“Students probably learn more during group work than any other form of teaching during their higher education journey.” (Francis et al., 2022, 3)
Group work is key for delivering the University of Westminster’s Educational Strategy. Experiencing collaborative group work is an important way of delivering this strategy, whether through authentic education, transformative learning, or personalised education, as it has been shown to: ”develop a range of soft skills including communication, empathy, teamwork, conflict resolution, leadership and self-management; all skills highly sought after by employers, recruiters and other key stakeholders” (McKay & Sridharan, 2024, 221).
This report aims to provide a practical, evidence-based review and guide for staff in higher education about facilitating students to collaborate effectively in groups to enhance learning in all disciplines. Its target audience is staff using group work with their students, academic developers supporting staff and students to make the most of teamwork as an effective pedagogy, and senior managers and programme leaders developing institutional, departmental and programme-level strategies to promote effective and fulfilling group work learning. There is a vast literature on group work. This report draws on almost 200 of the more important references.
There are several types of groups that students may encounter in higher education, including project teams, learning teams, peer-assisted learning teams, and problem-centred teams. In this report, the emphasis is on student project teams operating over a minimum of several weeks, though many of the arguments apply to other forms of group learning. A variety of closely related approaches may involve teams of students working on projects, including inquiry-guided learning, research-based learning, and project-based learning, which I group under the generic term – inquiry-based learning.
The core chapters of the report discuss the benefits and challenges of group work, learning to work in a group, and assessing group work (Chapters 3-5).
The benefits and challenges of group work faced by students and staff overlap. Just as importantly, many strategies may be used to maximise the benefits and minimise the challenges. My argument is that group work has an important role in student learning in higher education, but for it to be effective it needs to be designed to meet the specific context, including the level of the course, number of students, length of the project, extent of diversity, mode of instruction, pedagogical approach, discipline, and learning spaces available. The advice given in the literature about how to build, develop, and maintain effective teams to enhance the quality of student learning is reviewed. There is no universal way of working effectively in groups. Among the advice given is building group work skills into learning outcomes, choosing an appropriate way of selecting teams and team sizes to meet the context, and recognising that most teams develop in stages.
Free-riding or social loafing is a major concern in all disciplines. This is when group members do not contribute equally, or at all, to the work. Many strategies may be adopted to reduce this issue. However, care needs to be taken to explore the reasons for social loafing. It is “not necessarily due to apathy or a deliberate attempt to do as little work as possible” (Hall & Buzwell 2013, 37). 1 There are many activities students can use to help their group develop as a team, including setting ground rules, identifying the different roles team members need to play, and handling problems. Ideally, there should be an explicit across-institution group work strategy developed for programmes to ensure there is a progression of skill development, particularly across the core modules.
Traditionally, in assessing group work, the emphasis has been placed on the product or outcome of the task or project, but attention is increasingly also being given to assessing the process of group work. This makes sense if there is an explicit learning outcome about the acquisition of skills of working in teams. Tutors usually assess the product outcomes of projects as they know the subject material; they may also sometimes assess the processes of working in groups if the project is largely undertaken in the class or laboratory and they can observe and mentor the students in action. However, in most group work projects, the only people who know how the group operates are the students themselves; hence peer and self-assessment is the only valid way to assess the process of group work.
There is much debate as to whether all team members should be given the same mark, whether team members should be assessed individually, or whether it is better to distribute the group mark between individuals to reflect differences in the quality of their contributions, and if so, how best to do this. Many projects use a mixture of group marks and individual marks, with some tasks assessed by the tutor and others by peer and self-assessment. Redistributing group marks between team members can incentivise all students to work to the best of their ability
Not all teamwork has to be summatively assessed. Formative feedback can play a critical role in developing teamwork skills and give students confidence in areas in which they have previously little experience.
Developing inclusive working in groups is more about promoting equity and justice than upholding equality. Staff need to take account of the diversity among the students that they teach. It is important to avoid ‘othering’ and stereotyping, as individuals have multiple categorisations. This matters because it helps highlight the difference between equity and equality. Individuals and teams are likely to have different learning development journeys as they experience working with students with different histories, identities and skills. I explore two illustrative examples of supporting equity and intercultural groups to undertake teamwork – disabled students and international students. Many of the principles discussed apply to all the protected categories and other marginalised groups.
The modes of learning delivery – face-to-face, online, or blended – have different benefits and challenges for students and staff in undertaking group work.
Group learning is central to many different pedagogies.
“The challenge is that there are so many approaches that making a choice can be daunting, and, at times, it can be difficult to make distinctions between the myriad variations of specific group-learning approaches” (Davidson & Major, 2014, 8).
Hence it is unsurprising that many small group learning activities have developed in higher education without explicit reference to an underlying pedagogic framework. Here I use the term inquiry-based learning (IBL), as a pedagogy that “enables students to experience the processes of knowledge creation (Spronken-Smith, 2008, 1). IBL may be used as an alternative to attending lectures, for students to learn about existing knowledge which is new to them. It may also be used for students to undertake research, where they are creating new knowledge for society. 2
Disciplines have distinct approaches to their research and pedagogy that reflect their subject matter, and many have signature pedagogies, for example, using laboratories in the sciences and studios in art and design subjects. How group work operates in a laboratory and a design studio differs in some respects reflecting how knowledge is constructed in the sciences and the arts. A word of caution is needed here. Simply putting students in small groups in a laboratory, a studio or any other learning environment does not mean that the students will learn either knowledge or skills; that depends on the quality of the learning design and the appropriateness with which it meets the local context.
To many tutors adopt a ‘sink or swim’ approach to managing group work. “Indeed team projects are often assigned without providing students with the information or guidance needed to ensure a productive experience that allows students to develop the skills necessary to work effectively in teams” (Flores & Bauman, 2024, 71). Group facilitator behaviours can, however, damage group work if they over-interfere. There is no one best way of facilitating group work. Tutors need to be prepared to play multiple roles at different points during the life cycle of a group project.
Mentors may be used to support student group work. They are commonly senior students who have taken the course previously. Student team members can support each other to develop the skills of working in teams and to make their groups a success. Discussing which of the values underpinning partnerships apply to their group at their first meeting can help the team get off to a good start.
Face-to-face and blended project group work require different physical learning spaces on campus than is needed for transmission teaching and independent learning. There has been a significant increase in the design of learning spaces to support active and collaborative learning, particularly in authentic learning settings. Discipline and professional-specific learning spaces, such as studios in art and design and architecture, laboratories in sciences, and workshops in engineering, are essential for many forms of authentic learning. Our focus is on generic learning spaces designed for active and collaborative learning. Formal small group learning spaces include collaborative learning suites and bookable active learning spaces.
A range of educational strategies to incorporate research and inquiry into the curriculum is identified. All of them include group work. For change to be successful many conversations between stakeholders are essential, but these need to take place within a clear framework and sense of direction provided by senior management. Strategic initiatives, around the design, development, and maintenance of effective teamwork pedagogy, often involve a trade-off between costs and benefits between educators, students and institutions. Institutions ought to develop group work policies.
Group work strategies should recognise that teamwork and individual work are complementary, as students obtain different knowledge and skills. The choice between working separately or in groups depends on the preferences of staff and students, the size of the class, the complexity of the project, and what discipline and transferable skills the students are expected to learn. A group-based final-year capstone project, perhaps sitting alongside an individually undertaken dissertation, could be a sensible strategy to ensure there is a progression in the development of teamwork skills, as well as the enhancement of other skills. Strategic group work initiatives have several prerequisites for success.
In the final chapter, I speculate on the future of group work in higher education drawing on the views of two colleagues who reviewed an earlier version of this manuscript. Both emphasise the potential impact of generative AI, so I end this chapter with what ChatGPT says in response to the question: “What are the future likely trends in project group work in higher education?”. Future trends in project group work in higher education are debatable but include adaptation to rapidly changing communication technologies and gen AI; co-creation with students of group work activities; emphasis on diversity and inclusion; interdisciplinary group learning; personalised and adaptive learning; 3 sustainable and socially responsible projects; blended learning models; and focus on lifelong learning and professional development.
The text is illustrated throughout with many specific examples of advice, practices and mini case studies on the use of group work in a range of disciplines, institutions and countries. The report ends with a list of key takeaways. Four appendices provide examples of specific ways of assessing group work. 4