Conceptualising and communication

Successful group collaboration requires proper planning and clear communication. Obtaining buy-in from students is crucial. Once the value of including collaborative group work activities in your module or course has been established, the following needs to be attended to:

• Share the reason for collaboration with your students in different ways.
• Link this to higher level outcomes, such as the UP Graduate Attributes, Exit Level programme outcomes and module outcomes in doing so.
• By means of backwards design (starting with the end in mind), determine how you can scaffold the collaborative activities by means of:
  • Introducing smaller scale activities in class
  • Using these to focus on different principles of positive cooperative group work
  • Gradually expecting more from groups in terms of product and process
• Determine the exact learning you want students to gain from the different collaborative (learning/assessment) activities - intellectually (end-result) as well as socially (process).
• Translate this into a clearly described (assessment) task and criteria.
• Determine the number of students per group. The more students per group, the more difficult for them to collaborate - logistically as well as intellectually - and the better the chance that real learning will be compromised. Although groups between three and five are often ideal, the class context and the nature of the activity may determine the size.
• Explain to students whether they will be automatically enrolled, or whether they may choose their peers.
• Explain to them whether peer evaluation and peer feedback will form part of the process and, if so, explain:
  • The criteria they should use
  • the way/mode in which it should be done
  • whether this will count for marks.
• Determine and plan for closing the loop (how will students give you feedback on their experience of the collaborative activities?)

The following sections provide more detail:

Important principles for effective cooperative functioning

Teach students to work in groups

Options for group forming/selection

Formal cooperative learning activities

Tips and guidelines