Group work and group assessment are a feature of degree programmes across University of Bristol and the Higher Education sector more broadly. When group work is well-designed, implemented and assessed, it can be a highly effective and powerful means of learning, yielding benefits for both students and staff. Group work aligns well with the University’s core assessment priorities, particularly in terms of being authentic, in that it can promote collaboration, creativity and critical thinking.

It is also critical to provide support to learners to help them get started.  This could include:

• talking to students about how successful groups function, including agreeing communication strategies, establishing objectives, allocating roles and tasks, recording progress, and managing non-contribution
• inviting guest speakers, alumni, or students from previous cohorts to share their advice on group working
• providing opportunities for students to get to know other members of their group
• setting formative group tasks for students to practise discussing, negotiating, listening, and giving constructive peer feedback
• setting aside timetabled sessions for students to work on tasks in their group
• explaining and discussing the assessment criteria
• getting students to analyse examples of successful group projects, focusing on both the process and final product, to understand what ‘good’ looks like.

What are the ingredients of successful group work?

Effective group work tasks must be designed for all, so that all members of diverse groups feel able to contribute their knowledge and perspectives and understand how they can achieve the learning outcomes through clear assessment criteria. They must also provide opportunities for authentic collaboration between group members and be integrated with the wider aims of the programme.

Many of these issues can be avoided or mitigated through careful planning and activity design, as set out above, and assessment design, as described in the next section. This can include peer assessment, which can help address the ‘free rider’ problem, though it is important not to rely too heavily on this approach as it can exacerbate divisions and tensions within a group. It may be more fruitful to talk to students to try to understand the reasons for non-contribution. Regardless, it is vital to set ground rules and have clear procedures for managing issues as and when they happen.

Some students can find group work particularly challenging. Working in teams can make students feel conscious of differences between themselves and their groupmates, such as language, race, disability, age, gender or class background. This can cause acute anxiety and feelings of isolation. These feelings may be compounded if other group members see them as less capable or unwilling to work in the same way as the rest of the team, and therefore ignore or exclude them. To prevent such a scenario, it is essential to establish an inclusive environment by championing diversity and designing tasks that require groups to draw on the talents of each individual member.  It also involves providing a variety and choice of assessment types so that all students can demonstrate their learning. Lastly, as discussed in the next section, it is important to ask students to reflect on their experiences of group work so that they can learn from what has or hasn’t gone well and apply this to future group projects on their programme.

Grading students on the process of group work, and not only on the final product, can motivate them to work well together and prepare students for group tasks later in their programme, in which greater importance may be placed on the final output. Assessing the process can be achieved using a combination of the following approaches:

• Contribution logs or learning analytics: Students track their contributions using an online tool, or this is done forthem by the platform they use to carry out the task;
• Peer assessment: Each student judges the contributions of other group members by assigning a percentage, which is used to adjust their grades (equity share), or by writing a short reflective account;
• Self-assessment: Students write individual reflective accounts on aspects of their performance, such ascommunication skills, their ability to give feedback, or how they helped their group overcome any challenges they encountered.

Each of these strategies also makes it possible for students to be assessed on their individual performance, which can create a greater sense of fairness. Students can, of course, receive a separate grade for their individual reflective accounts, reducing the weighting of the group grade. They could also work together as a group to prepare for an assessment and then submit an individually assessed piece of work, e.g. an essay or report. 

Peer and self-assessment can not only motivate students to engage in the process of group work, but also foster assessment literacy, helping them understand the assessment criteria and develop the skill of evaluative judgement. However, peer assessment should be used with caution, as mentioned above.