Scenario

“So often when we ask students to collaborate, they see it as merely a way of distributing the workload, and not as an opportunity to build and consolidate their collaborative skills. They fall into old ways of working in groups where the task is divided and individuals complete their part individually, only really coming together at the end to bring it all together. I would like to design a learning opportunity that not only gets my students working together collaboratively, but which also influences their capacity for collaboration beyond the course. How can I get people to really recognize the value of becoming part of a learning community and experience the benefits of social learning?”

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How shall I design such a collaborative work?

I am unsure about-

1. whether the students even like working in a group?
2. What are their major concerns in a collaborative work?
3. What do they value in a collaborative work?
4. How do they want to participate in a group?

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Let’s ask both the students and the teachers for their opinion

More than 50 students from 11 countries responded to the survey

Outcomes:

1. Majority of the students (>90%) like to at least sometimes work in a group
2. Majority of the students (>65%) are concerned about the distribution of workloads (>65%) and presence of freeloaders in the group (>56%)
3. Collaborative work brings together people from different backgrounds, experiences, and expertise. This allows one to gain a diverse perspective. Most of the students (>76%) value this aspect of collaborative work
4. More than 61% students are happy when the workload is distributed equally among members so that everyone does some part of everything
5. Majority of the student gave importance to trust and mutual respect between the teammates

Interestingly the responses from the students tallied well with that of the teachers

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Students

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Students

Students

Student

Teachers

Teachers

Teachers

Teachers

Teachers

Coming to the three big questions

1. Divide the tasks in small modules so that the task can be equally distributed so that everyone does some part of everything

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2. Make the objective and sub-objective clear

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3. Make the groups so that students of more-or-less similar degree of motivations are together. This is important so, that even bossy students also learn to work as team players, while freeloaders or less motivated ones learn to take responsibilities

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4. Delivering a work in time is a group responsibility also make a task / assignment contract or minutes of meeting to document formally the responsibilities of the individual members

1. Using discord or any platform for informal interaction between the teammates to build trust and comfort between each other

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2. Making them appreciate technology with simple games or some ice breaking activities

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3. Final reflection assignment that requires debate / discussion with another group so that they can work on their soft skills while being appreciative to different perspectives

1. Make the working groups based on skills through a blind survey before the course begins

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2. Designing the group goals that requires diverse skills so that one member can’t do everything alone

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3. The survey showed that students usually like to work in groups, however if there is someone who don’t want to work in group without of course any serious reason, it is OK to push them to participate in group activity and allow them to figure out the value of collaboration based on the tasks themselves