Niagara College Canada

We’ll review key considerations when setting up or evaluating group work online, identify technologies and tools to support online group work, and look at ways that you can best facilitate a positive experience for your students as they engage in group work online.

What do I need to consider when setting up and evaluating group work online?

When to use group work

Below are some general criteria from Victoria University of Wellington to determine if group work is a possibility in your course.

• When groups can achieve some of the course learning goals.
• Where skills such as collaboration, cooperation and teamwork are important to practice and learn.
• When there are numerous tasks that can only be completed within a group.
• When the work involved is too much or too difficult for one student.
• When the skills needed for group work are important for the industry or employment.
• When listening to other students, building on the work of others and thinking critically and creatively are important.
• When there are limitations in resources that need to be shared.

Improving Learning and Teaching, Group Work and Group Assessment. (2013 Edition, Pg.5). Retrieved from: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/learning-teaching/support/approach/guides/group-work-and-assessment/group-work-assessment.pdf 

Group Size

For students working entirely online, the optimal group size is four to five. Groups this size enable:

• Easier planning and management – Students can work with each other to determine best times to meet based on their location or timetables.
• Improved accountability – Students are more visible to each other making it more difficult to shirk responsibilities and not do their fair share.
• Better decision making – It can be easier for the students to work collectively on decisions and come to a consensus.
• More meaningful contributions – With a larger project, each group member has the opportunity to make a valuable contribution and not feel they are completing “busy work”.
• Stronger relationships – There’s greater opportunity for group members to get to know each other and become more cohesive in a shorter amount of time.

Methods of grouping

There are a number of different methods for creating groups: 

• Students select their own group members
• Students are selected for groups by the instructor
• Students are put into groups randomly
• Students are put into groups based on task/interest

Assigning groups or doing them randomly can, of course, create issues if members don’t get along. However, with appropriate measures in place there are advantages to grouping students intentionally or by task. For example, if you create groups, you can put together members of different backgrounds, skills and interests and give students an opportunity to work with peers they may not normally work with. If you do it by tasks, you can allow students to identify which tasks they’d like to do and then create groups consisting of students with each of the other tasks. To learn more about the advantages and disadvantages of each method of group selection, visit the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).  Blackboard has also developed a resource to assist you in considering the benefits and potential drawbacks of various approaches to group formation.

Whether you group students intentionally, randomly, by task or allow them to put themselves in groups it’s important to remember that group work is complex and can be messy by nature. Working through that complexity is part of the learning experience for students. Once you create the groups what you do after can make the difference between a positive or negative experience.

More ideas on how you can arrange group work can be found here.

Planning

When you’re considering a group work project or assignment, it helps to think about what needs to be done before the start of the group assignment project.

For example, first ask yourself, does it make sense to have this assignment/ project completed through group work? Can the learning objective be met through the group work? Can the various tasks be broken down in a way that makes sense and provides equal opportunity for each student to work on it?

Another important consideration is to communicate the group work well ahead of its start, and to break it down into manageable components with appropriate scaffolding. Look ahead to have a clear understanding of what needs to happen including the various roles and responsibilities to complete the work. Students should have a clear picture of the purpose of the group assignment/project and what is expected of them.

A big part of a successful online group project is giving students the opportunity to develop connections and dialogue through technology and other means. What social platform might you use to enable students to communicate with each other (i.e. discussion boards, MS Teams, Blackboard Groups, Blackboard Collaborate Ultra)? Developing relationships and social presence prior to the start of the project will provide a solid foundation on which to work together in the future.

Your planning may also involve thinking about proactive strategies that deal with common challenges arising from group work.  For example, consider using written contracts developed by you and the students to outline their obligations and what happens if they do not meet those obligations. You may also think about how to resolve issues of unequal participation by assigning roles or developing assessment strategies that can motivate members to contribute to the work.  Another potential issue may be the dynamics of particular individuals in a group.  Do you have a process for this? For example, do you ask that they find solutions before coming to you?  Or do you set up regular weekly meetings to discuss progress and keep closer tabs on the group members?

If you’d like additional ideas on what to consider, please visit “Guidelines for Using Groups Effectively” by the Centre for Research on Learning and Teaching from the University of Michigan.

To learn about additional ways that you can facilitate a positive experience for group work, please refer to “What can I do as an instructor to facilitate a positive experience for group work?”, below.

Evaluation

Purpose – process or product:

As you develop the evaluations for your group work, it’s important to think about whether you are evaluating the end-product or the process of group work (or both). As part of this, you might consider the best evaluation methods to reflect the focus you have and the weight you give to each area in a way that supports the learning objectives for the course.  As well, it’s helpful to take time to explain what you are looking for specifically, particularly with newer skills you are introducing. For example, what exactly does good teamwork or collaboration look like in the context of your course and the project?

Timing:

When projects are broken down and chunked into smaller components it becomes more digestible for students and can enhance their learning. You can support this approach through regular simple evaluations from the start of the project and provide students with feedback to support their development and understanding. Grading early and often also helps to give students an opportunity to make adjustments to improve the final product. Having regular evaluations can also help to keep students on track throughout the length of the course. And remember that these regular evaluations do not necessarily have to be complex or result in a significant grading load.  Keep the check-in assessments simple and grade them for completion or use a very simple rubric to make grading efficient.

Individual, peer, group, self:

In group work, there are a number of different ways that you can evaluate the project. You can ask students to engage in peer evaluations, assess themselves at an individual level or consider the work of the group as a whole. On their own, each kind offers both advantages and disadvantages, which you can review at this resource offered by University of Waterloo.  As well, Carnegie Mellon University has a table outlining different grading methods for group work.

• Individual:
  To help distribute work equitably across team members, you may consider incorporating individual assignments at key points in the group project structure. For example, have all members of a group contribute three unique resources (i.e. 3%) and corresponding descriptions towards an annotated bibliography in support of their project. Each student would receive 1% for each resource they had identified and 0 if they did not contribute to the task. These individual submissions can be graded for completion and then the group can collate them into a comprehensive bibliography at a later date. In this way, all group members have some insight into valuable resources associated with their topic of interest and have contributed in a meaningful way to a key aspect of the overall assignment.
• Peer:
  If students are going to be working together closely and over a significant amount of time, peer evaluation will provide an opportunity to contribute to the development of their peers and express their appreciation of or dissatisfaction with the contributions of colleagues in a constructive fashion. Peer evaluation also give students important skills in providing feedback and creating channels for open communication throughout the project. Carnegie Mellon University has some examples of both peer evaluation and self-assessments for you to consider.
• Group:
  When evaluating the group as a whole it’s important is that you take time to explain the grading criteria to students before they begin their work, as well as the connection between the criteria and the learning objectives. Cornell University’s Center for Teaching Innovation has an example of a group rubric. If you’d like to get a sense of a project that involves all three types of evaluation have a look at the Methods for Assessing Group Work page at an example towards the bottom of the page, provided by the University of Waterloo.
• Self-evaluation:
  Often times the self-evaluation and peer evaluation go hand in hand, where the questions that are used for peer evaluations are the same ones used for students to assess themselves. Here’s an example from Northwestern, which includes reflection questions. This example from University of Iowa also provides an example of self-assessment and reflection questions, along with individual evaluation of the group as a whole.

Engaging your community:

As part of group work evaluations, you may also consider engaging individuals outside the course to contribute or take part in the evaluation process. For example, inviting industry people, employers, or alumni to participate as guest assessors (with training and conversation ahead of time).  This adds legitimacy to the project and raises the stakes in ways that can motivate student engagement.  Also, it extends learning beyond the confines of the classroom which can be extremely rewarding for students.

For other considerations, click here for a resource from Berkeley Teaching and Resource Centre.

What available technologies and tools best support group interaction?

At Niagara College, we have two main enterprise-level technologies that can provide robust ecosystems for group work.  Both Blackboard and Microsoft Teams allow for the creation of groups and serve to aggregate tools that support synchronous and asynchronous group collaboration. 

Below, we review and compare group functionality within Blackboard and Microsoft Teams according to five main categories:

• Group Formation
  • Blackboard Group Formation
  • Microsoft Teams Group Formation
• Group Collaboration Tools
  • Blackboard Group Collaboration Tools
  • Microsoft Teams Group Collaboration Tools
• Group Oversight, Grading and Feedback
  • Blackboard Group Oversight, Grading and Feedback
  • Microsoft Teams Group Oversight, Grading and Feedback
• Key Benefits of the Group Interface
  • Key Benefits of Blackboard’s Group Interface
  • Key Benefits of Microsoft Team’s Group Interface
• Limitations of the Group Interface
  • Limitations Blackboard’s Group Interface
  • Limitations of Microsoft Team’s Group Interface

For an ‘at-a-glance’ comparison of these two tools, download our Group Work Comparison Chart (PDF).

Facilitating Group Work in Blackboard

Group Formation

How do I create groups?

In the Control Panel, expand the Users and Groups section and select Groups. On the Groups page, you can view and edit your existing groups, and create new groups and group sets.For more information on how to create and manage groups within your Blackboard course site, watch the Setting Up and Using Groups in Blackboard video at the CAE’s Video Library.

How can students be enrolled in groups?

You can enroll students in groups in three ways. Please note that once enrolled, students cannot unenroll themselves from groups.

• Manual Enroll allows you as the instructor to assign each student in your course to a group. Manual enrollment is available for both single groups and group sets.
• Random Enroll is available for group sets only. Random enrollment automatically distributes students into groups based on your settings for maximum members per group or total number of groups. Random distribution applies only to students who are currently enrolled in your course. You can enroll additional students manually.
• Self-Enroll allows students to add themselves to a group with a sign-up sheet. Self-enrollment is an option available for both single groups and group sets.

Blackboard has developed a resource to assist you in considering the benefits and potential drawbacks of various approaches to group formation.

How do students find their group on Blackboard?

Once groups have been created and students enrolled, a group page, identified by the assigned group name will appear by default as a link on the student’s Course Menu. When they click on this link, students can access any group tools you’ve made available to them.

Visit this Blackboard resource for other ways to present groups to students, including where group sign-up sheets reside on your course site.

Also, check out this quick video to help students find their group and use group tools within their Blackboard course site.

Group Collaboration Tools

What tools do students have access to for asynchronous collaboration?

From their group area on their course site, students can access the tools you, as their instructor, have made available to them. Only you and the group members can access these specific tools.  All of the following tools are available through the group interface, but when you establish the groups, you can specifically enable or disable any of them.

• Group Blog: Members of a group can add entries and comments to the group blog to share ideas. You can grade group blogs.
• Group Discussion Board: Members of a group can communicate as a group, as well as create their own discussion threads.  You can grade groups discussions. Students are graded individually.
• Email: Use the group email tool for quick and efficient communication among group members.
• File Exchange: You and group members can use this tool to upload documents to the group area, and delete files, regardless of who added them. This tool is only available to groups.
• Group Journal: Members of a group can share their thoughts with each other and communicate with you. You can grade group journals.
• Group Tasks: Members of a group can define and separate the workload into tasks and distribute the list to the entire group. Each task has a status and a due date to help keep members on track. Group members can view the group assigned tasks in the group tasks tool or in the course tasks tool. You and other course members won’t see tasks for groups they aren’t enrolled in when viewing the course tasks tool.
• Group Wiki: Use group wikis to create a collaborative space for group members to view, contribute, and edit content. You can grade group wikis.

What tools do students have access to for synchronous collaboration?

• Collaborate Ultra: If you enable this option, a virtual room will be available to each group. The group can host synchronous meetings where they share audio, video, and other forms of content, including slides. They can make use of interactive tools, like the drawing and polling features and are also able to record group meetings. For more information on setting up and accessing virtual rooms for groups of students, watch the Creating Virtual Rooms for Groups of Students to Support Collaborative Work and Presentations in our Video Library.

Group Oversight, Grading and Feedback

How can a faculty member check-in on group progress?

As an instructor, you have default access to any groups created within your Blackboard course site. To check-in on group progress, you expand the Users and Groups option within your Course Management panel by clicking on it. Select Groups and click on the name of any group with whom you would like to check-in.  This will bring you to the group’s homepage and you can select any of the available tools to determine what progress the group has made.  Most group tools, such as the Blog, Journal and Discussion Board tools, will allow you to view which students have made contributions and which have not.

You also have the option, through the Users and Groups interface, to email all members of a group.  This offers you a quick and easy way to ask important questions of or share important updates with specific groups.

Finally, should you wish to host synchronous check-in meetings and you have enabled the Blackboard Collaborate Ultra tool for each team, you can meet them at a pre-determined time within their group’s virtual room.  For more information on setting up and accessing virtual rooms for groups of students, watch the Creating Virtual Rooms for Groups of Students to Support Collaborative Work and Presentations in our Video Library.

How can an instructor provide feedback and grade group work?

You have a number of available options available to provide formative feedback to a group of students while their work is in progress. As an instructor, you can input comments and make contributions on a number of group tools, including the Blog, Journal, Wiki, and Discussion Board tools. You also have the option, through the Users and Groups interface, to email all members of a group.  This offers a quick and easy way to provide comments on group progress and offer suggestions.

Of course, should you choose to meet synchronously with a group, you can also provide live commentary to students during those sessions.  These Collaborate Ultra meetings can be recorded so that students can review your feedback at a later date.

For summative feedback, interactions in several group tools can be graded.  Marks can be assigned to group Discussion Boards, Blogs, Journals, and Wikis. For more information on how to assign grades to group tools, watch the Setting Up and Using Groups in Blackboard video on CAE’s Video Library.

Any assignment generated within Blackboard can also be assigned to groups.  This is helpful because when a grade is assigned to the group, it automatically populates the appropriate Grade Center column for each individual member of the group. Choose a course area within which to create the assignment (likely the Assignments area of your course site).  When creating the assignment, choose ‘Group Submission’ within the Submission Details area.  Select the appropriate groups (or all of the groups if the assignment applies to the entire class), using the gray arrows to move them into the ‘Selected Items’ area.  Set-up the remainder of the assignment as you typically would and hit submit.  Once created, the assignment will also appear within the group homepage.

Key Benefits of Blackboard as a Group Interface

• Group assignments and/or graded group tools are automatically integrated with Grade Center allowing for streamlined evaluation.
• Plagiarism checking software, SafeAssign, can be applied to any group assignment submissions.
• Students work within a single platform, reducing the burden of learning new software and allowing instructors and students seamless access to group tools and feedback.

Key Limitations of Blackboard as a Group Interface

Not particularly effective for collaborative document creation, like collaborative development of Word, PowerPoint or Excel files.

Facilitating Group Work in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams (MS Teams) is a communication and collaboration platform that combines chat, video meetings, file storage, and app integration to support group work. Staff and students can access a web-based version of MS Teams through MyNC. The software is also available for free download to PC and Mac computers, as well as mobile devices. To access the relevant instructions, visit the ITS support page for MS Teams.

A quick start guide of MS Teams for education is available here. Note that not all the described functionality is available through our NC version of MS Teams.

Group Formation and Access

How do I create a ‘Team’?

Most faculty who use MS Teams to support student group work create a unique ‘Team’ for each group of students.  NC students and staff can access MS Teams from MyNC. After logging in select More Applications, then Microsoft 365, and finally click on MS Teams. You will then have the option to select Join or Create Team.  When you select Create Team, we recommend choosing Professional Learning Community as most faculty have found this to be the best setting for student-led group projects or work because all group members have full read-write permissions within their Team. For more information on launching this type of Team, check out this Microsoft resource.

A full comparison of Team types available within MS Teams chart is available.

How can students be enrolled in a specific Team?

It is important to note that only NC staff and students with valid college credentials can be enrolled within Teams. Students can be enrolled in a Team in two ways.

• Manual Enroll: Faculty control the process by creating a team for each group of students.  They use the Create Team option described above and search the NC usernames of each student to add them to the Team.  Using this approach, the faculty member is automatically added to the Team as the ‘Team owner’, allowing them to control the addition or removal of members. The Team should be set as Private so that it remains exclusive to the invited members.
• Self-Enroll: Because students have access to the Teams interface through the NC portal, some faculty have asked the students to create the Teams and invite their teacher as a member.  This streamlines the work of the faculty member, particularly in larger classes. One challenge, however, is that the originating student is by default the ‘Team owner’, meaning that they retain control over the addition or removal of members. Students should be instructed to set the team as Private so that it remains exclusive to the invited members.

For either method of enrollment, it is important to create a descriptive Team name, perhaps including a unique group identifier and also your course code (i.e. Group 9 – CULN 1684) so that students can distinguish the Team site for a group project in your course from other Teams created for other courses.

How do students find their Team?

Once students have been enrolled in a Team using their NC username, that Team will automatically appear for them within the MS Teams interface.  To find their Team, students would log in to MyNC. Once there, they would select More Applications, then Microsoft 365, and finally click on MS Teams.  Once in MS Teams, they would click on the Teams icon on the left-hand menu bar.  Any Team they were enrolled in would appear here, identified by its Team name.  They would click on the appropriate Team name to enter their virtual collaboration space.

Group Collaboration Tools

What tools do students have access to for asynchronous collaboration?

Team members have access to a huge range of different apps and collaboration tools within the MS Teams interface.  By default, each Professional Learning Community style team will include:

• Posts: This tab serves as an announcement page where Team members can post comments and update one another on progress.  Anything posted to this page can be viewed by all member of the Team and specific members can be ‘tagged’ within posts by including the @ symbol in front of their name.
• Files: This tab serves as the location for collaborative document creation, organization and editing. Team members can upload files, create folders, and edit documents collaboratively in ways that are very similar to Google Docs.  As the documents are updated, Teams maintains version histories and tracks contributions of individual team members.
• PLC Notebook: This tab is a tailored OneNote Notebook that allows teams to track various phases of their project.  The default template includes areas for team members to record their plans (i.e. group norms, roles), capture meeting notes, and update one another on progress.  The default template can be adjusted to better align with your specific project structure and goals.
• Other Tabs: There are an almost infinite number of additional tabs that can be added to a Team.  Each tab represents a new app, tool, document or website that students will use to advance their project.  Any Microsoft products (I.e. Excel, Forms, Planner) can be freely embedded within the Team as a tab.  There are also numerous other apps, such as Trello, Mindmeister, and SwoopAnalytics, that may require separate licensing and may come at a cost.  It is important to note that the CAE does not provide support for any of these external apps. 

What tools do students have access to for synchronous collaboration?

MS Teams allows for synchronous audio and video meetings with screen and document sharing.  There are two ways to launch a Teams meeting.

• Launching from Outlook Email Interface: NC students and staff can launch a synchronous MS Teams meeting from their Outlook email. To access the relevant instructions, review the Booking and Joining Teams Meetings document at this ITS support page. Using this option, the meeting organizer must invite Team members by including their emails in the To… area of the message.  A local and toll-free call-in number will automatically be generated, allowing members to connect to the meeting via their phone or use the link to join via a computer or mobile device.
• Launching from within MS Teams: In the top right corner of the Posts tab within a Team is an icon that looks like a video camera.  This icon is the Meet function.  When you click Meet, a synchronous meeting is launched.  The meeting appears as a new post within the Posts tab, allowing other members to join at the push of a button.  Launching meetings within MS Teams works best when team members have established a pre-determined time to log into the Teams interface.  These kinds of meetings cannot be pre-scheduled to launch automatically.  No call numbers are generated for this type of meeting, so members are limited to connecting via their computer or mobile device.

It is important to note that within much of the MS Teams documentation available through Microsoft, they reference a Calendar feature that allows for scheduling of MS Teams meetings. This Calendar function is NOT available within our NC MS Teams instance. 

Group Oversight, Grading and Feedback

How can a faculty member check-in on group progress?

As a member of a Team, the faculty member has access to all tabs within the Teams interface.  They can review group progress, respond to questions, check-in on individual contributions, and use the Posts area to provide commentary or offer encouragement for the whole group.

How can an instructor provide feedback and grade group work?

You have a number of available options available to provide formative feedback to a group of students while their work is in progress. As an instructor, you can input comments and make contributions on a number of Teams tabs, including the Posts and Notebook tabs.  You can also embed comments within documents stored in the Files tab.

Of course, should you choose to meet synchronously with a group, you can also provide live commentary to students during those sessions.  These meetings can be recorded so that students can review your feedback at a later date.

While formative feedback can be offered, there are no mechanisms for providing grades or creating rubrics within the Professional Learning Community style Teams.  Grades would need to be input manually into the Blackboard GradeCenter to form part of the students’ final grades in their course.

Key Benefits of MS Teams as a Group Interface

• Allows for collaborative document creation and editing for Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.
• A wide variety of apps can be integrated within the Teams environment to support group work, including MS Planner.
• Students can connect to synchronous meetings via telephone if they are having internet challenges and meetings can be automatically closed-captioned.

Key Limitations of MS Teams as a Group Interface

• No integration with Blackboard GradeCenter.
• No embedded plagiarism checking software.
• MS Teams interface can be somewhat complex and requires that students learn a new platform to complete their group work.
• The flexibility of the tool and the ability to integrate multiple apps can make the interface feel overwhelming for a new user.

What can I do as an instructor to facilitate a positive experience for group work?

There are a number of ways that you can facilitate a positive experience for students who engage in online group work.

Explain the purpose of activity and set clear expectations

It is important that you explain the reason behind the group work and how it ties into the course outline and learning objectives, as well as how the project is tied to the larger world.  Students are more motivated when they can see the connections between their course work and the real world.  They want to understand the end-result and what that looks like. As part of this, you may consider if the group work is outcome-oriented or process-oriented. Do you want them to focus on a solution? Or do you want them to reflect on and learn from the process?

In addition to outlining the purpose of the work, setting clear expectations in terms of roles and responsibilities will help to enable fair division of labour. How each person is evaluated against their role and work is also critical. What are the criteria (i.e. team work, presentation skills, organization) and what is acceptable? Are they evaluated as a group, individually, or both?

Also helpful is to talk about the group project in the beginning stages of the course, so students know what’s coming and can begin to link the content taught with how it will be used in the future.

Help students to develop skills for group work

Group work is never easy to navigate. The more you can prepare you students to work in groups, the more they will know what to suspect and be able to navigate the various opportunities and challenges that are presented.

There are a few ways you can prepare your students.

First, you can start by assigning simpler tasks so your students can start to build skills that will support them in their group work. For example, create smaller shorter learning activities involving group work. Part of this is thinking about what skills you want them to develop.  In addition to cooperation and collaboration, you may also want to consider giving them opportunities to provide feedback to each other, particularly if you expect to include peer evaluation and feedback as part of group work.

Second, you can begin to talk about potential issues that may arise through group work and talk your students through various approaches to mitigate them. For example, what might happen if one group member is not returning emails, or is taking on too much work?

Third, you can provide your students will tips on how to best work together on a project, or have them search out tips and share them with their peers. Check out this helpful article: “Ten Tips on How to Survive Virtual Group Work”.

Provide opportunities for dialogue

An important foundation for group work is to give students an opportunity to get to know and communicate with each other prior to the start of the group work. In an online learning environment, you need to take time to create interactions, whether it’s through discussion boards, synchronous sessions, or other means like wikis and other social media. Introduce your collaboration tools early so that by the time students do the group assignment, they are familiar with the tools, process and have had the opportunity to build relationships.

Acknowledge and prepare for common group work challenges

Group work is one of the best ways that students can broaden their learning. In the study by Johnson et al. (Cooperative Learning: Improving university instruction by basing practice on validated theory, 2014) it was determined that students engaged in collaborative learning had “greater knowledge acquisition, retention of material, and higher-order problem solving and reasoning abilities than students working alone”. https://teachingcenter.wustl.edu/resources/active-learning/group-work-in-class/benefits-of-group-work/

But group work can also bring a variety of challenges, including:

• Student perceptions of group work
• Division of labour; one or a few do all the work
• Scheduling challenges
• Personal conflict within the group

Acknowledging these challenges and identifying potential solutions at the start can help to mitigate them. One of the ways to do this is to consider key guidelines that students can refer to over the course of the project. The guidelines can be an opportunity to outline the roles and responsibilities of the group assignment, to describe the norms of behaviors and to outline various ways to approach potential issues that might come forward in the work.  You might also think about a group contract or ground rules that are created by the students and where the process to create the contract is facilitated by you, or done collaboratively. Please see below for some resources.

• Guidelines for Effective Group Work
• University of Waterloo – Making Group Contracts
• University of Delaware – Establishing Ground Rules for Groups
• George Washington University – Potential Problems with Group Work

Model expected behaviors in group work

Modeling is an important tool that you can use in your classes to engage students and bring to light the kind of behaviours you expect in their group work. In the paper titled “A Brief Review of Effective Teaching Practices That Maximize Student Engagement”, Harbour et al discuss how teaching practices impact student success and review three evidence-based practices, one of which is modeling. They note from Archer & Hughes (2011) that in teaching, modeling is defined as a “twofold process that includes demonstrating a desired skill or behavior while simultaneously describing the actions and decisions being made throughout the process.” This process, especially used with examples and when explicitly stating connections throughout the instruction, helps to enhance understanding.

What’s also important to consider, particularly in online learning, is how you extend modeling beyond direct instruction. What kind of behaviors can you reinforce? If you want students to be able to provide effective feedback to each other, or to understand the importance of responding to their peers’ emails promptly, how can you show this same behavior in your work? There are many teachable moments throughout the term where students often observe your behaviors outside of planned instruction times.

Engage in effective and regular communication

There are some key ways that you can engage in effective communication throughout the process of group work. One is to clearly describe the task you want them to complete by providing a concrete and meaningful example that they can relate to. It’s also important to be clear about your role and what they should expect or not expect from you over the course of the project.  For example, you might explain that you will not provide any answers for the work and are simply there to guide them, and listen. You can also outline when you will be checking in and what that looks like.  For instance, you might set up a regular meeting with each group every week to see how they are doing, and to discuss or facilitate ideas.

Establish peer feedback and peer review mechanisms, where appropriate

Feedback gives students insights into how they can maximize their strengths and build in areas they may need to improve. In group work, when members become skilled at giving and receiving feedback effectively, it opens the door to enhanced communication between group members and teaches them an important skill for their work outside of the classroom.

A good way to promote and teach the skills of feedback is to model it for students during your course.  For example, I when you are providing verbal or written feedback, to provide feedback that is timely and specific and offers suggestions for improvement. It’s also important to give your students time to practice giving and  receiving feedback before the group work begins. For example, you might have a smaller assignment or activity and ask students to engage in a short feedback session with a peer to review the assignment. If appropriate, as part of this process, you might walk around the room to add to the feedback.

To provide direction to your students on how to provide feedback, you can engage your students in the creation of a feedback rubric that provides clear examples of what feedback might look like. Click here to see an example of a feedback rubric from the University of California, Merced.

Another resource to consider is this one from EdSurge, which looks at ways to make peer feedback more effective in your classroom.