Four Barriers to Effective Group Work and How to Overcome Them

Group work can be a powerful learning tool.  Research from Sweden reveals desirable outcomes in academic achievement and skill development along with increased motivation to learn.  But as any teacher can attest, group work can go badly for a variety of reasons.  Let’s examine four barriers to effective group work and how to overcome them.

If we look back at the definition of collaborative learning, there is a key point: each group member needs to contribute their unique knowledge and skills.  When an assignment or the behavior expectations do not support or provide that opportunity, issues pop up. 

Let’s examine four barriers to effective group work and how to overcome them.

Four Barriers to Effective Group Work

Barrier #1: Lack of student accountability

“Some of my students either don’t want to or don’t know how to contribute to their group.”

What veteran teachers do…

1. Before class, break the task into roughly equal parts.  If you can’t do that, reconsider the group format.

2. Explicitly teach your students how to be collaborative. Often students are willing to participate but don’t always know how. 

3. Create clearly defined roles to complete the task: Discussion leader, Recorder, Presenter, etc.  If every member of the group has a specific part to play, and that part is known by the group and by the teacher, they’ll be more likely to pitch in.

4. For larger projects, you could give each group a list of necessary tasks and ask students to identify which member will be taking care of which part.  

5. Think about the size of your groups.  Larger groups tend to provide more “hiding” places if a student hopes to avoid work.

Barrier #2: Too much time off task

“Some groups are off task way more than they’re working.”

What veteran teachers do…

1. Consider adjusting the lesson timing.  Parkinson’s Law reminds us that “work expands to fill the time available.”  

2. Think about breaking larger tasks down.  Instead of asking for a finished product in 45 minutes, ask that smaller chunks be done every 15 minutes.

3. Utilize teacher-selected groups.  Although the “popular” choice among students is to allow them to select their groups, we typically see more productivity when students are working in teacher-created groups.

4. Have reasonable expectations for student concentration spans. According to the International Teacher Magazine, a typical student possesses a 10-15 minute capacity for focused attention.

5. Try to minimize distractions, specifically electronic devices.  As any adult can attest to, devices offer an easy escape when work gets tedious or difficult.  A recent study reported the median use time of phones by teenagers to be 4 hours a day.

Barrier #3: Lackluster interaction between students

“When my students work together, the conversation isn’t as rich as I want it to be.  It feels like if I don’t step in to initiate, not much is going to happen.” 

What veteran teachers do…

1. Mix individual “think time” with interactive collaboration.  It’s okay if a group isn’t talking the entire time. Research supports alternating between time for independent thought and time for conversation.

2. Consider how interactive the assignment is.  Does it actually require each person to contribute?  In some cases, teachers try to jam square individual tasks into round group holes simply because we believe in collaboration.

3. Assign (or allow students to select) specific roles to complete the group task.

4. Provide students with sentence starters that lead them toward more rigorous discourse.  You can put them right on the role cards.

For example…

• The main question we need to answer is…
• Let’s go around the table to hear ideas.
• Another way to look at the question is…

Barrier #4: Equitable grading of group work

“How do I reward the students who work the hardest, when it isn’t always obvious who that is?“

Three options for grading group work (from Carnegie Mellon)

Grading Option 1: Shared Grade

The group turns in one product and everyone gets the same grade.

Pros:

• Straightforward
• It avoids the difficult “judgment” call by the teacher on individual contributions
• Can encourage students to work together

Cons:

• Students potentially are unfairly penalized or helped by the work of others
• Individual contributions not acknowledged

Grading Option 2: Individual Grade

Students submit individual components of the group task and are graded solely on their part.

Pros:

• Encourages individual accountability
• Provides a fair account of each person’s contribution/effort

Cons:

• Doesn’t promote group interdependency
• It is difficult to design diverse group tasks that are precisely equal 

Grading Option 3: Grade A Follow-Up Task

The group creates a single product. Then, each student completes an individual task (for example, an essay or a test) based on the group’s product.

Pros:

• High degree of fairness
• Increased motivation to learn from the group task

Cons: 

• Lower importance on the group task
• More work for the teacher

Brad has taught history at the middle and high school levels for 19 years, almost exclusively in American public schools.  He has a master’s in educational technology and is passionate about elevating the status of professional educators.