Collaborative assignments are often used in education. An important argument for this is that professionals and scientists often have to work together in teams in their professional practice. Courses therefore include learning objectives for students related to collaboration and group assignments. In practice, this often proves to be challenging, and students experience it as a burden. A commonly heard issue is the "free rider": a student who does little yet still passes the course.
Tip 1: Only give group assignments when it's useful
Only use group work when it has added value. It's best not to use group assignments for assignments that students can just as well do individually. In those cases, students complain most often that the group process takes up too much time and has no direct added value. They don't see the use of group work and are dependent on others, while it is not necessary for that course.
Tip 2: Provide a phased approach to the assignment
Prior to the assignment, have the group first create a joint thesis with a schedule of tasks and duties. For successful collaboration, it is important that several tasks are well covered, such as: planning, making action lists and reports, fulfilling substantive tasks and making decisions. For example, have students draw up a group contract so that they are aware of their mutual responsibilities and can be held accountable for them. The action plan and group contract should be discussed with the teacher as soon as possible so that he or she can make adjustments. Repeat this process when submitting an interim report.
Tip 3: Use learning goals on cooperation skills
If, as a teacher, you include collaborative assignments in your course, make sure that the learning objectives of the course also reflect this and that you assess students on them.
Tip 4: Stimulate interdependence among students
Make sure that a form of interdependence is always built into collaborative assignments. This can be achieved easily by appointing a student to present a (sub) task during the class. This prevents free riders from evading this important task, which requires the presenter to be thoroughly familiar with all sub-processes and developed content. Also make sure that during a presentation, the presenter cannot pass the word to the 'expert' of the group. Also rate the presentation with a (partial) mark.
Tip 5: Use peer feedback
Have students give each other feedback on their group functioning, especially in project-based learning (Dutch only) which has a longer duration. This can be done by discussing it during a class, but this is often less effective as it requires a high degree of social security where everyone can express themselves freely.
A low-threshold method is to have students submit, along with their (partial) assignment, a (small) collaboration/process report in which they indicate who contributed what to the work. Refer back to the action plan or the group contract for this. If it turns out that the efforts were unevenly distributed, you, as the teacher, can bring the group together to discuss the consequences of this.
A somewhat more serious method of getting the conversation going is to have students from one team give each other anonymous feedback on their collaboration skills with the Group Member Evaluation functionality of FeedbackFruits. As a teacher, you can create criteria on which students should evaluate each other or you can use predefined feedback criteria. Have this done prior to a class meeting, review it as a teacher and provide prompts for effective feedback. Ask students to receive the feedback results openly and facilitate the following group discussion to ensure it proceeds in a constructive and socially safe manner.
The result of a peer review can be taken into account in the final grade or used for the completion of the assignment.
Tip 6: Make sure students divide roles
Explicitly encourage students to seriously divide tasks at the beginning of the group assignment.
Tip 7: Give partial grades for different parts of the product and the process
Do not give one final grade, but also grade parts of the final product and the process. The use of a rubric is very useful for this.
Bonus tip: Self-help kit Group Work
The Self-help kit Group Work webpage contains tips and helpful documents for students to help them learn to work together.