Common Issues with Group Projects and Ways to Improve Them
Stephanie Higgins and Bryce Raymond
Introduction
Solutions to These Problems
Due to large class size, undergraduate professors have resorted to using
group projects to make assignments more manageable for the students and
grading easier for the teacher. These group projects have many benefits to
learning: enhancing understanding of material, improving critical thinking
and problem solving skills, and learning how to work well with peers.
However, they come with many issues that can easily be solved.
1. To distribute work:
• Have the professor assign roles and responsibilities to each group
member.
• Keep group sizes small to ensure each member will have a
contributing role.
2. To make sure group members work well together:
• Utilize surveys such as MBTI to assess students’ personality types.
• Use learning style questionnaires such as the VAK survey to make
sure groups are composed of similar types of students.
3. To grade fairly:
• Have anonymous student evaluations of group members.
• Have a divorce option available.
• Grade each group member individually based on his or her assigned
role in the project.
• Have separate deadlines for individual parts and for the project as a
whole.
4. To improve communication among group members:
• Utilize availability surveys such as Catme to create groups with
similar schedules.
• Keep groups small to ensure minimal schedule conflicts.
• If physical meetings are not possible, use systems such as Adobe
Connect to hold online meetings.
• Put all work in shared programs such as Google Docs so that group
members and professors can keep track of contributions.
Learning Benefits
1. Students gain experience in time/task management, organization, and
communication with peers.
2. Students become accustomed to working with peers towards a common
goal, which prepares them for the workplace.
3. Group projects are correlated with better retention of material,
development of critical thinking and problem solving skills, and ability to
apply knowledge to various real-world situations.
4. Allows students to see other perspectives of project topics
Graph of Group Success Over Time of Structured and
Unstructured Groups
(Mennecke and Bradley “Making Group Projects Work” Page 34)
Conclusion
Group projects are a highly utilized tool in the undergraduate setting because
research has shown that it improves student learning. In addition, the ability to work
in a group setting is a skill sought after by employers. However, there are many flaws
in the way these projects are conducted at universities, but these flaws are easily fixed
by the methods previously discussed. If some, or all, of these methods are either
enforced by the professors or presented to the students, group projects will run much
more smoothly and will be more beneficial to the students.
References
Peer Evaluation Form Example
EVALUATION OF: _____________________________
Problems with Group Projects
1. Distributing work amongst group members
• Social Loafing: Students tend to work less hard when they
are part of a group than when they work individually.
• Students have trouble assigning roles to members of the
group.
2. Working with different types of people
• Students tend to have different work ethics that conflict.
• Different learning styles amongst group members may
clash.
• People who don’t get along socially may have trouble
working academically.
3. Depending on others for a grade
4. Trying to communicate and set up group meetings
• Conflicting schedules make it difficult to find the time to
meet.
• The larger the group, the harder it is to get everyone
together to communicate.
• It is hard to make sure everyone’s voice is heard.
EVALUATION DONE BY: ____________________________
(Group Member’s Name)
PREPARATION AND DEVELOPMENT: (4.0) (3.5) (3.0) (2.5) (2.0) (1.0) (.75)
1. Contribution of ideas:
2. Willingness to meet, spend time, etc.:
3. Accepting responsibility :
4. Sharing the work:
5. Leadership/interest :
Comments:
(Meiss “Evaluating Peers in Group Projects” Page 25)
Cuseo, J. (1992). Cooperative Learning Vs. Small-Group Discussions and Group
Projects: The Critical Differences. Cooperative Learning and College Teaching, 2(3),
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Maguire, S., & Edmondson, S. (2001). Student Evaluation and Assessment of Group
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Meiss, G. (1983). Evaluating Peers in Group Projects. Journalism & Mass
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Mennecke, B., & Bradley, J. (1998). Making project groups work: The impact of
structuring group roles on the performance and perception of information systems
project teams. The Journal of Computer Information Systems, 39(1), 30-36.
Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/232579584?accountid=13158
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