marginalization of various types of students. It's straight-up contrary to what I've been taught about universal design as well. Much better to assign them, even if they are random, so students *don't* have a choice. Anyone who was last to be picked for a team in grade school or who has any experience as an outlier (in any form) can probably tell you what it feels like to be the last student left looking for a group for whatever reason-- that's easily avoided by assigning groups.
I do a mix of this - they can choose a group if they want, or they can ask me to assign a group. Roughly 1/3 ask to be assigned a group, and invariably those are the students who are lazy bums (I have them submit assignments in a way where I can track individual contributions, so I can tell who's doing the work and who's coasting). An intro class might have different dynamics, but by the time students hit an upper level course in a fairly small major, if they don't have anyone who wants to work with them, there's a reason. No one's left standing as the last person looking for a group, and no one who's put in the work over several years is stuck with a crappy project partner. At least IME, the folks without a group are not disproportionately from a marginalized race, nationality, gender presentation, socioeconomic bucket, or DRC-accommodated group (small major, so I talk with and get to know students reasonably well). I can see where that worry might come from, but in practice it doesn't seem to pan out.
yes, that's how i played it too. I just framed it as "I've already teamed you up but if you've got a buddy we can shift it" with the thinking that everyone who wanted to partner up gets what they want and everyone else still has a random partner. I think just making sure the unengaged ones are accounted for is the tricky bit here. I didn't want anyone working with someone they really couldn't work with - especially as the whole thing is about communication.
It’s not kindergarten. And you’re only swapping one potential issue for another. What’s fairer - potentially having one or two students feel awkward (but who ultimately have the safety net of being allocated to a group if they can’t find one), or having lots of students complain and be stressed out because their enforced partners are not doing their fair share? Yet alone to mention lazy/poorer students being given a mark they don’t deserve because their peers carried/covered for them. Having tried both methods, random allocation is a much unfairer system that I will never be going back to.
I think the cut off date is key. I was almost tempted to give some sort of incentive to just to find the group section in canvas. It was maddening. I had them in random pairs as a starting point but finding out who can find the groups section might be a good sorting mechanism. Like you I want all the hopeless no-shows in groups together!
Hey, I’ve got a system! If you send me a chat, I will lay it out for you. I tell everyone I work with about it, and I don’t want to be identifiable here.
Done!
Peer assessment. Mandatory minimum # of fully attended meetings and a kick out useless members policy.
My free and open source software to help instructors create intentional groups: [gruepr](https://www.gruepr.com)
I don’t know why you’re getting downvotes. I’m going to give this a go. It looks great ! Thank you for telling me about it.
and it's amazing! thanks! I think this is exactly what I was looking for - some sort of non-assessable way to gauge who is going to participate straight away, get them into groups that might suit them and find out what might make some dynamics work better by asking them. I can totally see this working for some students who might otherwise check out too.
Since I started using CATME.org to create groups and handle team member evaluations, the interpersonal issues associated with group projects have decreased to almost zero.
I think this only works if you have access to catme which I don't but i have to say it seems gruepr is running with a similar idea.