Online group work

Blackboard provides a range of tools to support online group work:

Group manager: to divide students into groups for collaborative work

Selective release: to control the release of certain items in your site to certain groups, and thus create private discussion and work spaces

Discussions: to enable group members to communicate asynchronously and post attachments in a private discussion space

Assignments: to enable online submission of group work

Grading forms: to enable students to provide peer review on group work, according to a range of criteria

Peer review: to enable students to grade and comment on each other's work, using either a simple rating scale or a grading form

Non-Blackboard DSO tools that support online group work include:

Wikis: simple-to-use shared online content-creation spaces

eLive: to enable student groups to meet synchronously online, with audio, text messaging, whiteboard and file sharing

Drupal-SMF: to enable group members to communicate online in a private discussion forum, contained in a customisable website.

Online group work strategies

Why do group work?
Why do group work online?
What are the hazards with online group work?
How can DSO support group work?

• Dividing students into groups
• A shared communication space
• Synchronous communication
• Shared tasks and a shared creation space
• Assessing group work

Tips for successful group work
Some examples of online group work at Deakin
References

Why do group work?

Group work is becoming more and more popular in universities - and not simply because it can save teaching and marking time. When managed well it is an ideal way to help students develop their own knowledge through the process of working with other people to create something. Group work has several other advantages. It:

• encourages active learning
• helps students develop generic skills including not only teamwork and communication, but also problem solving, time management, critical thinking and leadership
• encourages students to articulate their knowledge and opinions, and refine their understanding in negotiation with others
• exposes students to a variety of points of view
• decreases isolation for off-campus students
• is a necessary part of most authentic activities.

Why do group work online?

The simple answer to this question is that it is the best way to gain the above benefits if your class is spread across different geographical areas. Also, communicating and creating things online helps students develop skill with the types of online technologies that are becoming increasingly important to most people's working lives.

What are the hazards with online group work?

According to Deakin's Division of Student Life counsellors, many students HATE online group work. These are the hazards (all of which can be avoided):

• Freeloaders - some students will sit back and let others do all the work, knowing they will probably still receive good marks. Two things you can do to avoid this are to use some kind of self/peer assessment and to divide the task so that some parts are assessed individually.
• IT/access difficulties - some students may not have strong IT skills, or may have limited or slow access to online collaboration areas, and this may limit their ability to contribute. Some mentoring and technical support will be necessary, especially in the early stages, and you should always choose the simplest technology available for the task.
• Timezones and slow responses - when some group members are in different timezones or are only occasionally logged on to DSO, communication can be slow and frustrating. To overcome these problems you could set up groups according to timezones, or encourage students to make agreements to check DSO at particular times convenient to themselves, or set up group eLive sessions for synchronous audio and text chat and file sharing.
• Personality/communication problems - these include domination, conflict, non-cooperation, etc. You cannot assume any group will operate smoothly, whether it is online or sitting around a table. You or a tutor will need to monitor online group discussions, be available to answer queries, model appropriate behaviour, provide feedback and be prepared to deal with communication problems. Being present online in the early stages will generally pre-empt more serious problems that could otherwise arise.
• Clumsy document creation - when students are working on group documents individually, version control and formatting problems can be awkward. Wikis offer one solution, but if you are not ready for these then simple, early advice on file naming and use of templates will not go astray.

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How can DSO support group work?

Dividing students into groups

The Blackboard Group Manager tool enables you to divide your class into groups. Once this has been done, you can use the Selective Release tool to allocate private discussion spaces, assignments, learning materials, etc. to each group. Small groups of between five and ten members generally work better than large groups as communication and task allocation is less cumbersome, trust builds quicker with smaller numbers of people to get to know, and members feel more responsibility to contribute.

You can use the Group Manager to set up groups in a number of ways, depending on whether you prefer students to select their own groups, you trust random selection, or you wish to control the selection.

• Self-selection
  Click the option Create groups with sign-up sheets when you are setting up your groups. If you then click on the box that asks whether students should be allowed to see the names of other members of the group before signing up, you will find many students will choose to work with people they know. While this can save members time in the early stages, a hazard of self-selection is that savvy, lazy students may sign-up into groups of students they know to be hard-working, to try to gain an easy ride.
  
  Another option is to create groups around different tasks. You could then leave the box allowing students to see who else has signed up to each group unticked, which will make students focus on the task that interests them most rather than who they will be working with. Or you could let students see who has signed up but get them to contribute their own profiles and a description of their particular interests to a discussion topic, and encourage them to use the profiles as a basis for selecting their workmates.
• Random selection
  If you choose this option, the member selection will be automatic and instant (whereas it can take students some time to find and use the sign-up sheets). It will force students to work with different people, and can create a fairer distribution of more and less able students across groups. However, some groups may be mismatched, and students may resent not being able to choose their workmates.
• Custom groups
  This option can be useful when you have different language groups, occupation groups, or groups in shared geographical locations. Some lecturers go to considerable lengths to profile their students' personalities, interests, abilities, etc., in order to set up balanced groups with shared interests. However, despite the lecturer's best efforts, some groups may still turn out to be mismatched, and again some students may resent not being able to choose their workmates. You might need to build in some flexibility to change groups in the initial stages.

Another way to create groups is to use the Blackboard Selective Release tool - though this is a blunt instrument compared to the Group Manager. You can use Selective Release to allocate discussions, assignments, content, etc. to students with different characteristics in the Grade Book columns. For example, you can set up discussions just for Burwood campus students, or for off-campus students. However, be aware that groups formed in this way can be large, and you may find the interaction is limited as a result.

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A shared communication space

A group won't get far without a shared discussion space, whether it is asynchronous or synchronous. Blackboard's Discussions tool or Drupal-SMF can be used to set up private asynchronous group online discussions. Students can also post attachments to their messages, such as Word documents, spreadsheets, images, audio and video files.

Although students inexperienced with the format frequently need coaching and modelling of suitable forms of expression for academic work, especially early in a semester, asynchronous discussions are a particularly useful means to encourage students to articulate their knowledge or thoughts on a subject. With asynchronous discussion, students have sufficient time to compose thoughtful messages and tend to make postings they think will stand public scrutiny for the whole semester.

You can use the Group Manager tool to create discussion topics that are visible only to members of specific groups. To do this, in the Group Manager, click on the box next to a particular group, then select Discussion topic from the drop-down list at the bottom of the page named Create Group Activity, and click on the green arrow next to the drop-down list. A Create Threaded Topic window will appear. Complete the fields and settings in this window and click Save. A threaded discussion will generally work better than a blog or journal for collaborative work, as the visible message structure should make it easier to follow the chronology of different threads of the task's development.

Moderation of group discussions is extremely important. Gilly Salmon provides a good deal of useful advice on moderating online discussions in her book E-moderating: the key to teaching and learning online (2004).'Learning submarines: raising the periscope' provides an introduction to her ideas.

Synchronous communication

eLive is the recommended DSO synchronous communication tool. It offers real-time audio and text messaging communication, as well as an online whiteboard on which participants can write, draw and share documents, image files, video, websites, etc. eLive's application sharing function enables students to actually work on, change one other's documents or a group wiki while in real-time audio discussion.

Synchronous communication is also very useful for project and group administration, meetings and catch-ups.You might find it useful to set up an ongoing eLive session for your unit's group work, to provide cheap audio and text communication as well as a meeting space with file sharing facilities.(You will need to make each student a moderator of such a session in order to enable them to application share - see the Setting up an eLive session quick guide for instructions.) Even if the students choose not to application share, they can save images they create on the whiteboard and the session's messages if they wish.

You could also consider using eLive for group presentations. Groups could either present to the rest of the class in a live eLive session, or record practice sessions until they are satisfied with their performance, and send you and the rest of the class the URL of their best recorded session. (See the Using the audio window in eLive guide for instructions on recording a session.)

For further information about moderating eLive, see the Moderator's Guide (9 MB).

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Shared tasks and a shared creation space

Group work generally involves creating something collaboratively. Much has been written on the best types of tasks to set for online group work and some useful resources are suggested under Tips for successful group work.

You may wish to provide different groups with different resources and materials. A useful tool to help you avoid cluttering your site is to create different learning modules for each group, and add the relevant instructions, readings, video, audio files, group assignments, group discussion topics or eLive sessions for each group. Then use the Selective Release tool to make each learning module visible only to the relevant group.

A group assignment(see Assessing group work) will offer a space where the group members can upload a series of draft versions of a document or website for each other to check. A group discussion topic (see A shared communication space) will also provide a space where students can post updated document versions as attachments to discussion messages, but using the assignment drop-box for this purpose should help them keep track of which is the latest version.

Wikis

Wikis offer a far more versatile web-based space for content creation than the Blackboard assignment drop-box. A wiki is a web space to which students can upload text, links, images and media files, and then edit each other's work and add comments. Users need neither special software nor knowledge of html. Multiple users can work on a page at the same time, and they can view the page history to see who added which components. Like any shared student space, wikis need to be monitored to ensure students are behaving appropriately.

For further information about wikis as a teaching/learning tool, see:'7 things you should know about wikis' or the Social software pages of this website.

Example: A wiki

Assessing group work

With the Blackboard Assignments tool, you can allocate separate online assignment drop-boxes to groups. These provide private online spaces in which group members can upload drafts. Once the group is satisfied with the final version of its assignment, one member can submit it and it can then be marked electronically, with group members being able to retrieve their mark through their My Grades tool.

You can mark Blackboard assignments using a customisable grading form, which allows you to provide marks and comment feedback on your own customised criteria.

Peer and self assessment

Peer and self assessment is almost essential for online group work. It is generally very difficult for lecturers to assess individuals' contributions to collaborative tasks, and some students will abuse a situation where all group members receive the same mark. However, it has been found that students will use peer assessment to penalise freeloaders.

Another reason to include some form of peer or self assessment is that, if the reasons for using group work as a teaching/learning strategy are strongly related to the benefits students should gain from the processes of working in a group, then performance of those processes should be assessed. As every lecturer knows, students will alter their approach to a task depending on what aspects are assessed, and if it is just the end product that is marked then you may miss an opportunity to encourage students to take their development of teamwork skills seriously.

A peer and self assessment form you create in say a Word document can be attached to a Blackboard Discussion topic. Students can download the form, complete it electronically and then attach either their individual assessments or a negotiated group assessment to their own discussion message. One submission may be sufficient, at the conclusion of the task, or you may prefer to ask students to peer- and self-assess several times during a longer task. The assessment criteria and weighting should be set by students in consultation with the lecturer, to ensure students are clear about their responsibilities and why they are important. For an example, see the sample peer and self assessment form (41 KB) (.doc).

For more information on peer and self assessment, see the Institute of Teaching and Learning's Self and peer assessment page.

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Tips for successful online group work

• The Institute of Teaching and Learning's teaching and learning module Group assignments provides a wealth of information and Deakin audio case studies on group work.
• Deakin's Elizabeth Stacey is an authority in the area of online communication and group work for tertiary education. A paper that covers many of the important principles she has found is Problem-based learning online.
• Gilly Salmon provides principles for effective online group tasks and moderation in E-tivities (2002), extracts of which are available from her All things in moderation website.
• Melrose and Bergeron recently published results of their research into effective online group work facilitation strategies showing the importance of 'instructor immediacy' at all stages of group development.
• The Deakin Division of Student Life website provides some insight into how Deakin students manage online group work.
• Central Queensland University has put together a bibliography of online resources on online collaborative work.
• Much has been written on how to manage group work effectively, and much of the advice that is provided for facilitating face-to-face groups can also be applied to online groups. The Centre for the Study of Higher Education has a useful website on this subject, as do the University of Technology, Sydney and James Cook University.
• Richard Tucker from Deakin's School of Architecture discusses results from his STALGS project researching many issues relating to different ways of setting up (on-campus) groups, as well as managing and assessing group work, in an Institute of Teaching and Learning professional development workshop presentation entitled 'Teaching group design problems: some tips from practice and research'. iLecture recording.

Some examples of online group work at Deakin

Kristin Demetrious describes an online role play she has used for several years in her Public Relations unit.

Peter Haeusler describes an online case study project he has used for several semesters in his Managing Global Risk unit.

Annegret Goold describes an online problem-based experiential learning design she has used in her IT Practice unit.

John McWilliams describes a role play that has both online and face-to-face components that he has used for several years in his Change Management unit.

References

Australian Universities Teaching Committee (2002), Assessing group work <http://www.cshe.unimelb.edu.au/assessinglearning/03/group.html>(accessed 5 February 2007).

Salmon, G. (2004), E-moderating: the key to teaching and learning online (2nd edn), Taylor & Francis, London.

Salmon, G. (2002), E-tivities: the key to active only learning, Stylus Publishing, Sterling, VA.

Stacey, E. (2005), 'Problem-based learning online' in Research in Distance Education 6: selected refereed papers from the 2004 Research in Distance Education conference, pp. 59-70, Deakin University, Geelong,(accessed 31 January 2007).

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