The year is 2018 and for some inexplicable reason, I am loafing about in my introductory business management class in order to start what I presumably considered would become a lengthy and rewarding but inevitably unfulfilled career as an accountant. If I had ever read the syllabus to this class, I had swiftly and intentionally forgotten every word of it, so it came as quite an unpleasant shock to me, when at 8:17 in the morning my well intentioned professor diagnosed my peers and I with a shot of group presentations. 

 

I had remained entirely dedicated to keeping to myself in this early hour of the day, and so I quickly found myself in a group of five people who I could consider 10 week acquainted strangers. Surely in the mind of my professor this assignment would result in something that resembled a more lethargic ending of The Breakfast Club, but much to her dismay I began to think of how I could preserve my A minus with the minimal interaction necessary with my peers. Ultimately, this plan succeeded and I put any effort that could have gone into connecting with and motivating my group mates into creating one extremely A minus worthy powerpoint slide accompanied with a speech that could last exactly two minutes presuming that as long as my work stood out as my own my grade would not suffer. I got a 90!

 

Now the year is 2022 and I look at my sluggish, overworked  engineering students at the end of a semester in which they showcased a slightly less than amicable relationship with their peers and assign them the same group project that I once dreaded. Thinking to myself all the while, “How can I possibly make this an experience they will not resent me for?”

 

The answer lies in a chapter of “Teaching Technical communication, authored by Luke Thominent, titled, “Designing a Team-Based Online Technical Communication Course” in which Mr. Thominent explains the advantages of assigning this type of group work to students, and how to properly integrate it into a technical communications course. In his chapter, Thominent emphasizes how to implement this type of assignment without overwhelming the students who will face evaluation on the work of their peers.

First, Thominent gives guidance on the type of work which should be done in a group setting, stating that the type of assignment should fit symbiotically with the team based learning environment. He specifically gives guidance about using assignments which require meaningful contributions between each group member. Stating that “Some research has shown that extended report projects are effective collaborative writing assignments because the complexity of the genre requires meaningful contributions from multiple people.” In other words, group work necessitates an assignment in which each member of the group can fully participate, otherwise group members will perceive other group members to be loafing about and not doing their fair share of the work.

 

From a students perspective, even when doing work which requires meaningful contributions from group mates, group projects can still feel tedious. What if those contributions lack in quality compared to one group mate? How will he/she feel upon a returning grade which reflects their peer’s lower-quality work? 

 

Thominent’s answer to that question is to keep group work assessment low stakes in order to give students a feeling of control over their final grade. Thominent states that in his course; “In total, there were 26 graded assignments in the most recent version of the course, making most relatively low stakes (3-4% of the final grade). And many of the projects (e.g., participation in discussion and individual drafts) were graded on a full credit/no credit basis. Collectively, this meant that final grades were primarily based on completing the assigned work and on contributing actively to the team’s efforts.” This allows students to work in groups while their grades remain in their own control.

 

Of course, while this type of evaluation will give students no reason to worry about how their group mates will impact their grade, it needs to be built on a classroom management strategy that will make students feel like they have nothing to worry about. Thominent states that “This grading strategy was explained to students at the beginning of the semester and was reinforced throughout the course. Reassuring students that they truly did have individual control over their grades helped to ease initial fears about the potential chaos of an online team-based course.” Ultimately leading to students understanding that this team based assignment will not result in a poor mark in their class.