Concerns about group work

There were concerns from a few participants about using more group work. When explored further this was due to prior poor experiences of using group work and group assignments. In the past we used a number of assessed out-of- class group assignments on the programme that created problems of inequity of workload, students often divided up the work rather than working on the project collaboratively. In addition, when group work is completed out-of-class, more conscientious students may not trust their peers to do the work to their satisfaction and hence take on a disproportionate amount of the work themselves, and then complain about it (Michaelsen, Knight and Fink, 2002). There was some concern that some students might pass with little effort due the

work of their peers; however, as the participants stated, the concerns did not seem to come to fruition.

I was concerned that we’d have people that never showed up but their team marks get them through a module. I’m not worried about that now but I was at the outset. (Participant 10)

I was concerned at the beginning that we’d have weak students who won’t have contributed getting propelled through to passing by stronger team members. (Participant 14)

The misconception that the marks of weaker students would be inflated or compensated for by their peers was also an initial concern of some of the participants who took part in my previous research on this subject in the US. They too came to realise that this wasn’t an issue with TBL (Tweddell, Clark and Nelson, 2016)

Prior negative experiences of group work at school, college or on prior degrees were also raised by a number of students in the focus groups.

They would make you find a group and do some kind of project together, mostly we would split the work up and come together at the end. It wasn’t necessarily working together as a group. So it didn’t really work, there was never the connection with the people. [Year 4 Student Focus Group]

We broke it all up, someone did the finance, someone the marketing, so we didn’t really learn about what each other was doing. [Year 2 Student Focus Group]

I used to see group work as punishment. It was like a gigantic project that was due and they would stick you in a group and it would just be awful because you would find that a few people would take control, a few people wouldn’t. Divvying up the responsibilities was awful and you ended up with a presentation that maybe 2 people did and 2 people just sat there. When I first heard about TBL I thought’ oh, gosh, who would

do that?’ Who would go and do group work on its own? I soon found out it was different. [Year 3 Student Focus Group]

A lack of incentives that reward individual preparation and team contributions and performance may result in students prioritising individual needs over group effort, which may lead to some students carrying the load for the group. TBL may help ameliorate this through the use of predominately in-class group work, and incentivising preparation and team contribution through the assessed readiness assurance process as well as through summative peer evaluation. Group work is an umbrella term used to describe numerous learning opportunities involving students working together in a group or team. Group work can vary in quality of the student learning experience with some students benefiting from peer discussion, peer learning, and peer support through to others that report factions, free-loading and difficulty in finding time to meet up. It can also be facilitated more or less well by teachers. Students can be working

in a group, that is cooperative learning, or as a group, that is collaborative

learning (Hammar Chiriac, 2014). The former may involve working individually on separate sections of a group task that is subsequently brought together and presented as a group endeavour. The latter, Hammar-Chiriac argues, is a more meaningful exercise where students utilize the different skills of the members of the group to achieve a common goal and involves problem-solving and reflection. If students are working as a group to solve a particular problem they are arguably more likely to be actively participating or engaged in active learning, the penultimate point on Trowler’s continuum of student engagement in learning (Trowler, 2010). Hammar-Chiriac goes on to report that previous studies (see Einarsson et al., 2007) of student experiences and conceptions of group work in higher education found positive and negative aspects to group work that were both task-related and socio-emotional. Potential positive aspects including affiliation and learning from each other and negatives included the time involved, conflict, and students who didn’t contribute to the team effort. A study investigating the experiences of students working in groups in higher education reported that 97% of participants responded that group work facilitated their learning and developed their collaborative working skills ensuring they learned more or different things by working in groups than if

working alone (Hammar Chiriac, 2014). This was achieved through discussion and questioning each other’s perspectives. Other benefits cited in the study included supporting and helping each other, forming friendships and increased motivation to read and prepare for the next group session. Participants also reported negative experiences of group work such as homogeneous group composition, poor attendance, lack of preparation for class, lack of clarity of team roles, and disagreements or clashes with a team member that affected the group climate. When there is inequity in contribution, which may arise from different levels of motivation and ambition, then this may lead to members of the group who are more active than others which may lead to resentment. My own experiences of teaching using group work before using TBL was that students would be given group tasks such as writing a short presentation together and presenting it back to the group. Students regularly complained that they struggled to meet as a group, that the work was unevenly distributed, and that they were often ‘carrying' other students who were often absent at the presentation.

When using traditional group work there is a danger that members of newly formed groups may prioritise their individual work and effort over that of the group, often referred to as freeloading. When there are incentives that measure and reward individual preparation for and contributions to the team effort then arguably the concept of freeloading can be overcome (Michaelsen, Knight and Fink, 2002).